There's nothing bad about being wrong sometimes. On the contrary, it's a good thing, it shows that it is very difficult to have a very accurate view of the future, no matter how much of an expert you think you are or other people think you are. That's the same kind of thing as the time capsule of the sci-fi writers that was unveiled recently: most of them had a very false vision of the future, because there are simply too many variables that make it impossible to compute.
I don't think what mixmax (or pg) was saying really had much to do with "being wrong" but more "being analyzed by people who already have a bone to pick". The result is that you find yourself not wanting to say anything at all. Alternatively, when you do, trying to be very very very clear about exactly what you are saying as it will give someone else "a weapon in comment threads" that won't just be used against you once, but might come up again eleven years later: the same statements, which causes a kind of ludicrous level of hedging and difficulty (as people might have understood it in context at the time without problem, but will anyone appreciate it eleven years later? in this "discussion", for example, pg has already had to remind some people that Java was already a quite popular language in 2001, and thereby that it still being popular now does not contradict much of what he was saying).
