The Value of Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: The Value of Ideas

#51

Post by timr » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:12 PM UTC

jamesseda wrote: post #31

philk wrote: post #8

This is a fantastic post by Scott. I think the great idea fallacy continues because it appeals to people's fantasy of becoming successful without much work. Anyone can imagine themselves having a great idea and then being successful. It's a lot harder (and less pleasant) to imagine taking an unremarkable idea and spending years of hard work to make it succeed.

I think part of it is due to academia. In computer science classes a lot of questions have a "best" answer. In the real world customers don't buy software because the architecture started with the "best" ideas. They buy software because it fits their need. The best idea could contribute a superior customer experience but it is peripheral to what it takes to be successful.

"I think part of it is due to academia. In computer science classes a lot of questions have a "best" answer."

Only if your conception of "academia" doesn't extend beyond first-year undergraduate coursework. Real academia is entirely about tackling questions for which answers are unavailable or incomplete, and finding better answers. Intellectual astronauts don't make it out of grad school, because they don't publish papers (for that matter, they tend to barely make it out of undergrad, because they're the guys most likely to be complaining about "jumping through pointless hoops").

Academics also tend to love to talk about their ideas with other people, and aren't very secretive (with the exception of their closest competitors, perhaps). My first real intro to the attitude that ideas are inherently valuable was when I moved into the tech world. If I had a nickel for every goofy entrepreneur I've met who is in "stealth mode"...well, I'd make more money than I did in academia.

Re: The Value of Ideas

#52

Post by tjr » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:14 PM UTC

michael_nielsen wrote: post #42

What a curious post. Pure mathematics is nothing but ideas - often very deep ones that very few people are capable of originating. If you take Adams literally, then mathematics is worthless. Is the idea of the Ricci flow, which Perelman used to prove the Poincare conjecture, really useless? The problem Adams is addressing, so far as I can see, is that many people think trivial, easy-to-have ideas are somehow valuable…

Sure, in a way, but, at what point do we say the idea has value? PageRank didn't seem particularly valuable until the Google folks built something "useful" out of it. I can imagine that someone who could envision its use (or, more esoterically, someone with lots of money who likes collecting things) might have bought the idea itself, and while the idea itself has intrinsic intellectual value, it is of no good [to society as a whole, or to those who do not enjoy understanding the idea for its own sake] nor of any profit just sitting there as an idea, or as a research paper.

Companies spend money regularly to license patents... to pay to use ideas. But what company would find value in simply licensing the patent just to enjoy it? The value is found in licensing the patent and using the idea to create something with it.

At the very least, there is more than one kind of "value".

Re: The Value of Ideas

#53

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:19 PM UTC

jdlegg wrote: post #37

mynameishere wrote: post #28

Here's the world's worst opinion on movie making: here's the world's worst idea for a movie: Titanic. Can anybody name even a single, solitary reason--even one --why the story of the Titanic could be considered anything other than a fantastic idea for a movie? The only thing I can come up with is "It's been done (successfully) too many times already", but that actually disproves the general assertion. I mean--it's up…

Show business, being primarily driven by the profit motive, tends to focus on ideas to which an audience can relate and enjoy. The story of the RMS Titanic, being one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history, is generally antagonistic toward these ends because most (not all) people don't like thinking about the possibility of dying on an ocean-liner and do not enjoy watching it happen to others. It should…

[deleted]

Re: The Value of Ideas

#54

Post by moron4hire » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:20 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #19

moron4hire wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

boxing trainer, boom. I tried to come up with one myself (shitty idea) and thought I had one with "beer that tastes like urine", but then I realized that such a product could conceivably find a market with alcoholics trying to condition themselves against drinking. So yes, even Miller and Coors still have a market (sorry, home-brewer joke).

"I tried to think of a shitty idea with no potential market, and came up with 'beer that tastes like urine.' Then I realized Miller and Coors beat me to it." (trying to show the importance of the execution of an idea)

Okay, how about clothing that melts away when it gets wet? Got anything there?

Re: The Value of Ideas

#55

Post by mynameishere » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:56 PM UTC

jdlegg wrote: post #37

mynameishere wrote: post #28

Here's the world's worst opinion on movie making: here's the world's worst idea for a movie: Titanic. Can anybody name even a single, solitary reason--even one --why the story of the Titanic could be considered anything other than a fantastic idea for a movie? The only thing I can come up with is "It's been done (successfully) too many times already", but that actually disproves the general assertion. I mean--it's up…

Show business, being primarily driven by the profit motive, tends to focus on ideas to which an audience can relate and enjoy. The story of the RMS Titanic, being one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history, is generally antagonistic toward these ends because most (not all) people don't like thinking about the possibility of dying on an ocean-liner and do not enjoy watching it happen to others. It should…

The "conventional thinking" already produced numerous successful titanic movies, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. They were successful without Cameron's various flourishes, but that's aside the point anyway.

EVERYONE knows how it's going to end,

Just as with every movie based on any war, any book, any real-life story, any standard hero/villain setup, etc. In ancient Greek drama, almost every play was based on well-known stories. So, the audience knowing "how it's going to end" has been conventional for several thousand years, at least.

one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history,

Replace "disaster" with the word "tragedy" and I think you can see how the titanic, again, fits in perfectly with conventional, time-tested, subject matter for dramatization. Maybe I'm missing your point, but many, many, many movies are based on bad things happening to people. The worse, the better, in fact.

Cameron's warping it into a chick flick has nothing to do with Adam's assertion. It's not a question of 1000 million vs. 100 million in revenues.

Re: The Value of Ideas

#56

Post by jamesbritt » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

"For example, here's the world's worst idea for a movie: Titanic."

Hmm, expect that doesn't strike me as an idea for a movie so much as an idea for an idea for a movie.

An idea may be worthless if it is little more than a potential trigger word or some vague imagery. It can be valuable if it in turn prompts a better, more substantial idea.

It seems that when people say that execution is everything, part of "execution" is to first take a vague, ill-defined, near-meaningless idea and turn it into a well-formed, full-bodied idea.

Re: The Value of Ideas

#57

Post by ccc3 » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 5:59 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #35

ccc3 wrote: post #23

This post is just plain wrong. Obviously it's tempting to get caught up in ideas and ignore execution, but saying ideas are flat-out worthless is simply being ignorant of history. A few examples: - Creating an assembly line to mass produce cars in the early 1900s was a good idea. It clearly wouldn't have gone anywhere without execution, but if Henry Ford had instead decided to execute flawlessly on a hand-painted roc…

None of your examples detracts from what he is saying. Your suggestion comes down to level of success. Your examples only work if Henry Ford would be considered a failure if painted rocks didn't lead to as much success as cars did, despite the evidence that rocks, painted and unpainted, are still a market.

He concludes his post by saying:

Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.

The only way that's true is if you consider success to be binary. Either you succeed or you fail. But level of success is important in terms of economic value and it is demonstrable that the idea is a factor in level of success.

Re: The Value of Ideas

#58

Post by toby » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 6:00 PM UTC

This seems like a false dichotomy, yet one that's argued all the time. The actual argument seems to be about the definition of the word "idea".

Maybe the word "Titanic" is a bad idea for a movie. It's not even really an idea at all. The actual idea for "Titanic" was a very high-budget, ominous, cross-cultural love story with great special effects set on a famous ship. But at what point are we talking about execution? Execution is itself a series of good ideas to materialize a concept, right?

What's certainly true is that "A Dilbert movie" is not a sufficiently developed idea for anyone to say whether it's good or not. Of course, the role of cultural critics is not to elucidate uncertainty but to make strong statements that others will read and argue about.

Re: The Value of Ideas

#59

Post by ajscherer » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 6:04 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #29

ajscherer wrote: post #26

"You can only hold the opinion that a particular movie concept is a good or bad idea if you don't understand what a movie is or what an idea is." This is ridiculous. Does he honestly believe that a movie about me eating a bowl of shredded wheat in a dimly lit room has the same probability of succeeding as a movie about Batman? Why do some movies get made and others not if it is meaningless talk about the worth of an…

"Does he honestly believe that a movie about Batman eating a bowl of shredded wheat in a dimly lit room has the same probability of succeeding as a movie about me?" You're confusing execution with the idea. The idea of you sitting around eating a bowl of cereal might seem boring, until you look at other ideas. An author sitting around a hotel in the middle of winter. (The Shining) A mother and son sitting in a car. (…

"A good idea for a movie doesn't mean it's a good movie. A bad idea for a movie doesn't mean it's a bad idea."

This is exactly what I meant when I said that the quality of an idea is a marginal factor in the success of an endeavor. I fully agree that execution should be the main focus.

What I was trying to say is that not all ideas are equal. You can always make a worse movie with a better idea, or vice versa, but some ideas are easier to pull off than others. Given the exact same level of execution, "Batman fights the Joker" will beat "Random nobody in Nebraska sits in the dark eating cereal" every single time.

If all ideas are of equal quality, why would Hogan's Heroes be an excellent example? Wouldn't all examples then be equally good or bad?

Hogan's Heroes is an excellent example precisely because the idea is harder to pull off than other ideas. If you gave Hogan's Heroes and American Idol each to 100 teams to turn into a show, I believe American Idol would become a hit with greater frequency than Hogan's Heroes.

Re: The Value of Ideas

#60

Post by Xurinos » Fri, Jun 04, 2010, 6:07 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #54

jimbokun wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I tried to think of a shitty idea with no potential market, and came up with 'beer that tastes like urine.' Then I realized Miller and Coors beat me to it." (trying to show the importance of the execution of an idea)

Okay, how about clothing that melts away when it gets wet? Got anything there?

Sounds like something you would go to your local "sensual items" shop for, and given Rule 34, it likely already exists. Certainly some candied versions do.