 To demonstrate how it can sometimes be difficult to grasp or even recognize a new and useful idea, we have put together a rather amusing series of errors of judgment – that is, opinions and forecasts about the future, as authoritative when they were made as they have proven to be entirely baseless now with the benefit of hindsight.
Hindsight is a cognitive fallacy, essentially an error resulting from a faulty organization of thought. The error in this case consists in believing that what is evident, even obvious today was likewise evident in the past. These kinds of errors of judgment, therefore, deserve a certain amount of indulgence.
Then there is of course the expression of conservative judgments, usually founded on prejudice, which are the result of another cognitive fallacy, and that is overconfidence.
More specifically, it is unfounded certainty approaching arrogance. The degree of overconfidence in individuals was measured in 1977 by Fischhoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein, who compared the subject’s certainty of having answered a series of questions exactly with the objective exactitude of their responses.
Two interesting results emerged from the research. The first is that people in general tend to be overconfident – that is, more sure of themselves than they should be. The second is that the closer a given topic is to an individual’s area of knowledge, the more overconfident they tend to be. In short, paradoxically, the better they know the subject, the less accurate they are in their judgments.
Overconfidence is a nasty beast, for it impedes us from recognizing the new and exposes us to the ridicule of hindsight. Below are a few spectacular examples. But please, after having enjoyed a chuckle or two, remember that no one is entirely immune to overconfidence, and that every one of us is capable of overlooking a brilliant idea or creative insight, either because we don’t understand it or because it doesn’t fit into our mental landscape.
ERRORS OF JUDGMENT
Nowadays it is practically impossible to discover unknown lands.
Council of Advisors to Isabella I of Castile - 1492
The Sun does not revolve around the Earth? Insane, heretical, absurd and false.
Tribunal of the Inquisition on the theories of Galileo and Copernicus - 1616
Comets are not celestial bodies. They are created in the Earth’s atmosphere.
A. De Angelis, friar and astronomer - 1673
A ship that sails against the wind? Preposterous.
Napoleon Bonaparte, responding to Robert Fulton, inventor of the steam ship -1805
Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic ocean.
Dionysius Lardner, professor of astronomy - 1838
Eliminating the pain of surgery is a fantasy. ‘Knife’ will always mean ‘pain’.
Alfred Velpau, French surgeon - 1839
High-speed trains are impossible. Passengers would not be able to breathe and would die of suffocation.
Dionysius Lardner, professor at University College, London - 1856
The Suez Canal? Absolutely impossible to build.
Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister - 1858
Pasteur’s theory of germs is nonsense.
Pierre Pachet, professor of physiology, Toulouse - 1872
We will never be able to operate on the abdomen or the brain.
Sir John Eric Ericksen, English surgeon - 1873
This “telephone” has too many defects to be seriously considered a viable means of communication and is of no interest to us.
Internal memo, Western Union Telegraphs - 1876
Nothing will come of this invention of electric power.
Erasmus Wilson, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology - 1879
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin, British physicist and president of the Royal Society - 1895
Cinema is an invention that will go nowhere.
Antoine, father of the Lumière brothers - 1895
Everything that can be invented has already been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents - 1899
X-rays will prove to be a hoax.
Lord Kelvin, British physicist -1900
I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew.
Herbert George Wells, English author - 1901
The horse is here to stay. The automobile is only a fad.
Horace Rackham, attorney of Henry Ford - 1903
There will never be more than a million automobiles in the world because it would be impossible to train a million chauffeurs to drive them.
The administrators of Mercedes - 1903
Airplanes will never travel as fast as trains.
William Henry Pickering, astronomer, Harvard College - 1908
Airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value.
Ferdinand Foch, commander of the French army - 1911
The cavalry replaced by these metal contraptions? Ridiculous.
The aide de camp of General Douglas Haig, commander-in-chief of the British armed forces, at an exhibition of armoured tanks - 1916
Television is technically feasible, but commercially it is a waste of time.
Lee De Forest, inventor - 1926
Animated pictures with a mouse? It’s a terrible idea that would frighten pregnant women.
Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, rejecting Mickey Mouse - 1928
Picasso’s fame will quickly fade.
Thomas Craven, art critic, Art Digest - 1934
The average American family doesn’t have time to watch television.
New York Times - 1939
I think there is a world market for about five computers.
Thomas Watson, president of IBM - 1943
The atomic bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.
William Daniel Leahy, American fleet admiral - 1945
Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
Darryl F. Zanuck, director of 20th Century Fox - 1946
In the future, a computer could weigh as little as 1.5 tons.
Popular Mechanics, USA - 1949
Listen, kid, you’d better go back to driving that truck.
Jim Denny, talent scout, to Elvis Presley - 1954
The hypothesis of space travel is utterly absurd.
Richard van der Riet Wooley , English astronomer, Time -1956
The United States is not capable of putting a man on the moon by 1970.
New Scientist - 1964
Britain will never have a female prime minister.
Margaret Thatcher - 1969
There is no reason for an individual to a computer in his home.
Kenneth Olsen, founder of Digital - 1977
640 K of RAM ought to be enough for anyone.
Bill Gates, Microsoft - 1981
It is clear by now that there will be no reunification of Germany in this century.
Flora Lewis, New York Times -1984
You’re lucky you’re not my student. You wouldn’t get much of a grade for a project like this.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum, professor of computer science, speaking to Linus Torvalds about the latter’s Linux operating system - 1992
Cloning a mammal will never happen, not now, not ever.
Michael A. Froham, biologist, State University of New York - 1993
I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.
Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, inventor of the Ethernet standard - 1995
There have been 17 films made about the Titanic, almost all of them failures. It is likely that this one will share that fate.
Los Angeles Times - 1997
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