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Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Crazy New Ideas

#61

Post by gustavo-fring »

codingdave wrote: post #55

> Someone proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then it gradually takes over the world. This is survivorship bias. He is not wrong in that yes, we should consider ideas from domain experts carefully and not be overly dismissive. But it is absolutely survivorship bias to believe that every crazy idea from a domain expert worked out.

Graham should know better, he talked about arc as the messiah for five years before getting beat to market by Clojure. Now they barely do proper language releases.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#62

Post by SigmundA »

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” -Sagan

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#63

Post by sneak »

codingdave wrote: post #55

> Someone proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then it gradually takes over the world. This is survivorship bias. He is not wrong in that yes, we should consider ideas from domain experts carefully and not be overly dismissive. But it is absolutely survivorship bias to believe that every crazy idea from a domain expert worked out.

From TFA:

> Such ideas are not guaranteed to work. But they don't have to be. They just have to be sufficiently good bets — to have sufficiently high expected value. And I think on average they do.

It's likely that you're both right. If something is biased 45% off of a coin toss, but gives 25x returns, it's still positive EV.

This is a part of VC and speculative investment that a lot of people gloss over. Success is the difference between being wrong 95% of the time and being wrong 97% of the time. (And, with Softbank around, sometimes it's the difference between being wrong 97% of the time and 99.5% of the time.)

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#64

Post by weasel_words »

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…

"They are betting that PC/Laptop/Mobile hardware will stagnate from this point on."

Me playing the devils advocate...

Perhaps not //forever//, but perhaps for the next few years (enough for them to make some good money).

Why? Chip shortage, GPU shortage.

Anecdotally, I just bought a computer for $7500, that, two years ago would have cost about $2500 (granted, it is the new tech, but even so, new tech of this tier two years ago would have been approx. $2500). On top of that, have to wait two months for it to be assembled. (ouch)

I agree with you that speed will probably not stop increasing, but if prices continue to go up, or even just level off, few people will be able to afford the new tech.

That being said, would I invest in Mighty? No since I agree with you in general....and agree with you about the zero privacy issue...very regressive position for someone like PG imo.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#65

Post by fallingknife »

bob33212 wrote: post #50

This is a great essay. I follow similar logic when assessing bitcoin. 1. Listen to as many viewpoints as possible 2. Remove the people who are not domain experts 3. Remove the people who are blinded by their own financial interests or ego. 4. Remove the people who are influenced by social pressures ( good and bad ) 5. Assign probabilities to the remaining viewpoints evenly. 6. Repeat steps 1-5 and chart the progressi…

Who exactly is a "domain expert" in bitcoin? The whole thing was created by an anonymous developer 10 years ago, and all of the so called "domain experts" are johnny come latelys who smelled a quick buck.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#66

Post by fallingknife »

antipauline wrote: post #48

Why are you all upvoting this shit? Just because Paul Graham wrote it, doesn't mean it's worth reading. Usually the opposite, in fact. You people need to lay off the PG cultism. Stop worshipping every word he writes just because you idolize his riches, or want to be him, or whatever.

You actually add credibility to his writing because you make it obvious that you don't actually have a counter argument.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#67

Post by pilingual »

rsp1984 wrote: post #29

I agree with the general gist of this, however the crux is that most ideas that turn out to be revolutionary just don't originate within the accepted circle of domain experts, exactly because being a domain expert makes you more unlikely to think out of the box. Google didn't come out of Yahoo. Napster wasn't founded by music industry execs. Friendster didn't evolve into Facebook. Match.com didn't invent Tinder. It's…

I'm curious to see a list of world-changing ideas that came out of domain expertise and those that the essay claims could be dismissed because the person was not an expert.

AirBnB, which is perhaps pg's favorite company, would never have gotten into Y Combinator without Michael Seibel and the endorsement of the JTV crew. AirBnB simply would not exist today.

So I hope people don't read this essay and think, "I'm not a domain expert, so I'll give up on this idea." Somewhat of a dangerous essay for that reason.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#68

Post by bonoboTP »

antipauline wrote: post #48

Why are you all upvoting this shit? Just because Paul Graham wrote it, doesn't mean it's worth reading. Usually the opposite, in fact. You people need to lay off the PG cultism. Stop worshipping every word he writes just because you idolize his riches, or want to be him, or whatever.

Fully agreed. A lazy article all-round. Where are the examples? Where are the pitfalls?

Is the insight merely that some wacky ideas turn out to be right sometimes?

Yeah, sure so how can we tell in advance? How is this actionable? And his answer is: listen to reasonable domain experts. That phrase is doing some real heavy lifting there...

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#70

Post by imhoguy »

antipauline wrote: post #59
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created an account just to say this? Damn, commitment.

Well, I don't want to get my usual account banned for expressing such apostate views. They're very protective of their cult leaders round here.

What are your views then?
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