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Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Crazy New Ideas

#701

Post by Misdicorl »

fighterpilot wrote: post #696
Misdicorl wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it is saying exactly that? Changing the "but" to "except" I think makes it clear without changing the intent

He's saying implausible sounding ideas should be dismissed because they are implausible, not because of the credibility of the person behind it. Then he makes one exception which is when the person is credible. That's different to saying that the idea should be dismissed merely due to lack of credibility of the person, which is what the second statement is talking about. The primary reason for dismissal in his first…

Wouldn't a criticism of the form "you have no idea what you're talking about here. You don't have credential x or experience y" satisfy both constraints? You've demonstrated the person does not have the necessary domain experience. And yet you've not addressed the idea at all and only the person who proposed it.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#702

Post by adventured »

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!

The parent is actually talking about a far larger category that existed commercially in a studied way long before the Kardashians, it's simply: sex sells.

Madonna knew it in the 1980s. Britney or Jessica Simpson knew it in the 1990s. Paris Hilton knew it in the 2000s. The Kardashians have known it the past 15 years. Hugh Hefner knew it 70 years ago. Every model of consequence knows it.

The Kardashians are extraordinarily talented at selling sexuality. They know how to package it. They know how to market it. They intentionally replicated the system that worked so well for Kim, on to Kylie Jenner as she came of age.

Once you gain an initial position via your sexuality, leverage it into further gains. Sex rarely fails to sell.

And the parent is also correct in that it mostly (not exclusively) works for women, regardless of the downvotes attempting to change human nature and reality. A few male celebrities have benefitted tremendously from the effect, including Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey (how many famous male models can you name from the past 20-30 years though?).

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#703

Post by nl »

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…

These "Mighty is bad" arguments are actually arguments in support of Mighty.

They are arguing that technology shouldn't need Mighty. The mere fact they are complaining about the state of the world means that there is a problem that needs solving.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#704

Post by saklani »

peterthehacker wrote: post #654
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

Has mighty app announced what pricing will look like? I’m assuming that you couldn’t offer something like this for free.

yeah, they mentioned 30-50$ monthly on their site.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#705

Post by BrandonM »

MsMowz wrote: post #518
bmmayer1 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the BrandonM/Dropbox quip?

When Drew Houston first posted Dropbox on HN, BrandonM had the top comment that doubted its viability/usefulness as a product. It's been the topic of a lot of discussion since then, including between the two themselves. >I have a few qualms with this app: >1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account... From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Sorry, I can't resist... I just noticed from the URL that my comment was the 9,224th item ever on Hacker News. Hacker News was a very different place back then. YC wasn't well known at all. Hell, the iPhone hadn't been released yet. We still had to walk uphill both ways to get to school and back.

Few seem to consider that contextual difference. Poor word choice aside for a moment, "quite trivially" meant something very different in 2007 than it has come to mean today.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#706

Post by mikewarot »

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…

>youtube: it was amazing that you could easily stream videos for free and search them. There was also a ton of copyright stuff in the early days.

Hosting videos back then required plugins on the part of the viewer, which was something we were all cautioned not to download because of security.... Youtube was the first site that broke through the ice and had enough content to start taking advantage of network effects, and didn't blow that lead.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#707

Post by aniforprez »

breck wrote: post #588
aniforprez wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "but why" question was not pointed at visualizing 1TB of single cell RNA sequence data or collaboration. It was pointed at why you'd want to do it in a browser? Why wouldn't you be able to make links and share them from a native application that they can then open in their application? Maybe I'm missing something in your problem statement but are you downloading all that 1TB in your browser window and changing pa…

> why you'd want to do it in a browser? Distribution. There's only 1 magic platform that allows you to ship new versions at your own cadence to 100% of people. Developing for just M1s is great, when all your users are on M1s.

I'm sorry but can you please stop speaking in riddles and be clear about how you feel Mighty is solving this issue? I'm genuinely at a loss about how this is solving your use case but your answers are only cryptic. I truly want to understand how Mighty might help to solve real world problems

How do browsers make something distributed? How are browsers the only "magic platform" that allow you this? How is Mighty contributing to solving this problem? How does M1 matter here

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#708

Post by pedalpete »

samatman wrote: post #683
pedalpete wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are enough examples for and against. He does give the example of Copernicus, I believe Louis Pasteur would be another good example. PG does say he is speaking mostly of maths, sciences, etc. But there are also many examples where the domain experts missed the opportunities, and somebody else stepped in. The AirBnB gang weren't domain experts in hospitality. Coinbase founder wasn't an expert in finance (…

It turns out that security was the domain where Coinbase needed expertise. Selling something and taking a commission is not exactly the nosebleed seats of high finance. Lots of people with expertise in setting up a web site, and enough finance to run a business, could have become Bitcoin markets. Indeed, a lot of them did. Most of them got hacked, sooner or later, because protecting billions of dollars of value from…

Very good point, and thanks for clarifying.

However, it still speaks to the initial point. Coinbase didn't have an insight as a domain expert which lead to their huge success.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#709

Post by DoreenMichele »

When I look back at video clips from the 1970s, there was a diversity there that has been sort of lost. Things got developed in smaller regions and if they were good enough, they got introduced to a larger world. So we got some variety without everything having to overcome a perception of "crazy."

Now we kind of think everyone is so connected that you have to be "crazy" to think X rather than realizing sometimes X makes perfect sense locally and it only seems bizarre to outsiders. "Crazy" often means it's a radical departure from existing ideas rather than an incremental improvement and there used to be more latitude for saying "Hey, let's import this idea from elsewhere that seems crazy here but it's proven and solid somewhere else."

And I think that's a challenge we need to work on. The world seemed really cool and exciting about forty or fifty years ago and I think that's because things were only starting to get connected. Now we are sort of over-connected and expected to all know what "normal" is, as if normal is the same the world over when it isn't.

I think there is a cost to that.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#710

Post by tomhoward »

vishnugupta wrote: post #201
tomhoward wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are betting that PC/Laptop/Mobile hardware will stagnate from this point on No, they are betting that no matter the processing power of computing devices of the day, developers will always push things to the limit and ship products that can end up being slow on devices used by a large share of the population. This has always happened, because software product makers always want their products to have as many f…

> developers will always push things to the limit Agree, it's an arms race at this point between end consumers and app developers. However, it also means once Mighty becomes popular they have to contend with developers overwhelming their computing resources as well.

As long as Mighty keeps providing a better experience than the local browser on the average user's own device, they'll have utility for a significant number of people. Developers still need to provide satisfactory-enough performance to the bulk of their audience. Mighty is for the users in the right tail who are willing to pay for better-than-satisfactory. There's no reason to believe that right tail will ever disappear.
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