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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?

#131

Post by Sukotto »

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.

I tried to add your RSS feed [1] to my reader, but there are no articles there. I think you've misconfigured something.

Would love to have a nano tank like the one you describe. Please keep us posted.

[1] http://blog.automicrofarm.com/rss

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

#132

Post by FF8C69 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #121
Eliezer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Anyone else got 3 or higher?" I have a drug that could massively raise the IQ of the world's population, in total more than the power of all the world's computers combined. And it costs only a couple pennies per person per year. Iodine.

source please

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

#133

Post by ph0rque »

Sukotto wrote: post #131
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.

I tried to add your RSS feed [1] to my reader, but there are no articles there. I think you've misconfigured something. Would love to have a nano tank like the one you describe. Please keep us posted. [1] http://blog.automicrofarm.com/rss

Hmm, chrome wants to install an app from the store, but firefox renders the feed just fine (it's not empty). What browser/OS are you using, or do you have stand-alone reader?

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

#134

Post by billswift »

lionheart wrote: post #57
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…

And now I have to rescale all my ambitions

"Aim high, you may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off." Mercedes Lackey, I forget which book, but I think it was Tarma that said it.

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

#135

Post by sanj »

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 the internet fit into this hierarchy?

How about the web?

3-6

?

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

#136

Post by jmvoodoo »

Alex3917 wrote: post #121
Eliezer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Anyone else got 3 or higher?" I have a drug that could massively raise the IQ of the world's population, in total more than the power of all the world's computers combined. And it costs only a couple pennies per person per year. Iodine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency

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

#137

Post by faul_sname »

mej10 wrote: post #103
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just vote for better funding of science research. It only takes one genius to change the world, but it turns out that one genius tends to produce many changes (cf Einstein // Lord kelvin // Faraday)

That doesn't really seem like a great attitude to have. It is far too hands-off and unreliable. I just can't imagine thinking "Well, I voted. That's the best I can do."

Then become rich and fund the researchers yourself.

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

#138

Post by 001sky »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #104
runjake wrote: post #75

Was pg ever pitched on Instagram? Because a "picture service that gets sold for $1B" sounds frighteningly ambitious.

I don't think Instagram set out to be acquired for $1B. That was just a pleasant after-effect. And here's pg's answer on what he would have done had he been pitched on Instagram: "Instagram is the one we'd most likely have missed. It all depends when we'd talked to them. They were a kind of overnight success in traffic. If we'd talked to them even a day after they launched we would certainly have said yes. But before…

These guys did invest in instagram. But...

When we invested in Instagram, it wasn’t actually Instagram. It was a company called Burbn, and the idea was roughly to build a mobile micro blogging service. Technologically, it was also different: an HTML 5 application rather than a native app...

Of course you never know what then happens. Instagram pivots to photos, and exits at ~$1B. But...

As Kevin iterated on Burbn, we made another investment in an excellent entrepreneur, Dalton Caldwell. Dalton’s company, Mixed Media Labs, initially built a product called PicPlz. PicPlz aime d to be a mobile photo sharing service...

Of course, now Dalton (as app.net) is doing what instagram (then as Burbn) set out to do - a micro-blogging service.

So, there ya go...the ol' switcheroo ;D

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

#139

Post by tel »

tesseractive wrote: post #111
tel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this scale applies so well in the healthcare vertical. Any major healthcare breakthrough is going to hit the latter half of 6 at least a bit, but I'm not sure that those all induce changes that scale above 5.

A major healthcare breakthrough that improved the quality of life for a large number of people would qualify as a solid 3 -- a major political-level change. I'd save 6 for things like defeating the aging process -- something that, like raising the IQ of the population at large, would also fundamentally change the human condition. I'm not really sure how many medical breakthroughs of this magnitude there are.

Improving world health status might not improve IQ as some inherent human intelligence capacity, but would certainly have an immeasurable population-level effect on "effective IQ" i.e. ability to practice whatever intelligence capacity exists already.

Consider just the challenge of defeating the obesity epidemic. Better diet improves energy and massively increases, again at the population level, the amount of raw thoughtful hours are available to a country.

This is even more widely applicable in global health where health initiatives can also be important components of social change. Women's/sexual health is tied deeply to women's rights which is a leading indicator for social revolution.

While medical breakthrough that change the space of healthcare at large might be rare, there's a lot of room instead for the kind of breakthrough which changes how people receive and are impacted by the healthcare knowledge we already have today.

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

Alex3917 wrote: post #121
Eliezer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Anyone else got 3 or higher?" I have a drug that could massively raise the IQ of the world's population, in total more than the power of all the world's computers combined. And it costs only a couple pennies per person per year. Iodine.

[deleted]
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