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Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Crazy New Ideas

#751

Post by [deleted] »

corybrown wrote: post #617
shard wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other replies to your comment don't seem to address your fundamental point that the Kardashians and their kind are in a different category than other celebrities. Their skills are not acting or singing or sports, but rather generating news to keep themselves in the headlines. I don't really recall this being a category until the start of reality TV, and even then it was short-lived after the shows ended. It wasn'…

Yes, this is something the 45th US president did quite well

[deleted]

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#752

Post by johbjo »

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…

Another perspective; blogs and wikis are two use-cases of essentially the same interaction. The different designs guide and inspire people how to use them. Then, they discover that the use-cases are beneficial.

In some ways, all of social media consist of apps tailored to specific use-cases that haven't been new for decades, but they "invite" normal people to use them.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#753

Post by borski »

fullstackchris wrote: post #741
randomsearch wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we shouldn't forget survivor bias here Hi HN, entrepreneurial scientist here. You have just given me an idea. Maybe I shouldn't be posting this buried in the comments but can always be reposted elsewhere. "survivor bias" This is a constant talking point in HN. It allows anyone to plausibly dismiss absolutely any advice from a successful entrepreneur (no offence to the poster here intended, they may be right - i…

Ah, there was some guy on a podcast, I think Sam Harris or Tim Ferriss, that was writing a book and / or publishing on exactly this type of research. They reviewed like 500 some startups and how they failed (or succeeded) it was one of the first scientific based studies like that... would love if someone browsing could comment the name if this rings a bell, I'd have to hunt it down...

I don’t know what this is, but I want to. I think parent’s comment is a fantastic idea.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#754

Post by sombremesa »

aerosmile wrote: post #387
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 am really surprised that you didn't choose the more obvious line of reasoning, which would be to bring up examples of companies that PG predicted to be breakout successes and then they failed. PG marveled about Instacart and Flexport well before anyone else, including myself (I know members of the founding teams in both companies very well, and think very highly of them... but even so, I didn't see their companies…

Yep, you can actually go through the list of companies YC has funded on the website and most of them are out of business today (as you’d expect based on the stats on VC backed ventures). Of course, nobody talks about those.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#755

Post by marcus_holmes »

kreeben wrote: post #737
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…

>> my "Kardashian problem" You need lots of empathy for sociopaths if your aim is to understand the why and the how of their successes. The fact you don't understand them makes me think you're a good person. The world would be a much better place if people weren't trying to copy them.

Thanks :)

I don't want to copy them, per se. I respect them for their business acumen, and I would like to be that good at marketing. But as you say, sociopaths. I would do different things with the power that that kind of money brings.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#756

Post by cableshaft »

moultano wrote: post #144
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

I did not take Jonathan Blow's tweet to be saying it's a bad idea, or won't work, but rather that it's an indictment of the whole web stack that it's necessary.

Watch any of his talks and you'll know for him it's definitely the latter. He's complained about bloat and the web stack in particular plenty of times.

Here's a really good talk by him that dives into it, titled dramatically "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

Also note he's currently developing a programming language called JAI that's trying (and seems like it might ultimately succeed) in being a faster and smoother alternative to C++ for developing games.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#757

Post by ungzd »

Domain experts may lie, they might be sure that idea will never work but still propose it in order to increase company valuation, get funding, etc.

Example: self-driving cars. Probably, experts that work in this field are confident that self-driving cars are impossible even 100 years in future, but working on self-driving cars gives them money.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#758

Post by scsilver »

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…

The Kardashians have just perfected the Seinfeldian idea that people want to watch people doing whatever.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#760

Post by drivers99 »

gustavo-fring wrote: post #470
dataviz1000 wrote: post #460

Isn't this the issue Joseph Campbell addressed? The journey a person with a crazy new idea endures? And, how in all different cultures the redeemer, a person solving an issue that their society needs to address, have the same symbolic characteristics. You and your children experience this not in a philosophy or mythology class but at every moment someone mentions a Star Wars or Marvel reference[0]. Disney keeps telli…

I feel like Godwin saying this, but the other side of that coin is that's the same process that Joachim Feist's biography describes Hitler as going through. You might be a Skywalker, but you don't know which one.

Similarly, I was going to say it's the story of Thanos.

"story of a person with a crazy new idea being ostracized and rejected by their society and the journey they have to make to return to their society with a new solution to a problem"

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