The cost of being early is that you look wrong for a while

If you detect a shift before the metrics do, the metrics will disagree with you for a while. That is the definition of early. The uncomfortable corollary is that, from the outside, early looks identical to wrong — sometimes for months, occasionally for years. The people who hold conviction through that window are called visionaries retroactively and stubborn contemporaneously.

The trap is to resolve the discomfort by giving the signal more weight than it has earned, or by abandoning it the moment the room turns skeptical. Neither is science. The vibe scientist's job is narrower: name the observation, write down what would confirm it, write down what would refute it, and set a review date.

That is unglamorous. It also happens to be the difference between an intuition that compounds into judgment and an intuition that decays into anecdote. The dated note, filed against a specific hypothesis, is what turns 'I called it' into evidence rather than autobiography.

Being early is not a superpower. It is a bet on time — and time, unlike opinion, keeps receipts.