<story><title>Is Hacker News a good predictor of future tech trends?</title><url>https://jamespotter.dev/hacker-news-tech-trends/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jbay808</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a lot like predicting earthquakes right? You can measure strain and know that you&amp;#x27;re due, but you still don&amp;#x27;t know precisely what the trigger will be or when it will happen.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t make such jokes about seismologists though. Why not?</text></item><item><author>em500</author><text>Regarding point 2, an old joke comes to mind: &amp;quot;economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>MattGaiser</author><text>1. For things like remote work, it only became a trend because of the pandemic. You would have needed to predict the pandemic to predict that management would permit remote work. It was not really a trend, but rather an emergency measure that morphed into a desirable benefit.&lt;p&gt;2. This only looks at successful things. We must examine unsuccessful things to see if there is any real predictive ability.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>injidup</author><text>I had to break up with my Seismologist girlfriend.
She kept pointing out all my faults.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is Hacker News a good predictor of future tech trends?</title><url>https://jamespotter.dev/hacker-news-tech-trends/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jbay808</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a lot like predicting earthquakes right? You can measure strain and know that you&amp;#x27;re due, but you still don&amp;#x27;t know precisely what the trigger will be or when it will happen.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t make such jokes about seismologists though. Why not?</text></item><item><author>em500</author><text>Regarding point 2, an old joke comes to mind: &amp;quot;economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>MattGaiser</author><text>1. For things like remote work, it only became a trend because of the pandemic. You would have needed to predict the pandemic to predict that management would permit remote work. It was not really a trend, but rather an emergency measure that morphed into a desirable benefit.&lt;p&gt;2. This only looks at successful things. We must examine unsuccessful things to see if there is any real predictive ability.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>But we do make such jokes about meteorologists.&lt;p&gt;I suppose it&amp;#x27;s the matter of media exposure: unlike economists and meteorologists, seismologists aren&amp;#x27;t constantly on TV telling us bad times are coming soon.</text></comment>