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The Right Kind of Stubborn

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#201

Post by locallost »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #199
locallost wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't nuking a product after 18 months be the opposite of the wrong kind of stubborn if it's the right thing to do? That's exactly my problem with views like these, it's always the other party that is "obstinate" and doesn't listen, but what if after 18 months the product as a whole didn't meet enough expectations? Then it would be very obstinate to insist on releasing it anyway, and a more pragmatic way to reach…

It wasn't the wrong kind of stubborn. It was exactly the right thing to do, for this organization. I'm not sure that it was, in the aggregate, the most beneficial decision for the company, but it was the decision they made, and I had to go along with it. I do think that we could have addressed the Quality issues, in a couple of months, and the app was something that I think would have been "revolutionary." That "revo…

I can't know what's correct there, but I don't need to. Ultimately it comes down to was it a success or not, for a company this basically means does it exist and is it profitable. In the alternate universe where things are done differently it could be better or worse. My main point is that whether it's the right or wrong stubborn depends on your point of view. Now Paul Graham has been very successful in business, but even there you might have different businesses. People took different approaches and were still successful. And business is just a narrow part of life. So what's bothering me here is that there are broad generalizations that in most cases come down to your point of view. This could ironically be interpreted as the wrong kind of stubborn.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#202

Post by eloisant »

etothepii wrote: post #167
xivzgrev wrote: post #125

I wish this article hit on an important point: when should the persistent quit? We all know we should know when to hold and when to fold, but in practice that's a hard decision to make especially when we're invested. And someone who is "persistent" vs "obstinate" should be able to do this: quit when it's right to do so. The closest thing he mentions is this, "persistence often requires that one change one's mind. Tha…

Does the answer to this lie with the tree PG discusses. If the goal is, "do something great." Then one should never quit.

Sometimes to do something great, you need to give up your failed project to start over with something that have a chance to work.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#203

Post by etothepii »

eloisant wrote: post #202
etothepii wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the answer to this lie with the tree PG discusses. If the goal is, "do something great." Then one should never quit.

Sometimes to do something great, you need to give up your failed project to start over with something that have a chance to work.

Apologies, I was referring to the specific thing one is doing (and giving up on) as a node below the "do something great" headline.

That is you don't give up on the overarching objective "do something great" because you have realised that the something you are doing is not helping you achieve that headline goal.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#204

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

locallost wrote: post #201
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the wrong kind of stubborn. It was exactly the right thing to do, for this organization. I'm not sure that it was, in the aggregate, the most beneficial decision for the company, but it was the decision they made, and I had to go along with it. I do think that we could have addressed the Quality issues, in a couple of months, and the app was something that I think would have been "revolutionary." That "revo…

I can't know what's correct there, but I don't need to. Ultimately it comes down to was it a success or not, for a company this basically means does it exist and is it profitable. In the alternate universe where things are done differently it could be better or worse. My main point is that whether it's the right or wrong stubborn depends on your point of view. Now Paul Graham has been very successful in business, but…

That is exactly why I said "it depends."

My experience, is that folks can't deal with "it depends." We have to have "hard and fast" rules, to be applied in all contexts.

Determining "it depends" almost always requires scars and contusions. Less-experienced folks often have a much more difficult time, making these decisions, than folks that have been around the track a few times.

The folks that decided to cancel that project were very highly-placed executives. It wasn't an easy decision. However, one of my mistakes, was underestimating just how obstinate and change-averse, the QA people could be, and how much real power they wielded. If I had accepted this, I maybe could have saved the project. It was a hard lesson, but one I learned well.

That corporation made some serious mistakes, mainly from being so risk-averse, that they allowed their competitors to eat their lunch, and suffered a pretty big implosion. I suspect that they will do OK, in the long run, but they took a real beating. Ironically, the reason they survived that drubbing, was because of their fiscal conservatism.

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#205

Post by Gormo »

pilingual wrote: post #85
arp242 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an old anecdote where I think Pascal, but I'm not sure, argued the existence or non-existence of God in front of the king with another philosopher. Maybe-Pascal exclaimed loudly and with great confidence "A plus C equal B squared! Therefore God exists! COUNTER!" The other philosopher didn't know much about mathematics, had no idea to reply, got flustered, and "lost" the argument.[1] And honestly, I'm not sure…

Why are NFTs dumb? How can I buy a digital asset sold by an artist?

What digital assets are you referring to? During the NFT frenzy, the NFTs in question did not convey any assets that I'm aware of -- they transferred no unique physical artifacts, nor ownership of any copyrights or trademarks.

The NFTs just included public URLs pointing to files, so pepole were effectively buying and selling certificates of authenticity for artwork without owning the actual artwork itself!

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#206

Post by Gormo »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #108
pilingual wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are NFTs dumb? How can I buy a digital asset sold by an artist?

NFTs are not a good solution to buying artwork. They are a novel concept, but translating that to conventional problems around ownership is difficult and probably not the best solution.

NFTs are a great solution for demonstrating provenance. They can function as digital certificates of authenticity for an asset. Treating them as assets themselves, though, is pretty ridiculous.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#207

Post by Gormo »

actionfromafar wrote: post #130
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs are not a good solution to buying artwork. They are a novel concept, but translating that to conventional problems around ownership is difficult and probably not the best solution.

They could be used by TicketMaster for tickets. That’s about the most realistic use case I could come up with.

Digital tickets for anything that uses tickets, deeds for transfer of real property, execution of contracts, etc.

Any use case in which some blob of data corresponds to an individually specifiable concrete thing is a suitable use case for NFTs.

The problem with the speculative frenzy a few years ago was that the NFTs in question did not convey ownership over anything -- people were trading the NFTs themselves rather than using them as deeds/contracts/tickets corresponding to some other external asset. If the NFTs were used to convey copyright ownership or exclusive usage rights to the underlying artwork, they'd have made a lot more sense, but as it played out, people were paying huge sums of money for what amounted to tickets to nowhere.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#208

Post by breck »

rqmedes wrote: post #170
breck wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet would be that scientists write the most, not journalists. You seem to have changed your position from journalists to "people whose day job is to write", which is good, as that includes scientists.

Marketing people write a lot more

> Marketing people write a lot more

https://breckyunits.com/dataset-needed.html

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#209

Post by kragen »

Suppafly wrote: post #71
arp242 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an old anecdote where I think Pascal, but I'm not sure, argued the existence or non-existence of God in front of the king with another philosopher. Maybe-Pascal exclaimed loudly and with great confidence "A plus C equal B squared! Therefore God exists! COUNTER!" The other philosopher didn't know much about mathematics, had no idea to reply, got flustered, and "lost" the argument.[1] And honestly, I'm not sure…

>I found that no, it really is that dumb, and I had understood it correctly months ago, and all the jargon was just meaningless bollocks word salad. My brother is an artist and absolutely refused to believe that the hype around NFTs was just bullshit. I'm sure if I called and asked right now, he'd still give me some word salad about how it's going to start paying off any day now. Now if anyone talks to me about NFTs,…

> Now if anyone talks to me about NFTs, I send that me that Folding Ideas youtube video, 'Line goes up' and refuse to engage with them.

this sounds like a certain kind of stubbornness. but i wonder if the collison brothers listen with predatory intensity to critiques or their business from random strangers in the same way they listen to pg. perhaps some discrimination is useful

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