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Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

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Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#71

Post by thebigshane »

ph0rque wrote: post #49
Eliezer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the following scale? 1) We're going to build the next Facebook! 2) We're going to found the next Apple! 3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level…

Eliezer, I believe you just created the Yudkowsky Ambition scale. My startup, http://automicrofarm.com/ , rates between a 3 and a 5, depending on how successful it becomes, in my opinion.

In case anyone missed the small blog link on the bottom: http://blog.automicrofarm.com

More information about the idea there.

Count me interested! As long as it doesn't involve entomophagy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#72

Post by vhf »

T_S_ wrote: post #65
Eliezer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the following scale? 1) We're going to build the next Facebook! 2) We're going to found the next Apple! 3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level…

I think I am at 0.25 on this scale.

Me too, and I'm fine. :)

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#73

Post by sskates »

Eliezer wrote: post #47
pg wrote: post #42

I'm sorry if this is an unsatisfying answer, but if you mean convincingly pitched, I couldn't answer a question like that without disclosing the long-term plans of startups that would prefer to keep them secret. If you mean unconvincingly pitched, it would probably be the applications we get from people who've discovered new power sources that violate the laws of physics.

Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the following scale? 1) We're going to build the next Facebook! 2) We're going to found the next Apple! 3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level…

I know within my own batch (W12) the highest a startup pitched itself at demo day was about a 2.5- creating a company substantially bigger than Apple. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find a 4 or 5 somewhere in in all of YC with something along the lines of creating the next version of the internet (especially from the startups doing hardware). The tradeoff there is the variance is even higher; doing a software startup is safe, relatively speaking!

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#74

Post by mej10 »

stickfigure wrote: post #66
mej10 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, pretty much any of his recent ideas/companies are "frighteningly ambitious". I do wonder how YC would handle someone that is as ambitious and skilled as Musk, but without his financial success. (Un?)Fortunately for them I think that is a pretty rare combination, so they probably don't have to worry too much.

It is a mantra here that there is an enormous amount of timing and luck involved in creating a successful startup. I would expect the majority of people with Musk's skill and ambition to lack his level of financial success. Certainly the percentages will be better than the general population, but it's not guaranteed or even likely.

In my opinion, if people really think timing and luck matter more than skill and determination, then they shouldn't be doing startups (unless their goals aren't to create an awesome/important company, but to have fun or something else).

Timing and luck (from what I have seen) really only seem to matter for things where it doesn't really require a lot of domain expertise. Of course, those are what first time entrepreneurs (at least of the Hacker News variety) are most drawn to, for what should be obvious reasons.

Perhaps it is just due to there being more information about Musk than other founders, but I haven't heard of any YC founders having the level of technical skills and abilities that Musk has. He is older than most, though, and has been at it for a while, so this shouldn't really be surprising.

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#76

Post by numeromancer »

Alex3917 wrote: post #25

How would you even know? Sometimes the most ambitious ideas don't require more than a few hundred lines of code. It's often how you want the rest of the world to use your product that makes it ambitious, not the product itself.

DFFT FTW!

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#77

Post by ph0rque »

thebigshane wrote: post #71
ph0rque wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliezer, I believe you just created the Yudkowsky Ambition scale. My startup, http://automicrofarm.com/ , rates between a 3 and a 5, depending on how successful it becomes, in my opinion.

In case anyone missed the small blog link on the bottom: http://blog.automicrofarm.com More information about the idea there. Count me interested! As long as it doesn't involve entomophagy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy

Thanks... we have no plans on raising insects for human consumption! Right now, our prototype is producing fish, berries and vegetables; we'll be experimenting with fruit trees, beans, and eventually poultry (for eggs at first), mushrooms, and honey.

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#79

Post by seiji »

Eliezer wrote: post #41

We never pitched him on the Singularity Institute ( http://singularity.org/research/ ), but I doubt he's ever been seriously pitched on anything more ambitious than "build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence with a stable, specifiable goal system so that it can improve into a superintelligence and do world optimization." If he's been pitched on anything more frightening than that, I'd really like to…

Honest question: Does SI actually do anything other than hold conferences and take donations so smart people don't have to get real jobs?

Re: Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On?

#80

Post by croddin »

Eliezer wrote: post #47
pg wrote: post #42

I'm sorry if this is an unsatisfying answer, but if you mean convincingly pitched, I couldn't answer a question like that without disclosing the long-term plans of startups that would prefer to keep them secret. If you mean unconvincingly pitched, it would probably be the applications we get from people who've discovered new power sources that violate the laws of physics.

Can you say where the scariest and most ambitious convincing pitch was on the following scale? 1) We're going to build the next Facebook! 2) We're going to found the next Apple! 3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level…

Where does Planetary Resources rank on this scale?
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