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Great Founder Theory (2020)

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Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#61

Post by narrator »

seanhunter wrote: post #59
narrator wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is you consider being a criminal, criminally insane or extremely high on drugs just "culture." You refuse to draw the line of social exclusion anywhere. There is no unacceptable behavior because it's all just "culture." Is rampant theft a culture war issue? Is people not being charged for repeated random assaults a culture war issue? Is people out of their minds on meth, and passing out for hours and…

Where did I express an opinion about refusing to draw a social exclusion line or in fact any of that? I just said that you've dragged all those topics kicking and screaming into this conversation which is supposed to be about TFA on "Great Founder Theory". This isn't about Targets or Starbucks bathrooms or any of the other pet topics you're trying to introduce.

Bringing it back to the original discussion, most of this thread is people hating on the idea that there are exceptional individuals who change the world. The dominant ideology in San Francisco is that everyone is totally equal in all aspects except for systemic discrimination which is the polar opposite of that. It has gone so far down the slippery slope in that direction that absurd things are starting to happen. The opposite of the Great Man Theory is the Everyone is Great Theory in essence and that latter belief has caused all sorts of havoc when put into practice. We need to readjust the balance so that we recognize that there are bad people out there who are not great who don't belong walking around in public and free to do as they please.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#62

Post by lordnacho »

dmn322 wrote: post #56
lordnacho wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's actually not great man theory? The natural conclusion of what you're describing is that there's some sort of continuum or spectrum of people who might take up some opportunity. Those people are also generated by dice rolls: some have genuinely better brain chemistry, some are nurtured well by family, some find a mentor who puts a lot of effort into them, some grow up next to a training ground. If you look…

After alexander the great, greek kingdoms were left scattered along the path he went, some lasting for 100s of years. IMO he spread a system of logistics and trade required to sustain armies over that many thousands of miles, which was also could be used as the basis of a society. That system of logistics came from his father but also thousands of years of greek society before that. No offense to them, but I wouldn't…

Not sure I understand you. If the idea that Alexander was one of these great men, without whom things would be vastly different?

What's so special about him, other than him being the guy who did what he did? Sounds a bit dismissive and that's not the impression I want to make, but aren't there loads of people with forceful characters, most of whom do not get to sit at the steering wheel?

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#63

Post by rchaud »

Kon5ole wrote: post #46
_xnmw wrote: post #39

In my view, Great Man Theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy with survival bias. Those who believe it are the most likely to take insane risks, and therefore most likely to end up at the head of some great movement, or die trying. All those great visionaries, those Napoleons, Jobs, Musks, Newtons and Galileos were also "natural maniacs" [1]. The ones who fail we simply call "insane" and history forgets them. Neverthele…

The old Apple ad "think different" promotes the same perspective. People credited with notable changes throughout history are by definition "crazy" since sanity is defined by being the same as anyone else. Thinking that it's impossible to be great seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. As someone once said, "whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right".

Jobs was a '60s hippie who showed up to work at HP barefoot and un-showered. If anything, he deserves the title of 'the crazy one'. His era is very different from the one that Musk, Neumann, Kalanick and others grew up in. These were rich, connected people that wouldn't get out of bed without a multi-million dollar term sheet.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#64

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

simonh wrote: post #41
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SpaceX is an entirely unoriginal company (really good execution, though). The genius of SpaceX is in the systems which enable that execution. It's not even really a particularly significant company. There's a large SpaceX office down the road from where I live (Redmond, WA) and a fair few of my ex-MSFT friends now work there, and they call say the same thing to me: "SpaceX's successes are despite Elon's involvement…

Nobody else was pushing reusability in the way Musk was, or with the same approach of propulsive landing. Pretty much the whole rest of the industry was absolutely convinced it was impossible. Yes he found a few engineers willing to try to make it work, but without him going all-in on it from the top there is no way we would have propulsively landing first stage boosters today, and maybe not for many decades to come.…

Out of curiosity, are you still at SpaceX and do you have personal experience of working directly with Elon?

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#65

Post by seanhunter »

narrator wrote: post #61
seanhunter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I express an opinion about refusing to draw a social exclusion line or in fact any of that? I just said that you've dragged all those topics kicking and screaming into this conversation which is supposed to be about TFA on "Great Founder Theory". This isn't about Targets or Starbucks bathrooms or any of the other pet topics you're trying to introduce.

Bringing it back to the original discussion, most of this thread is people hating on the idea that there are exceptional individuals who change the world. The dominant ideology in San Francisco is that everyone is totally equal in all aspects except for systemic discrimination which is the polar opposite of that. It has gone so far down the slippery slope in that direction that absurd things are starting to happen. T…

The opposite of progress is due to the great man is that progress is due to teams of people, not that everyone is great. I get that it is something you care about a lot but that's not anything to do with this. Have a good one.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#66

Post by BSEdlMMldESB »

simonh wrote: post #55
BSEdlMMldESB wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my problem with this theory I can only explain in my own terms my problem is that this perspective confuses together individuals and systems no great men exist in isolation, some name takes most of the credit but they're all but a sum of their circumstances, which in all cases include other top people who never get to be as famous strict clarity of this is extra important now that fully autonomous 'systems' are takin…

The question isn't whether they need more people to make it all work. That's not in dispute. It's the degree to which any of these people are replaceable. If you removed any of the engineers working on the iPhone Jobs would have hired another engineer and cracked on with the project. Maybe there would have been more bugs, or slightly worse features, maybe there would be some things better. Take out Jobs, and there is…

so become irreplaceable or be turned into a commodity...?

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#67

Post by __loam »

ac2u wrote: post #50
__loam wrote: post #2

It's absolutely incredible to see someone take the Great Man Theory, something that has been greatly criticized in historical circles, and apply a tech bro bullshit veneer to it to pass it off as some new and amazing thought worth sharing with everyone. Here's my own Great Founder Theory: I don't think founders matter nearly as much as people in Silicon Valley think they do. They're basically there to give VCs a figu…

>to pass it off as some new and amazing thought worth sharing with everyone The linked page does read like it's passing it off as original thought (whatever that means), but had a quick look at the linked PDF. It doesn't make any attempt to hide the historical and academic context of the Great Man Theory from the reader. Whole thing might be bullshit, but your comment comes across as overly sneering. Whether it's wor…

Overly sneering. Holy shit. People who write 200 page books with chapters named "How Elon Musk made engineering cool again" deserve ridicule.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#68

Post by dmn322 »

lordnacho wrote: post #62
dmn322 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After alexander the great, greek kingdoms were left scattered along the path he went, some lasting for 100s of years. IMO he spread a system of logistics and trade required to sustain armies over that many thousands of miles, which was also could be used as the basis of a society. That system of logistics came from his father but also thousands of years of greek society before that. No offense to them, but I wouldn't…

Not sure I understand you. If the idea that Alexander was one of these great men, without whom things would be vastly different? What's so special about him, other than him being the guy who did what he did? Sounds a bit dismissive and that's not the impression I want to make, but aren't there loads of people with forceful characters, most of whom do not get to sit at the steering wheel?

I'm against great man theory as well.

I'm responding to what you said here: "does all progress grind to a halt once the guy dies? Do we have a lot of examples of that?" with a pretty glaring example of what you're saying (which provides counter-evidence to the view we both share).

Then the rest of my comment is an attempt to show that it wasn't just Alexander the great being a "great man" that causes his expansion, but instead it was a system of logistics that the Greeks happened upon.

I'm saying: because they needed the logistics, they developed the logistics. Because they had the logistics, they had the ability to expand. Because they had the ability to expand, someone did. That person happened to be the son of a king (Philip II of Macedon) whose logistics enabled him to expand through Greece. I'd venture to guess his father was probably involved in some politics and warfare logistics as well... indicating that this was a capacity developed over generations due to an environmental requirement

Maybe everyone realizes this these days, but I didn't realize until a few years ago that ancient armies traveling for months were like traveling cities, and in a way they could be like caravans as well, trading. Perhaps Philip II's big innovation was a systematic method of trading instead of pillaging with the surrounding cities, which would allow establishing continuing political relationships, which explains the kingdoms lasting for 100s of years more. Expansion by brute force was certainly going on with neo-Assyria 500 years or so earlier, but with Alexander the great, from what I can gather, there was lots of communication with surrounding towns. It appears an army would plop down for a month and regroup. They'd buy food and weapons. They'd probably find some people unhappy with their current emperor and do some recruiting. Expansion by brute force requires even more massive amounts of logistics than the sort of military caravan thing Alexander may have had going on and I find it really difficult to believe he could have gotten as far as he did with that strategy.

If Alexander inherited such an army as well as a new form of logistics that allowed him to travel further, it would make him more of an avatar of a larger force behind him. That's more how I believe things tend to happen versus him just being some genius tactician who won because he was smarter than all the barbarians... even if that's what he believed was the cause of his success.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#69

Post by lordnacho »

dmn322 wrote: post #68
lordnacho wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I understand you. If the idea that Alexander was one of these great men, without whom things would be vastly different? What's so special about him, other than him being the guy who did what he did? Sounds a bit dismissive and that's not the impression I want to make, but aren't there loads of people with forceful characters, most of whom do not get to sit at the steering wheel?

I'm against great man theory as well. I'm responding to what you said here: "does all progress grind to a halt once the guy dies? Do we have a lot of examples of that?" with a pretty glaring example of what you're saying (which provides counter-evidence to the view we both share). Then the rest of my comment is an attempt to show that it wasn't just Alexander the great being a "great man" that causes his expansion, b…

I see, I think we're on the same page.

> Maybe everyone realizes this these days, but I didn't realize that ancient armies traveling for months were like traveling cities, and in a way they could be like caravans as well, trading.

The acoup guy does a great job of explaining this kind of thing.

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