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Fashionable Problems

paulgraham.com

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Re: Fashionable Problems

#101

Post by trhway »

cjblomqvist wrote: post #77
jbverschoor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that multi-layered problem solving is superhard to execute. It's not that it's hard to find a solution that would be orders better, but it's just that it's risky, as it's an all-or-nothing path. It at least requires a lot of confidence for the existing market. With waterfall-kind of planning, that would work. Unfortunately it got a bad name in the '90s and early '00s. The wild-west of inexperienced dev…

Aren't those companies great examples of this though? They have a great vision, but really try to play inside the existing system except for one thing. Tesla for example haven't yet done much innovation that the other car companies don't, except for betting hard on electricity (or more specifically, batteries). A more radical approach challenging the whole system on all fronts would be to re-think personal transporta…

You, like many others, me sometime ago including, are missing the point that can be illustrated with Apple - Jobs broke the carrier control over software that is running on the device which, until Jobs, had been a given unquestionable fact of life like the sky is blue. That is what unleashed the revolution, not the nice piece of hardware which would be just a brick under ATT control like many before.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#102

Post by ronilan »

Silicon Valley’s biggest problem is that is tends to see problems as opportunities and opportunities as problems. There is no opportunity in that problem.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#103

Post by xwowsersx »

bawolff wrote: post #52

Seems like a lot of weirdly defensive people in this thread. But the essay doesnt really seem that revolutionary more common sense. If you want to make an impact, dont work in an oversaturated field. The low hanging fruit is probably already picked and other people will probably get there before you do. But you also dont want to work in a field nobody cares about as noone will care. Working on a problem with proven d…

> If you want to make an impact, dont work in an oversaturated field.

That's exactly the opposite of his point, if I understood it correctly!

Re: Fashionable Problems

#104

Post by darksaints »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #97
darksaints wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting theory as to why we never evolved with wheels is the idea that an evolutionary improvement requires a viable intermediate state...something that works well enough in the transition from inferior to superior. It is worth noting that human inventions can evolve in much faster timelines than biological evolution, but no matter how fast they come, there does need to be a way to fulfill intermediate needs,…

> An interesting theory as to why we never evolved with wheels is the idea that an evolutionary improvement requires a viable intermediate state Not really; wheels aren't an improvement in the first place so there is no need to explain why they didn't develop. Note that it's easy to make robots that use wheels, and difficult to make robots that use legs, but we make legged robots anyway so that they'll be able to han…

Okay, but evolution has given us some pretty expansive diversity in traits across the biological world. No single trait is pareto optimal, but relatively superior/inferior depending on context. Wheels have some pretty extreme efficiency advantages, useful for both speed as well as endurance. They come with disadvantages too, but there are plenty of animals who never need to leave environments where legs are optimal or even necessary for survival. There are some animals that will never leave grassy plains, for example. Yet none of them have evolved wheels either. We don't have marine animals that have evolved propellers, despite an edge in efficiency.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#105

Post by xwowsersx »

mmahemoff wrote: post #39
blast wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many PG articles? Which ones?

Just a general observation. Wasn't specifically answering your question about PG's writing.

Lol what do you mean a "general observation"? You stated plainly that "Many articles now are cleanly formatted tweetstorms". Which ones?

Re: Fashionable Problems

#106

Post by drchewbacca »

majos wrote: post #42

This post sorely lacks evidence for its big first claim: > I've seen a similar pattern in many different fields: even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they've all worked on similar things. Anyone want to step in with some examples? Without them, the thrust of the essay seems to be: "If only other people understood what…

In mathematics I'd put forward the conjecture that "for every proven theorem you could ask at least 5 more similar questions which are unproven."

For example it is proven there are infinitely many primes. Are there infinitely primes that differ by 2? By n for any n? Are there infinitely many palindromic primes? Are there infinitely many primes of form n^2 + 1? Is there always a prime between n^2 and (n+1)^2?

If this is true then, assuming there are 200k proven theorems, there would be >1m unproven but readily stated theorems which would mean it wouldn't be too hard to find areas no one is looking into.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#107

Post by chubot »

seriesf wrote: post #61
stephenamills wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ideas that diverged too much from the existing successful tech had a huge obstacle in their way: they had to recreate all of the existing solutions in their new model.” You’re so right! There are great examples of companies that preserved the existing ecosystem of solutions (Facebook with PHP, Microsoft with C++, Google with Java and C++, maybe also Amazon with Perl 5 and C++). There are also great examples of succe…

The fact that many large and lucrative code bases are written in c++ should disabuse you of the idea that c++ is suicidal.

“Many” is almost underselling it. It’s literally EVERY web browser that anyone uses. I don’t know where people get these ideas. OP has a shallow understanding of programming languages, software development, and their history.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#108

Post by mmaunder »

I'd suggest focusing on people and the problems they have rather than industry, your space, the news and your colleagues. That way you'll serve real needs rather than getting a ton of street cred as you dissapear down an academic rabbit hole.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#109

Post by tyre »

dang wrote: post #91
FreakLegion wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The word means 'attempt' It can, but doesn't in this context. 'Essay' was a sort-of polyseme (like 'passion', which can still mean 'suffering') that has long since severed ties with its origin. Outside certain narrow academic discussions, the etymology and current use of 'essay' have effectively nothing to do with one another. In any case though pg does pretend to some amount of expertise. "How to Do Philosophy" is…

Of course it does; it has kept a close association with this meaning throughout literary history. An essay is an attempt, a sketch, thinking out loud. It's the literary genre equivalent of informal conversation. In an essay, you discover what you think by writing it, just as in exploratory programming you discover what your program is by programming it. To say that essays aren't for non-authoritative musing is like s…

I strongly disagree with this.

The greatest essayists are not putting a "sketch" into the world. I cannot imagine reading an Isaiah Berlin essay and saying, "this is just informal conversation."

Consider Didion, Foster Wallace, Sontag, Mailer, Orwell, Hitchens, Paine, Zadie Smith, the founding fathers of the United States via the Federalist Papers.

There is no lack in seriousness, no lack in rigor, and no lack direct purpose backed by thoughtful consideration and ample evidence.

There are _also_ informal or unserious or musing essays, but please do not lump together the entire genre of essays with a description of Medium posts.

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