The original Paul Krugman quote

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

Oh no, he made a mistake one time... When I was in 5th grade I added 2 numbers wrong, that must mean my whole career has been a lie.

Predictions are wrong more often than observations, I expect.

McKinsey advised AT&T that the total market for cell phones would be just a handful. McKinsey is going strong.

You're right, he missed that one. Do you think his total track record is poor?

Please let's not dip into the cosmic hashtable. It's boring and offtopic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096 (June 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622773 (March 2020)

I'm old enough to remember when everyone was trying to learn Japanese back in the 80's.

It would be difficult to work in China, their green card equivalent is difficult to obtain.

The economic conditions in China right now are very bad for the average person, pretty high unemployment.

Why shouldn't you? You learn 3 new characters a day with no effort whatsoever via SRS and pass the HSK1 in 2 months. If you like it, you keep on studying and improving, if you don't like it, at least you will be able to greet the taxi driver when you go there (but won't understand their reply).

Probably good to have to pad it under language skills in resume but not a very important concern.

It is incredibly hard.