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Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Crazy New Ideas

#621

Post by npsimons »

de_keyboard wrote: post #127

I think "attacking" Crazy New Ideas is how we develop them, iron out the kinks and test our understanding. Criticism is an essential part of the journey from crazy new idea to accepted wisdom. However, the main problem I have with with this article is that it divides people into domain experts and the rest. This kind of black and white thinking is pervasive in PG essays, and always lead to a cute conclusion. You can…

> I think "attacking" Crazy New Ideas is how we develop them, iron out the kinks and test our understanding.

Criticism is the crucible in which crazy new ideas are forged into crazy viable ideas.

> However, the main problem I have with with this article is that it divides people into domain experts and the rest.

Let's be honest: in this day and age "the rest" are far too vocal and need to STFU on things which they have no knowledge. Sure, domain experts can disagree - let them be heard, but the know-nothings should be given zero attention.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#622

Post by stephc_int13 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #587
geebee wrote: post #388

Lots of comments already, but I'll chime on in. I realized this very late in life, but I have a test for when it's time to pay attention to a new technology. It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. The web: couldn't you ju…

I think of this as my "Kardashian problem". I don't understand why the Kardashians are famous or wealthy. I mean I get the mechanics of it - famous legal case -> sex tape -> reality TV show. But I don't understand how this works, or why it works. This isn't their problem. They are very wealthy, famous, and they obviously totally grok how their market works. This is my problem. I should not attempt to produce a mass-m…

You should clearly not enter a market you do not understand, because you'll probably lead you to bring a knife to a gunfight.

But your conclusion about mass-market is too broad, this is not a single thing and can really depend on your definition and perspective.

Apple devices can be considered mass-market or niche.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#623

Post by mumblemumble »

aniforprez wrote: post #534
mumblemumble wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is slightly what I'm thinking, for that particular use case. The idea that you're going to shove 1TB of data down to the client strikes me as slightly unhinged. Even if we assume you can achieve a sustained transfer rate of one gigabit per second, it's going to take over 2 hours to get a terabyte shoved down to the client. I'm guessing, though, that the actual vizualization is nowhere near one terabyte. Data's g…

> The idea that you're going to shove 1TB of data down to the client strikes me as slightly unhinged Yeah which is why I asked for clarification from them because it seemed really weird to assert that as a positive for the app? > It would be much faster, and, I think, simpler, to keep the data on a central server, have it generate the visualizations, and push them down to the client. Yeah I completely agree but in th…

Yeah, agreed. I can see Mighty as perhaps being useful as a band-aid to deal with someone else's poor, resource-hungry design.

But if you're the actual app developer, I'm just not seeing a good reason why you would want to deliberately incorporate this technology into your design. Why farm the sever-side rendering out to a middleman when you could just... do server-side rendering?

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#624

Post by qshaman »

geebee wrote: post #388

Lots of comments already, but I'll chime on in. I realized this very late in life, but I have a test for when it's time to pay attention to a new technology. It's when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say "couldn't you just _____", were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn't understand or considers very cumbersome. The web: couldn't you ju…

This argument have been attempted already, you can also take Juicero, "can you just squeeze the bad yourself?" , and was indeed a dumb idea. This "crazy idea" is not removing any friction to regular people, regular people browse youtube, or instagram, tik tok, etc... this is targeted to techies, look at the homepage, people who are pointing out the "crazy new idea" , is neither crazy, new, or good at all, are the target of this product. Just because some successful companies had bad feedback in the beginning, doesn't imply "you missed it" or their product will become the next thing. The HN crowd of today is also not the same as the crowd back then(dropbox founder comment fiesta...).

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#625

Post by dang »

Rapzid wrote: post #517
gman83 wrote: post #80

I guess because I think that Hyperloop is a really dumb idea I must be extremely envious. This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism. The critics are envious, they're trying to look sophisticated, they're not real domain experts, etc.

Your just not a domain expert on ideas though. Just look at all the words he wrote on ideas. You should be more open to his absurd belief in the idea of Mighty App being a game changer.

Please don't be snarky or take HN threads even further in the flamewar direction. No matter how you feel about $person or $subject, it's bad for community to pee in the swimming pool this way. It encourages the more discerning swimmers not to stick around—and we're trying for something else in any case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#626

Post by ALittleLight »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #614
aj7 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pornography for women works completely differently than pornography for men.

Can you expand on the idea that the Kardashians produce pornography for women? Sounds like it could explain why I don't get it!

I don't know if I would call it "pornography for women" but in my experience women tend to be more interested in social dynamics. e.g. Who said what to whom and why, X is fighting with Y because of Z and J is siding X instead of K, and so on.

These shows tend to be about groups of characters engaging in what you might call social or political struggles. Tensions, drama, conflict, emotions, and so on. Reality shows like the Kardashians are a distillation of these aspects and create something that is sweet like sugar to people who are disposed to enjoy that flavor.

I think a lot of people judge reality TV shows without watching them and kind of look down on them. If you don't have the taste for something it's easy to look down on it. For example, lots of people look down on Star Trek, which I loved when I was younger and still do. If I had to answer why I liked Star Trek, it's because I like to imagine myself as Captain Picard and figure out what I would do if I were faced with the given moral dilemma of the week. If my fantasy preferences tended towards "How would I handle the handsome jerk my sister is dating while I myself am a beautiful billionaire?" then I would watch different shows.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#627

Post by dbtc »

npsimons wrote: post #621
de_keyboard wrote: post #127

I think "attacking" Crazy New Ideas is how we develop them, iron out the kinks and test our understanding. Criticism is an essential part of the journey from crazy new idea to accepted wisdom. However, the main problem I have with with this article is that it divides people into domain experts and the rest. This kind of black and white thinking is pervasive in PG essays, and always lead to a cute conclusion. You can…

> I think "attacking" Crazy New Ideas is how we develop them, iron out the kinks and test our understanding. Criticism is the crucible in which crazy new ideas are forged into crazy viable ideas. > However, the main problem I have with with this article is that it divides people into domain experts and the rest. Let's be honest: in this day and age "the rest" are far too vocal and need to STFU on things which they ha…

Except for children, who often ask the best questions.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#628

Post by Metacelsus »

bernulli wrote: post #602

My favorite crazy ideas from Science are - "Imagine, they're like really small animals, but the're too small to see! The're everywhere! They live on us, in us, around us! They are what makes us sick!" (Pasteur, germ theory of diseases) - "You know how there can be mountains as huge as the Himalaya? Easy! In reality, all continents are really like small leaves floating on a see of magma, and they're bouncing into each…

More recently:

Seeing small things is difficult. Instead of making microscopes better, what if we made the samples bigger?

(Expansion microscopy)

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#629

Post by IgorPartola »

gofreddygo wrote: post #465
dunkelheit wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always bring Dropbox to these discussions as an example of a startup that was dismissed by HN but turned out to be huge, but turns out there are examples of the opposite thing happening too! Does anyone remember Color Labs? Go read this thread and marvel at the similarities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2364463 . A stellar team backed by top VCs who invested (extraordinary at the time) $41M sets out to…

I see this as a pessimism/optimism spectrum. We are on the extreme left if we can reliably predict successes and on the extreme right if we can reliably predict failures. As we pick a few datapoints (Dropbox, Coinbase, Airbnb) and we average it out, we are pushed towards the left. More data we pick (colorlabs for example, and I'm sure many others) we are pushed more towards the right. Most popular article dealing wit…

To expand on your model, I think our ability to predict success and our ability to predict failure are separate things not on a continuum with each other but orthogonal metrics. We need to count false positives and false negatives here.

I predict that HN is no better at predicting success than average. It might be better than average at predicting failure but given the distribution that might not be that hard: if you dismiss every idea AND most ideas fail, then you always look like you are getting it right with a few occasional wrongs. Think about it in the inverse: if most startups succeeded spectacularly but a few failed miserably and you always were bullish on all startups, people would just say that you are almost always right.

The only real difference between predicting success and the result being failure and the opposite is that in this world success is unbounded (your valuation isn’t constrained since you can create a whole new market segment), but failure is always bounded. Therefore getting a success wrong sucks more than getting a failure wrong: you could have made a lot of money by correctly predicting a unicorn.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#630

Post by majormajor »

aj7 wrote: post #606
marcus_holmes wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of this as my "Kardashian problem". I don't understand why the Kardashians are famous or wealthy. I mean I get the mechanics of it - famous legal case -> sex tape -> reality TV show. But I don't understand how this works, or why it works. This isn't their problem. They are very wealthy, famous, and they obviously totally grok how their market works. This is my problem. I should not attempt to produce a mass-m…

Pornography for women works completely differently than pornography for men.

This is rather insulting and dismissive. There's a lot of empty media content aimed primarily at men that's no more ultimately meaningful than celeb gossip that's hardly "pornography." Sports are the most obvious. A lot of empty action/comedy shows would also fit the bill, I think.
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