The Millennium Bug

Just reading the following article: 20 years ago, we were all set for a Y2K disaster that wasn’t

Article says:

Patti Duncan stockpiled enough water, food for herself and her cat, and books she hadn’t read to survive two weeks in her Marysville home. She was sick of hearing about the Y2K bug — a programming flaw that raised fears of computers misreading the year 2000 as 1900 and going haywire. Even so, Duncan told The Herald in December 1999 that she was ready, just in case. Throughout 1999, we were bombarded with warnings of Y2K pandemonium. People were stashing food and cash. Agencies offered assurances — the power would stay on, financial markets wouldn’t collapse, travel wouldn’t be disrupted and life’s necessities would be available. We prepared, because who knew for certain?

Yes, I filled my bath with water and bought loads of tins of food. I didn't think anything particularly untoward would occur, but it was sensible to take necessary precautions. No one else I knew took any precautions at all!

We got computer experts saying that the bug was too deeply imbedded in computers to possibly expect that nothing would happen. They said there will be some disruption, and perhaps considerable disruption. That Governments were being unrealistic and irresponsible in their reassuring messages. Well, these were experts on computers, and I knew virtually nothing about computers at that time. So it was surely sensible to take note of their warnings.

So what happened on 31st December 1999? Bollocks all happened is what! Very disappointing. And this is why people aren't in thrall to "experts"; namely because more often than not their predictions don't pan out. Predictions by economists scarcely perform any betting than flipping a coin. Those that have a track record of successful predictions almost invariably did so by chance (if a million people flip a coin 20 times in a row, there will be 1 person on average who will get 20 heads. But he has no ability to get heads when flipping coins).

4/1/2020 Edited to add: I put the forgoing on facebook, and a certain Steve Hume responded by claiming the reason why the bug didn't manifest itself was because of all the work done by people like himself to prevent it. Moreover, he appears to think this contradicts what I said.

It doesn't. Either the millenium bug:

a) Was a problem that could be largely dealth with before the year 2000 had rolled round,

or

b) The bug was too deeply imbedded in computers and some disruption was inevitable (i.e sufficient disruption to make it to the news).

Before the year 2000 rolled round most acknowledged "experts" were maintaining "b". However, after the year 2000 it transpired that "a" was correct. Hence, the claims that it was too deeply embedded were nonsense.

So Steve Hume's comment didn't actually have any relevance to what I originally said. Pointing this out to him simply elicited a response saying my position is "slightly incoherent and, not a little weird".

The frustrations of trying to explain things to people on the net..