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Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Crazy New Ideas

#641

Post by sirsinsalot »

zem wrote: post #639
sirsinsalot wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if it succeeds, good on Suhail! Well, not exactly. There's plenty of people who have been successful at, frankly horrible things. I count this kind of "not your computer, ours" rent seeking change as "bad if successful".

i have a hard time classifying mighty as 'rent seeking' - they are providing you computational resources in return for money, not seeking some sort of gatekeeping money by virtue of owning a scarce or critical-path resource.

Agreed, my concern is about the trajectory of the product offerings more broadly. Embrace-extend-rent seems a common theme. I hope the case of Mighty has better intentions. Perhaps I am too cynical.

I wonder if the pitch deck had the same value proposition we are getting or if it said "lets own consumer virtual desktop starting with Chrome". Both are valid.

Feels like a bait and switch.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#642

Post by the_af »

tlb wrote: post #604
the_af wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Campbell's "journey" is about storytelling and the narrative journey, with a heavy dose of Jungian psychology, not about tech/science ideas. So I'd say it doesn't fit here.

That's the part that screenwriters often talk about. But his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, covers more than that and there are insights applicable to being a scientist. A key insight is that mythology's interpersonal structures are special to people, and our minds are wired to see them everywhere. A neuro-Bayesian might call them a prior. As a result, if your role in society somewhat resembles an archetype, t…

Interesting! I didn't read that book but a book derived from it, by Christopher Booker, titled Why We Tell Stories. I disliked much of it, it was very pretentious and reductionist and went as far as to suggest stories which deviate from the hero's journey are somehow flawed.

Maybe I should go to the source, thanks for pointing out there's more to it.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#643

Post by BrandonM »

dang wrote: post #572
jasode wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the behavior of _someone_ making good conversation, not someone being haughty. I meant to focus on the text's tone sounding haughty rather than accuse the person being haughty . Let me try to explain another way to emphasize the text aspect: that particular sentence in isolation is what is quoted on the internet outside of HN: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+can+already+build+suc... https://www.bing.c…

Ok, but if you read the text as a whole, it's not true that it's haughty. That it sounds haughty when quoted selectively is the internet's fault, not the commenter's. At most he can be accused of (a) not pre-emptively bulletproofing his text against selective quotation, and (b) not knowing the future. And (a) reduces to (b). I take your point about lore, and on that level it's just good fun. p.s. Also, nice use of th…

Hello. I’m honestly loving this conversation. Thanks for engaging seriously about it. It also means a lot, dang, that you took the time to both understand my points and also to counter the narrative, all these years after I commented.

As much as I appreciate your thoughtfulness, I really don’t mind the commentary. I’m long past being frustrated about being misinterpreted, and I learned a lot from it, anyway.

As I’ve stated since[1], I was an undergrad when I made those comments. I know how much I’ve grown since then. It feels like someone else said them, and everyone is talking about “not me” when they remark about it today.

I definitely appreciate the love, though. Thanks!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661824

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#644

Post by npsimons »

dbtc wrote: post #627
npsimons wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Asking innocent questions is okay, good even. Five whys comes to mind.

But stating opinion as fact or "just asking questions"[0] is not conducive to understanding.

[0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#645

Post by coldtea »

131012 wrote: post #113
gustavo-fring wrote: post #39

Graham's obviously inspired by some Kuhnian paradigms here, but in Grahamiam fashion, he doesn't cite anything to back it up. What I find interesting where he calls most people conservative is how when I'm discussing VCs, YC, etc with non SV people is we talk about how conservative they are. YC's business model for years was predicated on finding talent (kids) that was undervalued, underpaying them (10k was the initi…

And the fact that he states that he uses the word in the right way doesn't make it right. In fact, I find the use of the word paradigm quite shallow and disconnected from the Kuhnian definition.

>And the fact that he states that he uses the word in the right way doesn't make it right. In fact, I find the use of the word paradigm quite shallow and disconnected from the Kuhnian definition.

Perhaps because Kuhn doesn't dictate the definition of paradigm (and in general, the originator, etymology, etc. doesn't dictate use), the language community (the speakers of a language) does.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#646

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

allenu wrote: post #539
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 really don't remember tech people poo-pooing some of the examples you gave as "couldn't you..." I think you're looking at these examples with too fine a lens of implementation, especially in retrospect. the web: I was a teen when people started using local "freenets" to connect to a text-only web and I think most people who tried it were amazed that you could instantly view content somebody on the other side of the…

Thanks, I was looking for this comment. Most of the examples he gave just seem like absolute straw men to me:

> The web: couldn't you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it?

Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate.

> Wikis: couldn't you just update a web page?

It was pretty obviously apparent with wikis that letting anyone update the page, from the browser, was a cool technological achievement. I was well into my tech career at this point and don't remember anyone reacting to wikis this way.

> youtube: couldn't you just upload a video and use tags for search?

I mean, these are getting ridiculous. When YouTube came out video sharing was a major PITA, a pain that hit most technical people, too.

I just don't buy GP's premise because all of the examples seem like something only "Tech Support Guy" from those old SNL skits would say.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#647

Post by madrox »

Ironically, I'd dismiss this if it wasn't PG saying it, but this has survivor bias written all over it. No one remembers the ideas that were dismissed by domain experts that did not make it. This is the exact same argument that says college dropouts make the best CEOs.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#648

Post by maxwell »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #595
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…

Luck seems to play a big role in the celebrity market

Luck also seems to plays a big role in the programming lang market.

Yet the behavior of lang maintainers seems to have an outpaced influence over that luck: individual programmers actively chose Guido over Larry or Matz. In turn, Armin's framework looks about in line popularity-wise with DHH's at present, but the trend seems clear. We trust Node because Ryan rage quit. Oracle has cast a shadow over Java, and their TIOBE descent is finally manifesting. K&R may never be unseated, e.g. A Deepness in the Sky. Anyone who's seen Anders in person has witnessed his presence.

I wouldn't discount the effects of actual human characteristics and behavior, even if choices end up mostly based on fashion and a fascination with infamy. One can influence their own luck.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#649

Post by StavrosK »

louissm_it wrote: post #634
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…

“For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.” - Dropbox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

I love how what ended up happening was "Or you can pay Dropbox to not have to do any of this".

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#650

Post by peterthehacker »

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

This is the first time I’m hearing of Mighty App and, at least at first glance, I wouldn’t categorize it as a “crazy idea,” in fact it seems pretty non-crazy to me - chrome but more efficient. It’s literally a faster horse. I guess the implementation is the crazy part...?
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