"Words they may have to eat" Department

[tonyk]

Well too many to count, for me personally. I am eating them up on a daily bases...

Once I said that AdamBL is putting my thoughts in a better English... That must have been in a parallel reality.

[merockstar]

"This sounds too good to be true. It has to be either a ponzi scheme, or a technological impossibility."
-Me, speaking about Bitcoin after reading the 2010 article on slashdot. I then ignored it's existence until 3 years later.
Needless to say I try to keep a much more open mind these days.

[hughmanwho]

ByteMaster:  "Ethereum & BitShares Partnership"

Bytemaster may have thought that a partnership was a great idea.. but Ethereum doesn't seem to.  Which is kind of important when it comes to working out a deal..

[JoeyD]

Those of us who bought in early have borne an incredible risk. It just as easily could have turned out badly for us.

Well I've bought in at the recent all time worst moment and have had the pleasure of seeing the value of my "investment" more than half about as fast as a new car. I am also not convinced that changes as potentially powerful as bitcoin and the projects over here will continue to go as uneventful as they have up till now, we have yet to see the first real push-back from power-players with a vested interest in the status quo. While I do not enjoy "losing" my hard earned money (and believe you me when I say hard), I do not regret investing in projects like bitcoin and the ones being developed here.

That said, eventhough I've put my money where my mouth is ideologically, I don't think I'd really mind being able to do that while still maintaining(or in my case recovering) some spending power. I'd like to be able to keep on supporting projects like these, so fingers crossed that bitcoin and especially bitshares-DACs will be able to achieve even a little of their potential.

[CWEvans]

Honesty is a true art. How does one make honest predictions?

Prices will increase, decrease, or stay about the same.

Anything more specific than that is a sales pitch.

Profoundly disagree. If one minimizes psychological noise and maximizes intellectual honesty it is often possible to make great predictions.

I had a discussion with my step-father concerning Bitcoin and Litecoin before the last bubble and he argued against investment, but it was clear to me all along that he was merely expressing a feeling (disappointment) from earlier experiences as an investor.

Those of us who bought in early have borne an incredible risk. It just as easily could have turned out badly for us.

[CLains]

Honesty is a true art. How does one make honest predictions?

Prices will increase, decrease, or stay about the same.

Anything more specific than that is a sales pitch.

Profoundly disagree. If one minimizes psychological noise and maximizes intellectual honesty it is often possible to make great predictions.

I had a discussion with my step-father concerning Bitcoin and Litecoin before the last bubble and he argued against investment, but it was clear to me all along that he was merely expressing a feeling (disappointment) from earlier experiences as an investor.

[donkeypong]

2014 could still be a big year for Bitcoin. But I'm glad I found Bitshares, which has much greater potential.

[JoeyD]

2. "Mt. Gox is the Ft. Knox of Bitcoin." --Anonymous user of Magic The Gathering Online Exchange.

I think there may be some truth to this one.

Ah, you mean Knox as Gox? Who knows, Ft. Knox could well be empty. If it's full, though, I'd have to think all that gold is worth something...more than the paper money.

Ft. Knox could be empty, similarly there has been shown no proof whatsoever of the theft of mtGox bitcoins, so they might not be as m t.

This thread has the makings of a famous last words listing.

My own was about how I thought Bitcoin-technology would grow as fast as GNU/Linux, so I expected to be able to afford quite few years before getting my feet wet.

[donkeypong]

2. "Mt. Gox is the Ft. Knox of Bitcoin." --Anonymous user of Magic The Gathering Online Exchange.

I think there may be some truth to this one.

Ah, you mean Knox as Gox? Who knows, Ft. Knox could well be empty. If it's full, though, I'd have to think all that gold is worth something...more than the paper money. 

[CWEvans]

Warren Buffett wouldn't even invest with his friend Bill Gates.  He said he didn't understand tech then and he's said the same thing more recently as applied to Bitcoin. He chooses only companies with balance sheets he understands, such as those selling razor blades, candy bars, or space on railroad freight cars.

And, that seems to have worked out pretty well for him. So, when he says silly things about Bitcoin, let him have his fun.

I've never understood why, when someone is an expert on one thing, people expect that person's wisdom to extend into other areas. Asking Warren Buffett about Bitcoin would be like asking Bill Clinton about Hollywood celebrities and how they should act...

Or Paul Krugman about anything other than Economic Geography, or me about which programming language to develop software in.

3. "Franko is freedom." Reality: One of the first altcoins, currently with a market cap of $37,000 and stuck around #112 amongst altcoins.

Depending on whose blogs one reads, this one might be true.   

5. "Way overvalued for a search engine." --Me, dismissing a chance to get in on Google near the beginning

One of my favorite examples of the unknowability of the future that I use in class when teaching Economics or Finance is YouTube.

It's a website... where people can up load cat and baby videos... for free... and the site operator will pay for all that storage and bandwith... from advertising revenue...?  Get out of here!!!

Shows what I know.

[CWEvans]

Honesty is a true art. How does one make honest predictions?

Prices will increase, decrease, or stay about the same.

Anything more specific than that is a sales pitch.

[Stan]

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

[bytemaster]

2. "Mt. Gox is the Ft. Knox of Bitcoin." --Anonymous user of Magic The Gathering Online Exchange.

I think there may be some truth to this one.

[donkeypong]

Warren Buffett wouldn't even invest with his friend Bill Gates.  He said he didn't understand tech then and he's said the same thing more recently as applied to Bitcoin. He chooses only companies with balance sheets he understands, such as those selling razor blades, candy bars, or space on railroad freight cars.

I've never understood why, when someone is an expert on one thing, people expect that person's wisdom to extend into other areas. Asking Warren Buffett about Bitcoin would be like asking Bill Clinton about Hollywood celebrities and how they should act. He's famous and he was a popular president, but the fact that he's a celebrity doesn't suddenly make him an expert in Hollywood life. Just like Warren Buffett doesn't know jack s*** about Bitcoin or any other technology investment.

Here are a few "words they may have to eat" nominations. These are paraphrased, not exact quotes.

1. "Mortgage markets are a powerful stabilizing force." --Alan Greenspan. It has some truth, but in hindsight it wasn't the best thing to say. 

2. "Mt. Gox is the Ft. Knox of Bitcoin." --Anonymous user of Magic The Gathering Online Exchange.

3. "Franko is freedom." Reality: One of the first altcoins, currently with a market cap of $37,000 and stuck around #112 amongst altcoins.

4. "The 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps." --Steve Jobs (RIP)

5. "Way overvalued for a search engine." --Me, dismissing a chance to get in on Google near the beginning

[CLains]

Honesty is a true art. How does one make honest predictions? There's so much denial and confusion lurking in every thought - and paranoia is self-aggrandizing. To be humble with ones own thoughts and past predictions, and yet not blame oneself for them, and yet to try to be honest again and again!

[CWEvans]

Definitely...

Good point here.  Humility is the cornerstone of trust.

I, for one, am extremely proud of my humility. 

Yeah... we have had to eat quite a few...

And it takes a strong character to do so. It is those who refuse to eat their own words, in spite of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, that are the most unpleasant.

More to the point of the OP above, there are several categories of having to eat one's words, including:

• Fools: Those who pontificate on what they do not understand, especially experts opinioneering outside their fields of expertise.
• Liars: Those who want something to fail and work actively to undermine it.
• Luddites: Those who cling to outdated dogma, refusing to acknowledge innovation.
• Skeptics: Those who are unfamiliar with what one is doing, and naively heed the words of fools, liars, or luddites.

Engaging well-meaning fools can be very productive sometimes. Anti-Bitcoin goldbugs might be an example here, when they correctly identify shortcomings of fiat currency, and then resort to appeals to tradition, popular sentiment, and authority, as well as proving a negative, to make their cases.

A somewhat more adversarial approach is called for with liars, who are actively attacking one, whether directly or indirectly. One need not be belligerent about it, but one is not going to convince a rival to embrace one's position by seeking common ground. One should either ignore or confront a liar's charges—as gently or harshly as fits one's personality and the image that one wants to project—and seek to make him or her an ally only after one believes that this person has ripened into a fool.

When it comes to luddites, just let it go. You're asking them to repudiate beliefs that have defined their personhood for longer than you have been alive. To expect anyone to do that is asking too much. Warren Buffett is not going to start hanging out on this forum and sleeping over at the homes of BitShares developers, no matter how eloquently any of us makes the case for peer-to-peer, distributed, self-governing service providers that exist only in software.

If one finds common ground with skeptics, one often can convert them to one's point of view.

So... I would hesitate to quote Peter Schiff in the context of this thread, but Paul Krugman is fair game, as is Professor Bitcorn.

[bytemaster]

Yeah... we have had to eat quite a few... 

[fuzzy]

Definitely...

Good point here.  Humility is the cornerstone of trust. 

[AdamBLevine]

Maybe good to start with a little self deprecating humor.  Do you think there are any statements Invictus representatives have made along the journey that have wound up being more trouble than they were worth?

[MrJeans]

"Stay away from it. It's a mirage, basically," Warren Buffett

Too many people have told me its a ponzi scheme. A few months later and the same people dont say that anymore... but they say it cant be trusted... a few months later...

[Stan]

The all-knowing author in this article

http://qz.com/193931/bitcoin-looks-like-the-worst-investment-in-the-world-this-year/

had a good laugh at Bitcoin's expense, then uttered this jewel:

In short, bitcoin doesn’t come anywhere near meeting the test of a currency. It’s not a widely accepted medium of exchange. It’s not a reliable store of value. And last week the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) dealt it a harsh blow by ruling that for tax purposes, bitcoin should be treated like a financial asset such as a share of stock, which will make it almost impossible to use as a currency.

Of course, your ownership share of a share of stock represents a claim on the profits of an actual company. Your ownership of bitcoin, even before the IRS decision, represented, well, that you were a pretty cool, tech-savvy person. In other words, not much.

Thanks to Wildwex for the discovery.

[Stan]

Here's a thread to capture those prized words we think their authors will most likely have to eat before this is all done.

What examples have you found?