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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?

#81

Post by seiji »

hammock wrote: post #67
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.

Appreciate the honesty in revealing that the biggest idea you've been pitched you can't actually talk about. But how about not taking the easy way out and instead answering what is the most frighteningly ambitious idea you have been convincingly pitched that you can talk about?

Just wake up your inner pg: airbnb, dropbox, that new skateboard thinggy.

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

#83

Post by dasmoth »

croddin wrote: post #80
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…

Where does Planetary Resources rank on this scale?

Somewhat depends on what they find, and if they're able to usefully exploit it. But for ambition, I'd say at least a 3.

Of course, you could argue that anyone who can return non-negligible amounts of mass to earth makes it to 4...

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

#84

Post by pdog »

ph0rque wrote: post #58
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.

Also, I think you should rework the Yudkowsky Ambition scale a bit: * 3 and 4 are really on the same level, just interchangeable * 6 should really be an 8 or a 9, since it enables 7, 8 and perhaps 9 * the whole scale should be expanded so that 2-10 become 11-20, and 1 becomes e.g. a weekend hack that can bring in enough revenue to buy me a new toy every once in a while.

My notes:

* While 3) and 4) both create sweeping political changes, 4) is decidedly scarier owing to the sheer destructive power. 3) encompasses positive change as well.

* 6) may enable 7), 8) and perhaps 9), but is less ambitious in that it doesn't seek to bring those frighteningly ambitious ideas into reality (it only possibly enables them).

* Zero.

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

#85

Post by stcredzero »

Eliezer wrote: post #50
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.

Holy schmaloly, that actually is a 3 if it works. Anyone else got 3 or higher?

Go after "Railroad Baron Money." That is to say, to invest in a fundamentally new kind of very useful infrastructure, like a subset network of computers where DRM actually works. If not absolutely, then well enough in practice. That would mean it would take something like 2 to 3 years for people to jailbreak new hardware, and almost a year to break revisions to old devices that fix an earlier jailbreak. (We're getting close to this level of security for some organizations.)

The trick is to be one of the Barons when networks are becoming widespread, and not an early innovator who gets in the history books but dies penniless. (Again fits with the railroad analogy.)

(And yes, trusted computation [DRM] as it is practiced now is bad, in the way that many things only possessed by only the powerful are also bad.)

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

#86

Post by rabidonrails »

ph0rque wrote: post #77
thebigshane wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

intrigued, but the blog is down :(

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

#87

Post by run4yourlives »

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.

I swear to you - cold fusion is real. I have a reactor in my basement.

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

#88

Post by neurotech1 »

I'm going to speculate for a bit, and say that some of the "Frighteningly Ambitious" ideas probably involve hardware or hardware/software combinations. Kickstarter is full of updates on how getting designs into production is harder than expected.

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

#89

Post by martindale »

Eliezer wrote: post #50
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.

Holy schmaloly, that actually is a 3 if it works. Anyone else got 3 or higher?

We've got a solid 5 with what we're building at LocalSense: https://localsense.com -- but it contains elements of #9 which is strangely high on the list.

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

#90

Post by EGreg »

mej10 wrote: post #38
bfe wrote: post #26

"We want to make our own rockets and spaceships from scratch. But that's just the beginning, to pave the way to settling Mars and making it affordable for middle-class customers to relocate to Mars." I imagine if Elon Musk had pitched SpaceX for YC, it would be a strong candidate for this.

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.

I think it's pretty clear that the amounts YC invests wouldn't be enough to really "build an MVP" for Elon Musk's ideas. It's not something you do unless you already have a lot of money.

Elon Musk talks about this, in one of his interviews, how Tesla and SpaceX are something that requires a lot of money to begin with. Because they are big risks.

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