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Comment by vishnugupta | Hacker News Reader

While appreciating his genius let's also remember that even Newton himself couldn't resist FOMO and lost substantial money when a bubble burst [1]. Goes to show he was a human after all.

[1] https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/73/7/30/800801/Isa...

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There was a linked quote on that. "I can predict the movement of stars, but not the madness of men"

Truly a great quote and still so valid today.

ANDROMACHE. Doesn't it ever tire you to see and prophesy only disasters?

CASSANDRA. I see nothing. I prophesy nothing. All I ever do is to take account of two great stupidities: the stupidities of men, and the wild stupidity of the elements.

— Jean Giraudoux, French (1882-1944)

Reminds me of Einstein's "Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe"

(attributed to him, anyway)

Reminds attributed to Heisenberg -

“When I meet God, I’m going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he’ll have an answer for the first.”

Probably thought he could time the market. Everyone makes that mistake...

its worse than that. He pulled his money out because he (correctly) thought it would end badly, making a large profit.

But it just kept growing and growing. He eventually bought back in, and that was right at the peak before the crash, so he lost a lot.

This is almost like how it went for me, early Bitcoin "investor". Still managed to make some speculative profit though, take that, Newton!

This story is about his anti counterfeiting exploits though, which usually requires skills not necessarily related to intellect. he was dutiful and unforgiving which is why he had some level of success in it. Same reasoning applies to his investments tanking, it's a different skillet and far more unpredictable.

This is mentioned in the linked story.

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