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Great Founder Theory (2020)

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Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#71

Post by pseudalopex »

simonh wrote: post #52
novok wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smartphone existed before the iPhone with blackberry, palm and microsoft pocket pc. The big innovation behind the iPhone was the pure multitouch interface, which was in labs and such beforehand: https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_the_radical_promise_of_th... So all of these founders did commericalize and create consumer products to make them more mass market, but the raw tech was there beforehand to make it happe…

I think this underestimates the degree to which the iPhone running essentially a full pre-emptive multitasking workstation class OS mattered. The Blackberry, Palm and Pocket PC OSes were basically Windows 95 and Classic MacOS era style technology stacks. A bit more modern, sure, but nothing like OSX of the time. Bear in mind, the iPhone running a fully capable desktop class browser was jaw dropping. BlackBerry manage…

iPhone multitasking was very limited in practice. Windows Mobile and Symbian were more advanced than you present. And Windows and Linux pocket computers existed. Convergence was inevitable.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#72

Post by davidmnoll »

keiferski wrote: post #23
ITB wrote: post #11

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many. Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or t…

Even if you don’t buy the broader idea of Great Man Theory, it seems obvious to me that the idiosyncrasies of the Great Men that happen to be “selected” do have an obvious impact on history that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. In other words, the personal characteristics, family members, etc. of the supposedly interchangeable Great Man do have a unique effect on history that would be different if a different Great…

I don’t think anyone is saying that those idiosyncratic details have no local impact whatsoever just that over the long run they mostly get filtered out as noise.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#73

Post by ac2u »

__loam wrote: post #67
ac2u wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>Overly sneering.

Of course it is... if the author said to you in real life, at a party, "I've been working on a book called X and it roughly follows this thesis", a regular person wouldn't immediately take your tone, it's an entirely online persona, and if it's not, then it's not well socially adjusted.

Ridicule has it's place, but you're acting like the author is pretending that the Great Man Theory doesn't exist and is trying to hoodwink the reader.

>with chapters named "How Elon Musk made engineering cool again"

I mean the chapter was about the dual falcon landings and the tesla in space, both cool things that captured mainstream media attention. Not controversial to say so. Hyperbole if it depicted it as a lone wolf Elon Musk effort, but it's a Chapter title, not something to get exited over.

>deserve ridicule.

Hey if that's how you wanna direct your precious time, go for it. Seems author is a political scientist type figure. I usually take their musings with a heavy pinch of salt, but I don't really go as out of my way as you do to get hot and bothered and treat it like it's a crime against the zeitgeist that it's taking up a few KB of bandwidth.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#74

Post by jiggawatts »

ITB wrote: post #11

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many. Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or t…

My mental model for this phenomenon is that great men aren't single human beings, but more like a corporation or a brand.

Many supposed "great visionaries" simply formed a team that collectively had the vision that we attribute to the leader.

Steve Jobs had Jony Ive

George Lucas had Ralph McQuarrie

Christopher Nolan had Hans Zimmer

Etc..

I'm sure there's many more who's names aren't public enough to have become general knowledge, but the point is that great generals don't win wars by themselves. They have trusted officers, which in turn have trusted men. The figurehead is just that. They may be important in the sense that they attract the best officers and the bravest soldiers, but in the end, they could not "do it on their own" in any sense.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#75

Post by simonh »

pseudalopex wrote: post #71
simonh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this underestimates the degree to which the iPhone running essentially a full pre-emptive multitasking workstation class OS mattered. The Blackberry, Palm and Pocket PC OSes were basically Windows 95 and Classic MacOS era style technology stacks. A bit more modern, sure, but nothing like OSX of the time. Bear in mind, the iPhone running a fully capable desktop class browser was jaw dropping. BlackBerry manage…

iPhone multitasking was very limited in practice. Windows Mobile and Symbian were more advanced than you present. And Windows and Linux pocket computers existed. Convergence was inevitable.

iPhone multitasking was the full 32bit preemptive real deal for background services like GPS, networking, the phone stack, core data, OpenGL, etc and built in apps.

Only user applications had limited access to background processing, but that sandboxing was only possible because it was a modern Unix system with robust process isolation and fine grained access controls.

Microsoft didn’t think any of that mattered either. They tried to compete with the Windows CE core for 3 years before abandoning it and started work on an NT based OS, but it was too late.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#76

Post by simonh »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #64
simonh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There have been numerous interviews with and statements by current and former SpaceX engineers.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#77

Post by pseudalopex »

simonh wrote: post #75
pseudalopex wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone multitasking was very limited in practice. Windows Mobile and Symbian were more advanced than you present. And Windows and Linux pocket computers existed. Convergence was inevitable.

iPhone multitasking was the full 32bit preemptive real deal for background services like GPS, networking, the phone stack, core data, OpenGL, etc and built in apps. Only user applications had limited access to background processing, but that sandboxing was only possible because it was a modern Unix system with robust process isolation and fine grained access controls. Microsoft didn’t think any of that mattered eithe…

All other operating systems I mentioned had preemptive multitasking including installable apps before iOS released.

iOS limited access to background processing by terminating apps after 10 minutes and when resources were needed. This was a new policy not new technology. Other operating systems left background processing in users' hands deliberately.

Windows Phone released 3 years after iOS. Work started earlier obviously.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#78

Post by fuzzfactor »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #5

> My answer is that a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society I stopped reading past this.

I understand where you're coming from and that's only the third sentence of the preface. So you have to figure anybody could get that far in no time.

What about that second sentence then?

>What are the origins of institutional health or sclerosis?

When it comes to sclerosis or more tragic decline I guess we'll have to chalk that up to not-so-great successors to truly great founders . . . in theory.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#79

Post by keiferski »

dmn322 wrote: post #53
keiferski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Great Man Theory is. Your impressions of it are not. It's wrong because the concepts of invention and scientific discovery are entirely different from political action. I agree with you that science/technology is not contingent on certain individuals and is better understood as a larger historical process. The discovery/invention of calculus is a good example. I don't agree that political history works th…

"I think you would have a very difficult time arguing that history wouldn't have been drastically different if say, Muhammad the individual hadn't made the decisions he did." Would it make you feel differently if you knew that there were dozens of competing offshoots of Abrahamic religions in the area at the time? What if you viewed the Abrahamic religions as a set of policies and processes that were basically the ge…

Well I don’t think it’s a given that some form of Abrahamic religion would have inevitably become Islam-like and had the same trajectory. There were a lot of unique features of Muhammad that ending up having a major positive effect on the subsequent conquests. Not to mention the particular historical situation of the Byzantines and Persians that allowed for such expansion. If someone other than Muhammad had come a few decades earlier or later, there’s a good chance the outcome would have been different.

Otherwise yes certainly Islam is as diverse and variant as any other religion and its current iteration (in the Middle East, at least - India and Indonesia being different situations) is mostly a consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#80

Post by keiferski »

davidmnoll wrote: post #72
keiferski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you don’t buy the broader idea of Great Man Theory, it seems obvious to me that the idiosyncrasies of the Great Men that happen to be “selected” do have an obvious impact on history that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. In other words, the personal characteristics, family members, etc. of the supposedly interchangeable Great Man do have a unique effect on history that would be different if a different Great…

I don’t think anyone is saying that those idiosyncratic details have no local impact whatsoever just that over the long run they mostly get filtered out as noise.

But these don’t just have local impact. They often entirely change the trajectory of history.

For example: what if Caesar has a son earlier in life and by the time he is killed, this son becomes his heir instead of Octavian? The son isn’t as clever as Octavian, he loses the civil war to Antony, who is far less capable of setting up the infrastructure of the empire. Rome collapses centuries earlier - or the Senate regains power.

None of this seems like it would lead to the same historical outcome.

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