I think it&#x27;s because the examples are so plentiful.<p>Big leaps forward seem to broadly cause people to either significantly underestimate them (the home computer mid 1980s), or to significantly overestimate their near-term impact (the state of all things stem cells 15 years ago).<p>It occurs almost every time there&#x27;s a big headline about growing organs, curing HIV&#x2F;AIDS, curing various forms of cancer, curing alzheimer&#x27;s, and so on. It occurs with almost everything to do with gene therapy right now.<p>Robotics has been under an almost constant state of overestimation for more than a century, while the industry has still delivered amazing technology in that time. Artificial intelligence has been treated the same way for decades. I think these two instances are heavily caused by fear, people are projecting far beyond what&#x27;s rational.<p>You see it in batteries a lot. Solar suffered from it for decades. Storage &#x2F; memory seems to see the effect in action with nearly every breakthrough (the gulf between the date of first public awareness and reaching a commercial economy of scale representing that typically huge gap of time).