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I've always been fascinated by bubbles -- economic bubbles, though soap bubbles are neat too.

Their dynamics are rooted in human behavior, not in technology or products. That's why the same bubble dynamics have played out in every era documented across centuries.

Bubbles were the same from Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (1841) to Galbraith's "The Great Crash, 1929" (1955) to Lewis's "The Big Short" (2010) to whatever book will be written about our current time.

Each bubble follows an almost predetermined curve, the "Stages of a Bubble". In the early phase, it's not even clear whether there will be a bubble or anything at all. Proponents are largely ignored and if they advocate too loudly they are mocked, as they're way too early in the trend for anyone to believe them.

As public awareness grows, so does the clout of the boosters. The ones who get the most credit are in just before the elbow of the mania phase.
https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter3/transportation-and-economic-development/bubble-stages/

The crash from a bubble, as we all know, is vertiginous. If hope and greed are the driving emotions on the way up, fear is the driving emotion on the way down.

I'm reminded of a saying I've seen -- if you see one half of the Eiffel Tower forming, you can bet the other half will too.

So what is an "evilbrag" per @natematias and how does it relate to bubble dynamics? (Setting aside the question of what specifically counts as evil in tech, because everyone will have a different definition.)

Suppose someone's incentive is to collect fame and fortune as an expert on some topic. If they work on it early and call attention to it during the awareness and early mania phases, they collect the most clout for their involvement. But by the time the bubble reaches "delusion", the media landscape is crowded with hot takes and no clout to be gained.

If instead a person who was involved on the way up then flips the script -- and the bubble chart -- and says "this thing I was instrumental in building is evil, and I am here to tell you why and save you from the monster I built", they create for themselves a new opportunity to collect clout.

Now they can be a new type of prophet who's singing, to pick a totally random example, the hymn of AI doom.

Someone doing an evilbrag is collecting money and fame on the way up *and* the way down. A bunch of people will then try to jump on the evilbrag bandwagon but they'll be too late, and everyone will forget all about it once it reaches despair.

Those doing an evilbrag are maximizing their earnings just like those shorting CDOs during the housing bubble.

Meanwhile, true visionaries, the ones we probably should listen to on both the way up and down, are a bit different. They're the ones who are talking about things during the stealth and awareness phases.

And when visionaries caution us about things, the public sees them as Cassandras in the very early days of the mania phase, when everyone else is just jumping on board.

I for one would like to hear more from those who see what is just stealth right now or risks from tech that is just barely getting attention.