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Crazy New Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Crazy New Ideas

#791

Post by ac29 »

no_wizard wrote: post #658
regextegrity wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your problem is treating the success of the Kardashians as deterministic

Their initial success may not have been, but their sustaining success absolutely must be, or else it would have fizzled out, one way or another. Many celebrities tried to latch on to this style of success as their careers waned more generally, (Jessica Simpson comes to mind, she had a similar enough reality TV show and was a big star for her time), but there was no sustaining power there. Not saying she isn't in her…

> their sustaining success absolutely must be

Isnt that just survivorship bias?

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#792

Post by shard »

867-5309 wrote: post #788
shard wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no different than actors and singers, who act out situations scripted by their publicists and managers who understand how to market their products. Regardless, we are talking about the kind of product that's being sold, which is fundamentally different than those sold by actors and singers.

actors and singers are contributing to the arts, plus they require at least an iota of talent, which is more than can be attributed to those vapid degenerates

Yes, and this is exactly Marcus Holmes's point.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#794

Post by ric2b »

tomcam wrote: post #725
zem wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the phrase "famous for being famous" sums it up nicely. it's a feedback loop.

With respect, I believe anyone who uses the term "famous for being famous" isn’t working very hard to understand the subject. It is roughly like saying a programming language is successful because it uses semicolons.

I think it makes sense, a lot of celebrities that I know, I only happen to know them because someone else talked about them, not because they have some kind of talent that I was looking for.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#795

Post by mbrodersen »

adventured wrote: post #702
Noumenon72 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extraordina…

Millions of woman try to get famous based on looks and sexuality alone. They (almost) all fail. So I think it is more complicated than that.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#796

Post by tim333 »

prawn wrote: post #715
corybrown wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It comes down to two things: consistency of brand, and constantly creating content. Media does the rest. If you think about 45, he almost always wore the same thing, put his name on everything, applied the same style of opinions to everything (either loved or hated something, with limited nuance). Offered a simple opinion on everything.

He was always slightly outrageous which the left wing media had a job dealing with in a way that did not benefit him. He'd say something a bit bad which was then on the cover of all the newspapers when it would have been politically better to ignore him.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#798

Post by deepnotderp »

Laremere wrote: post #355
II2II wrote: post #43

The reference to the Copernican Model of the solar system is an interesting one since it produced less accurate predictions than the Ptolemaic Model. Improving the predictions of the Copernican model initially involved the introduction of epicycles, diminishing the value of the crazy new idea. It took the work of Kepler (elliptical orbits) and Newton (a physical basis for elliptical orbits) to elevate the heliocentri…

To add to this: He lists two reasons why people want to dismiss "crazy new ideas": envy, and the desire to seem sophisticated. Using Copernicus as an example simply does not fit these claims. Reasons to dismiss Copernicus's ideas: 1. They were worse predictions, so for all 'practical' purposes of the day (essentially, only knowing where the wandering stars would be), adopting his ideas would be poor. 2. Most crazy ne…

Yes and no.

Humans are dogmatic about politics, the backfire effect is a thing, etc. Why should things be magically different for scientists?

There’s a reason “science advances one funeral at a time “

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#799

Post by dang »

lvs wrote: post #781
dang wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you could say that my question were an ad hominem argument if it were an argument, but it's not - it's a question. Your comments shocked me by how mean they were, even relative to the other stuff that I read on here. And I have vague memories of having been shocked in the past by how mean you were on other occasions—I don't remember anything specific, but I have a residual Pavlovian wince about it. All of t…

You're getting a bit semantic in defending what you certainly know is ad hominem misdirection. But if you want to double-down on it, it doesn't faze me. Your contention is that it is more important that I, a random commenter on the internet, am psychoanalyzed than to consider the substance of the argument I made. Your concern was how it was presented, not its content. I'll take that as a concession that the argument…

I answered your argument in my initial reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27070820): pg isn't saying that all crazy ideas by domain experts must be true, so a flagrant counterexample doesn't prove anything. Indeed, flagrant counterexamples are to be expected, since almost by definition, crazy ideas will have more variance than conventional ones.

The problem is that there wasn't really much of an argument there. You converted his point into something stupid that he didn't say, and then did a bunch of name-calling. Since the "argument" was so flimsy and the name-calling so mean, I asked why you would bother to do that. I'm still interested in the answer, even if the answer is that you don't think you did that. It's not really personal, I'm just curious. But yes I understand how it could come across that way.

Re: Crazy New Ideas

#800

Post by NikolaNovak »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #786
NikolaNovak wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sarcasm but let me try to address the notion behind it, to best of my limited personal understanding; "prevent spread" has multiple factors to it. My impression, in my locality, is that at beginning of pandemic people focused on notion of using masks to protect themselves (and many though not all governments indicated that's not efficient/recommended). Then "as time passed and we learned more" focus moved to u…

My impression is that importance of mask is well-studied and masks are regarded as one of the most important hygienic achievements right behind washing hands. These are cold hard facts. Everything else is political wiggle-waggling. You may argue whether it is okay for a technocratic establishment to lie to people and manipulate them; but to pretend that they didn’t feed the public with half-truths is just ridiculous.

I think we have wildly different understanding; and mine is very much evolving - as I feel is everybody else's.

Masks right behind washing hands - honestly, until Covid, I clearly lived in ignorance and had NO idea that a) Surgical masks are tested and designed to protect others against exhale and b) N95 masks are tested and designed to protect occupant via inhale. Just that basic, yet absolutely crucial concept was unknown to me. I had very limited exposure to them across two continents and half a dozen countries, and it certainly wasn't part of my own education about most important hygienic achievement or practice across four different educational / political / health systems. That doesn't necessarily mean masks aren't crucial, but it perhaps doesn't make it obviously so either in context of daily public health.

And then we have the mucky complex detail of aerosol vs droplet vs surface, sizing and staying power, etc.

You are presenting / clearly strongly believe that (all?) masks are a binary, always-good, always-clearly-protective thing.

My understanding/interpretation is that it's more complex than that; I am OK with scientists, when faced with a net new illness, inherently evolving the opinion and recommendations. I guess this is where you see a "technocractic establishment lying and manipulating". I look at wildly different countries with wildly different values, framework, goals, assumptions, methods, and yes "political wiggle-waggling", and most of those culturally politically different scientists following broadly similar path of learning and understanding.

It is likely our frameworks and life paradigms are too different to come to an agreement - at some point we all, you and I included, fit inbound facts and perceptions into our root approach and beliefs.

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