How many of the people praising permissionless innovation are also condemning Facebook/Twitter/Google for allowing their platforms to be used for political purposes? If that's you, you're being inconsistent because permissionless innovation is exactly how those companies got into that pickle. Sometimes innovation has dangers or negative consequences. It's not always unreasonable to have a "review cycle" where those can be recognized, measured, and possibly ameliorated (or at least accounted for) before too much harm is done. There should be a tendency toward permissionless innovation, but just saying anyone should be allowed to run any experiment they want on their neighbors is taking it too far.
Permissionless innovation
81–90 of 115 posts
Re: Permissionless innovation
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet that also makes it so that innovation requires permission from your competitors, which is stifling.
No. It isn’t stifling at all. This is Patent 101. Joe has a patent on the widget. I can’t make a widget without violating his patent. I get a patent on an improved widget. Joe can’t manufacture the improvement. He’s incented to cooperate with me and I’m incented to innovate. Incented, not stifled. Just allowing copying incents manufacture but not innovation. Even China is moving in the IP direction.
This isn't how technology works any more. It's _extremely_ hard to make e.g. video codec that doesn't use patented techniques. What happens for things like that is the invention is a new technique, that gets rolled up with all the existing techniques and released in the next version of MPEG. Licensees pay MPEG-LA and it disburses to the members.
Similar for chip design techniques, online stores and so on.
Then there's network effects. If you build a better class of phone, do you have to build out a whole new non-interoperable phone network in order to get it deployed?
Re: Permissionless innovation
#83[deleted]
Re: Permissionless innovation
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a long time econtalk listener I am kind of disappointed with this week's episode. I don't feel like they really elaborated beyond "we should have permissionless innovation"
Same here. It was my first episode of econtalk. There were thought provoking points; i.e. focusing more on systemic mistakes rather than small ones as a result of permitting decision making at the local level (a la N. Taleb). However, it could've been told in 1/3rd the duration. I'll give it another go given this episode might have been one off.
Definitively don't judge Econtalk by the episodes with Mike Munger, they're more informal and less structured, since he's a friend of the host.
Re: Permissionless innovation
#85It reminds me of an article I read years ago in a magazine about solar power. A guy decided to go off grid with solar panels and battery back up. He was living in Chicago. He called around to find out who regulated this sort of thing, where he needed to apply for permits or whatever. He learned that there wasn't a governing body. So he realized that as long as he didn't do anything stupid (a la burn the building down…
I can't remember if it was on HN or reddit, but there was a comment//post about how a job site operated similar to this. To heavily paraphrase over the gist of the second-hand account from the boss: "Our workplace will be rule-free until people start abusing it. When someone goes overboard, a rule against their abuse will be created under their name which will be applicable to everybody; if you think that rule bullsh…
This reminds me of the "no pictures at your desk rule" at a company I contracted at. everyone was allowed to have pictures at their desk until the guy put up a hundred pictures from his side photography business.
Re: Permissionless innovation
#86I don't really get the article on the one hand he's complaining about the government picking winners, like the solar failure. On the other he's heralding a service that closed it's api and is built on one of the largest government picks of all time. CompuServe, AOL had solutions long before the internet.
What if Darpa had decided to build an infrastructure on top of compuserve, aol, and prodigy. the whole world would look completely different.
Re: Permissionless innovation
#87I don't really get the article on the one hand he's complaining about the government picking winners, like the solar failure. On the other he's heralding a service that closed it's api and is built on one of the largest government picks of all time. CompuServe, AOL had solutions long before the internet. What if Darpa had decided to build an infrastructure on top of compuserve, aol, and prodigy. the whole world would…
His point is that innovation is both something that we all want, yet something that is often inadvertently stifled by regulators or competitors. Perhaps the energy innovation that would benefit society most is not pursued because it's too lucrative to pursue solar (the government's "winner"). Perhaps there are streaming video/music innovations we will never see because there is so much red tape put up by Disney, etc.
Re: Permissionless innovation
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. It isn’t stifling at all. This is Patent 101. Joe has a patent on the widget. I can’t make a widget without violating his patent. I get a patent on an improved widget. Joe can’t manufacture the improvement. He’s incented to cooperate with me and I’m incented to innovate. Incented, not stifled. Just allowing copying incents manufacture but not innovation. Even China is moving in the IP direction.
Joe has a patent on the widget. You can't make an improved widget without either getting permission from Joe, or breaking patent law. So you don't invent your improved widget, you don't patent it, and if Joe is not interested in innovating, nobody else won't do it either. The world becomes poorer. (In reality: enter China, who doesn't give a fuck and innovates anyway.) (In real reality: unfortunately, the Chinese gov…
You might not invent the improved widget but I would. Essentially all patents are improvements.
Berkeley invents CRISPR. Broad Institute invents improved CRISPR.
In a parallel universe, does John Galt invent CRISPR? Let's see. He'd have to spend millions on development and then wouldn't be able to recoup that because anyone could copy it. So no, Galt doesn't do this. He's free to do this but there's no incentive for him to do it.
Galt's world seems more like:
From each according to their ability
To each according to their needRe: Permissionless innovation
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't remember if it was on HN or reddit, but there was a comment//post about how a job site operated similar to this. To heavily paraphrase over the gist of the second-hand account from the boss: "Our workplace will be rule-free until people start abusing it. When someone goes overboard, a rule against their abuse will be created under their name which will be applicable to everybody; if you think that rule bullsh…
I'd never, ever consider working a place like that, as it places the power in the hand of managers who may decide something I consider perfectly reasonable is "abuse", and use this "under their name" bit to harass people. Which means I can't evaluate if the company will be a decent work place or a sweatshop. To me, this is disrespectful to employees in the extreme. It shows a total disregard for the power disparity t…
I would rather work at a company with few rules than one where there is red tape around everything. For example, at my current company I don't even have root access on the machines I develop on, and I have to submit tickets to IT to get anything installed or changed. One time I asked them to install Docker and was met with suspicion. IT said they would investigate, and months later it is still is not installed.
Re: Permissionless innovation
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here. It was my first episode of econtalk. There were thought provoking points; i.e. focusing more on systemic mistakes rather than small ones as a result of permitting decision making at the local level (a la N. Taleb). However, it could've been told in 1/3rd the duration. I'll give it another go given this episode might have been one off.
Definitively don't judge Econtalk by the episodes with Mike Munger, they're more informal and less structured, since he's a friend of the host.
He’s even hosted an episode