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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?

#151

Post by tesseractive »

tel wrote: post #139
tesseractive wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tho…

I think the idea of level 6 is not merely an incremental increase in effective IQ -- the internet and smartphones putting most of human knowledge at anyone's fingertips could qualify as that -- but something that fundamentally changes what it means to be human. Defeating obesity, the African AIDS epidemic, or even cancer would be amazing, heroic, and worldchanging, but still wouldn't qualify as changing what it means to be human.

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

#153

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by SilasX »

sbierwagen wrote: post #149
SilasX wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a solid 5 -- made the kind of change that electrification did, in terms of there being massively many more ways to get informed, fact-check, collaborate, organize, the importance of location, and so on.

I don't know... what kind of impact has the internet actually made on human lifespans, or manufacturing output? The internet has affected global GDP a lot, but almost entirely in the "moving numbers around in a database" fields, with all the profit ending up in the pockets of a few hundred hyperrich. (high finance, entertainment)

I think this is one of the cases where GDP misses what we're trying to measure. If, before the Web, I would have bought a product just barely useful enough to pay for, then post-Web, buy something different instead that is much, much better for me (has a higher consumer surplus), GDP will be the same, even though human welfare has significantly increased.

Normally, you can glaze over such a case, but the internet is basically filled with this kind of thing. Moreover, a lot of the stuff that you would normally have to pay for, you get effectively for free, and I'm not talking about pirated movies. I mean the collaboration, fact-checking, knowing of more options, info you'd normally need to buy a book for, etc. Again, cash payments for that stuff might have dropped, but it made people that much better off.

So if people that were doing things obviated by the Web, then go start doing something different, then, well "GDP is GDP" -- but that is a massive efficiency improvement.

I don't know about human lifespans or manufacturing output (though the widening collaboration opportunity increases the number of people that can solve foundational manufacturing problems), but that's only one of many human values, and I think it's an artificial requirement to compare to electricity on that basis -- almost like penalizing it because it didn't enable better hunting of large animals.

So stepping back to the level of human welfare and modes of life it enables, I think the Web is comparable to electricity.

Here's an informal measure: what does the technology do to the "quaintness" of (non-sci-fi) stories composed before it? After electricity, you might look at a book with a plot element "character can't work at night", and scoff at how backward it is.

Does the Web do something similar? I'd say it does a lot more. Per Steven Landsburg, there was a novel written in '91 (right at the Web's infancy) with plot elements like "someone is endlessly searching bookstores to find an obscure book" and "someone sells expensive encyclopedias to people with a tremendous demand for easy access to knowledge" -- very, very quaint from today's perspective.

(Novel was called, IIRC, "Hunters and Gatherers")

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

#155

Post by hollerith »

ig1 wrote: post #35
hollerith wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I have been assuming that a large fraction of VC-funded startups try for exits of at least $1 billion. (The more rational ones know they will probably fail, but that does not prevent their sincerely aiming for that target.) I am almost certain their investors want them to aim at least that high. Are you sure you're not confusing billion and trillion? ADDED. I'm not trying to appear bad-ass or hardcore (and in fa…

Investors generally aim for a 10x+ return, so if an investor invests $3m at $10m pre-val they'd be aiming for a $100m+ exit. They're definitely not only aiming for $1bn+ exits although obviously they're a bonus (in the last decade there have probably been under 50 billion dollar exits in the tech space).

PG is an investor and he has stated multiple times that he'd prefer that all of his investments were aimed at the high end of the range of possible outcomes (mentioning Google's exit more than once in this context). Of course he has also stated that he understands that it is usually not in the best interests of the founders, so no pressure.

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

#156

Post by sammyo »

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 clicked through looking for an auo-micro-composting mechanism. And auto-harvesting. Did you have ideas about handling blights, molds and other diseases?

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

#157

Post by ph0rque »

sammyo wrote: post #156
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 clicked through looking for an auo-micro-composting mechanism. And auto-harvesting. Did you have ideas about handling blights, molds and other diseases?

For auto-composting (not sure how micro you need to go...), we're thinking of using Black Soldier Fly Larvae to process the compost and auto-harvest into the fish tank for a snack for the fish. Another option is using earthworms, and manually (eventually automatically) harvesting them into the fish tanks, thus recycling one's food scraps back into food.

As far as blight and mold, those problems have been identified and solved with greenhouse and hydroponics growing. The key to these problems and other diseases is to make it easy to prevent, or failing that, treat those diseases. But again, this is a solved problem.

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

#158

Post by jayturley »

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?

A mobile-based distributed trust system that reflects what other people think of you and your skills, is resistant to gaming, and doesn't start with the premise of lots of Bitcoins.

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

#159

Post by jameslevy »

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.

The irony is that over the next few decades, maybe it will turn out that the single biggest YC black swan could be a new power source that appears to violate the laws of physics.

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

#160

Post by hkmurakami »

hluska wrote: post #107
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.

Several years ago, a good friend came to me and excitedly pitched his latest invention - perpetual motion. He grew more and more animated as he explained how his device used magnets... Being young, I drew a diagram showing why it would fail. With each line, I could sense him deflating, but I kept drawing. Finally, by the time I brought up Newton, I realized that I'd gone too far. Our friendship didn't really work out…

This reminds me of Jeff Bezos' anecdote about telling his grandmother how much her smoking had shortened her life.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/inde...

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