Crazy New Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#131

Post by talkingtab » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

I believe there is another factor, a bit more subtle, but I wonder if it is more pervasive.

Humans need to act. In order to act we need to believe that our actions are actionable. Anything, anything at all, that leaves us unable to act is a threat to our survival. A bear jumps out at you. Being unable to act because you don't know whether to play dead or run is deadly. Being unable to decide whether to wear a mask or not is deadly, even if both choices are both right or wrong. Maybe not said well, but when you consider all the actions you take in a day and what would happen if we could not decide.

As a side effect, I wonder if simply voicing ideas or bringing into view concepts that challenge the certainty we each require in order to get through a day, is in fact threatening.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#132

Post by lostcolony » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

lbacaj wrote: post #118

antipauline wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing original there, it's the business model of carpetbaggers and robber barons. How boring. Indeed. Venture capitalism is still capitalism, with all its abuse and exploitation.

Capitalism for all its flaws at least taps into what motivates people to work really hard and encourages it. It mimics nature itself. Some ideas might be mundane but others can be extraordinary, it’s par for the course. As an example, Capitalism gave us a vaccine to a novel corona-virus within a year. These companies didn’t do it out of good will, they did it because they knew they could make money. Many socialist co…

As of November last year (let alone anything since re: distribution), US governmental agencies paid $2.5 billion to Moderna to develop the vaccine and buy doses (and there already had been work done by Moderna on mRNA vaccines).

As of July last year (again, let alone anything since), US governmental agencies had paid Pfizer $1.95 billion.

So, basically, the government spent billions for something they then distributed 'for free' to the taxpayers.

That's an interesting example to pick for 'capitalism'.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#133

Post by jgalt212 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

as PG has gotten richer, astoundingly so, I feel his writing has become of lower quality and less general utility. But, that's fine. I don't have to read it, but I do still adore and re-read his older works.

That being said, it's amazing that mental gymnastics all VCs these days will go through to make something that's completely nonsensical seem like it "could" make sense. e.g. NFTs and Andreesen Horowitz

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#134

Post by antipauline » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

lbacaj wrote: post #118

antipauline wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing original there, it's the business model of carpetbaggers and robber barons. How boring. Indeed. Venture capitalism is still capitalism, with all its abuse and exploitation.

Capitalism for all its flaws at least taps into what motivates people to work really hard and encourages it. It mimics nature itself. Some ideas might be mundane but others can be extraordinary, it’s par for the course. As an example, Capitalism gave us a vaccine to a novel corona-virus within a year. These companies didn’t do it out of good will, they did it because they knew they could make money. Many socialist co…

> As an example, Capitalism gave us a vaccine to a novel corona-virus within a year. These companies didn’t do it out of good will, they did it because they knew they could make money. Many socialist countries are struggling because it turns out it’s hard to force people to produce innovation without the right incentive structures in place.

Most vaccine development occurs in academic research institutions, even if the large-scale manufacturing is then taken up by the capitalists. For example, the Covid vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca was created by and innovated upon by a vaccine research group in Oxford University, who are obviously not in it for making vast wads of cash. And in general, it's the state who funds vaccine development, and the state who buys the vaccines.

On the broader subject of medicine, capitalism also gives us harsh enforcement of supposed 'intellectual property rights', stymieing the availability of medicines in developing countries. Fortunately, it looks like this will be waived for Covid vaccines, thanks to some government intervention. But it shouldn't have to be this way. Jonas Salk had the right idea when he released his polio vaccine freely to the world, to benefit all, without profit motive.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#135

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #27

bestinterest wrote: post #4

Very interesting. This sounds like a response to the Mighty [0] launch which Paul Graham has been defending on twitter recently after an outcry from some of the 'hardcore' developers such as Jonathan Blow [1] and Casey [2]. [0] https://www.mightyapp.com/ [1] https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1387101172230672389 [2] https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1387645578067124224

There was this product[1] to browse internet offline by downloading something called “Web Packs”. This was back in 2005 just when I was graduating when I spoke to the founding team. They were naturally quite confident about the product taking off. Something seemed off to me I couldn’t point out what so I didn’t take the job offer. After all these years I realized the source my discomfort. They were actually betting a…

The Mighty model is timesharing CPUs. At least 80% of the time my computer isn't even used. And when I use it, I doubt average load is over 25%. So the Mighty model has a 20x utilization advantage by those numbers.

That should easily support twice the peak CPU power for me when I need it.

Another thing is that the Mighty CPUs will (presumably) be upgraded continuously, while my laptop CPU gets no faster after purchase. If that makes me only buy a new laptop every 4 years instead of 2, I've saved a lot of money and hassle.

I'm not saying this means Mighty will conquer the world. But there are reasonable arguments behind the model. Especially if you assume bandwidth will keep improving.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#136

Post by vishnugupta » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #106

vishnugupta wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was this product[1] to browse internet offline by downloading something called “Web Packs”. This was back in 2005 just when I was graduating when I spoke to the founding team. They were naturally quite confident about the product taking off. Something seemed off to me I couldn’t point out what so I didn’t take the job offer. After all these years I realized the source my discomfort. They were actually betting a…

Couldn't they instead be betting that despite improvements in hardware speed the web will bloat faster than the hardware improves? Betting on that doesn't sound that crazy to me.

That is indeed one of their premise. However that also has, perhaps unforeseen, implications. To start with, their VMs have to be at least one step better than the end consumer's machine. Can they do it without increasing their price? Secondly, there's no guarantee that developers will overwhelm even Mighty's cloud resources?

All that said, it's worth noting that the first set of customers seem super impressed. So maybe Mighty are on to something.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#137

Post by bombcar » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

II2II wrote: post #43

The reference to the Copernican Model of the solar system is an interesting one since it produced less accurate predictions than the Ptolemaic Model. Improving the predictions of the Copernican model initially involved the introduction of epicycles, diminishing the value of the crazy new idea. It took the work of Kepler (elliptical orbits) and Newton (a physical basis for elliptical orbits) to elevate the heliocentri…

I think there's a very strong analogy between the Copernican model vs Ptolemaic and computer languages (for example) - you can have something like C which has obvious defects (grant this for the argument, substitute something else if you like), but a replacement like Rust isn't taking on just C, but the entire ecosystem around C and all the tooling and knowledge therein.

Similarly the Copernican model was "more correct" depending on how you look at it (currently we model everything relative to everything else, the earth and sun "orbit" around a midpoint that is inside the surface of the sun but not the exact center, for example) but it provided WORSE predictions than the Ptolemaic model of the time.

And this had real practical implications in the technology of the day - navigation charts, etc, analogous to trying to use new tooling and finding it doesn't support aspects the old tooling did.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#138

Post by fsociety » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

stephc_int13 wrote: post #89

In case someone missed the story, Paul Graham is indirectly talking about the feedback received by Mighty App. And in this particular case, I don't think this is a valid defense. First, he clearly has too much skin in the game to be credibly neutral about it. Second, he avoids addressing the main critique about this "new tech". People are not claiming that it is a bad idea because it is infeasible or not valuable, bu…

Not to mention the privacy concerns of allowing someone else’s machine to proxy all of your web requests.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#139

Post by jean_tta » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #110

I really wish PG would actually talk to some historians. History of Science is an extremely deep field with tons of professionals who have spent their lives studying this material. His overview is shallow. The only history book he cites is from fifty years ago ! It is so frustrating. There is this huge wealth of content available and a large group of people who'd want nothing more to be able to share what they know a…

A very smart man, PG himself, once said [0]:

> I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before.

PG started writing essays about what he knows well (programming, start ups), then about things he knows a bit (painting) and then stuff like this, or his essays on economic policy. In any case, he predicted his own future quite well.

[0] quoted here https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm from there http://lemonodor.com/archives/001091.html#c8508

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#140

Post by herendin2 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

gustavo-fring wrote: post #52

blocked_again wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Also, Suhail Doshi, the founder of Mighty, is mentioned as one of the people who draft read this essay.

Graham does this often. Instead of directly saying what he wants to say, he beats around the bush. When Allred was getting criticized for shady business practices, Graham wrote haters and thanked him and Musk and a bunch of other people. Not sure why he does it, it is very underhanded, as though he's afraid of actually getting in a legit argument with the person. Easier to pontificate form his essays, have them poste…

I think he genuinely believes these issues are much broader than a single company. So he wants to encourage discussion about the general issue, instead of sparking even more unproductive, repetitive argument about a single company which would overshadow the broader and more interesting issue he sees.

(As we can see here, where a quarter of the comments are debating the business model of Mighty.)