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Fashionable Problems

paulgraham.com

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Re: Fashionable Problems

#81

Post by dunkelheit »

majos wrote: post #42

This post sorely lacks evidence for its big first claim: > I've seen a similar pattern in many different fields: even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they've all worked on similar things. Anyone want to step in with some examples? Without them, the thrust of the essay seems to be: "If only other people understood what…

When I was reading the essay I was immediately reminded of the concept of paradigm shift (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift). The gist is that during periods of "normal science" most scientists are working within the framework of the dominant paradigm which, among other things, determines what kind of problems are worth working on. But every once in a while the paradigm shifts (which happens comparatively rarely, on the time scale of decades), old problems are deemed irrelevant and everybody piles on to work on the new stuff. The original example is physics but other fields are pretty similar (in our field current AI craze comes to mind).

Re: Fashionable Problems

#82

Post by bawolff »

mannykannot wrote: post #64
bawolff wrote: post #52

Seems like a lot of weirdly defensive people in this thread. But the essay doesnt really seem that revolutionary more common sense. If you want to make an impact, dont work in an oversaturated field. The low hanging fruit is probably already picked and other people will probably get there before you do. But you also dont want to work in a field nobody cares about as noone will care. Working on a problem with proven d…

The advice to not work in an oversaturated field, if you want to make an impact, looks to me a bit like the reverse of looking for one's keys under the lamp post, because that is where the light is. We should give some credence to the proposition that saturation is the wisdom of the crowd at work, figuring out where a breakthrough is likely, and it is usually only with hindsight that over-saturation is apparent.

I somewhat suspect by the time something is "popular" it is, almost by definition, oversaturated. Its sort of like weird investment strategies (e.g. always buy stocks on mondays, or whatever I dont actually know anything about stocks). Sure some of them may work originally, but unless i am extremely well connected, by the time i hear about it, everyone else knows too and the market has corrected for it.

Perhaps another metaphor is a gold rush. Even if there really is gold in those hills, if everyone knows there is, its probably already too late to go out and buy a shovel.

That said, i agree that there is plenty of survivorship and hindsight bias when it comes to any advice on how to be succesful.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#83

Post by Gatsky »

majos wrote: post #42

This post sorely lacks evidence for its big first claim: > I've seen a similar pattern in many different fields: even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they've all worked on similar things. Anyone want to step in with some examples? Without them, the thrust of the essay seems to be: "If only other people understood what…

String theory.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#84

Post by leppr »

gkoberger wrote: post #5
lquist wrote: post #2

If you want to try working on unfashionable problems, one of the best places to look is fields that people think have already been fully explored: essays, Lisp, venture funding – you may notice a pattern here. Do people really think the fields of essays, LISP or venture funding are fully explored?

I think so? They’re all expanding, of course... but none have really changed that much over the past few decades. There’s a ton more VCs than there were a decade ago, but has it really changed as a field? People tweak the formula a bit, but we haven’t seen a shift in the same way YC shifted things. To a lesser extent, pg was one of the first “tech essayists” (now it’s a genre, http://waitwho.is ). I don’t think pg is…

Cryptocurrency ICOs showed venture funding could be innovated on way more fundamentally than "tweaking a formula". The simple ICO model may arguably have been largely misused, but it kickstarted a lot of promising research and experimentation[1].

[1]: e.g. https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/10/24/gitcoin.html, https://www.zfnd.org/blog/dev-fund-guidance-and-timeline

Re: Fashionable Problems

#85

Post by notkid »

The heuristic of trying to work on what you genuinely love is not helpful or practical for most people. It sounds good, but it is just a platitude. Genuine love and fake love feel and look pretty similar. Most people naturally start loving the life they live in, if it is generally positive. Then, they make up a self-affirming, coherent narrative that justifies their emotions, decisions, and interests. If you do an AI startup, life goes well for you, and you embrace that decision and life, how can you differentiate whether it was really a genuine interest or not?

Re: Fashionable Problems

#86

Post by dunkelheit »

cambalache wrote: post #79
rbavocadotree wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two areas where I have a little experience: Economics: There are surprisingly little people studying very large, grand, topics such an inequality. You've probably heard of the handful of economists that do. It's unfashionable due to the influence of the Chicago school and it's focus on free market principles, as well as many other factors. Physics: Good luck getting any interest or funding if you are not studying the…

Both examples are wrong. Lots of economists working on inequality , it is even a hot topic. Your physics example is so vague that is meaningless. Name one promising theory/approach in physics which is not getting interest because it goes against "the currently dominant theory of the field".Tip: LQG does not count.

> Name one promising theory/approach in physics which is not getting interest because it goes against "the currently dominant theory of the field".Tip: LQG does not count.

Lack of such promising theories is precisely the point (I guess we are talking specifically about the problem of quantum gravity). Everyone is working with the same 1.5 old approaches and the progress has stalled. Of course individually this strategy is rational because if you try to think of something new and it doesn't work out (which is very probable) your career is toast. But imagine what the brainpower poured into string theory could achieve with a more breadth-first search strategy.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#87

Post by jdsully »

blueboo wrote: post #63

Paul is confusing ignorance for insight here. It's the same phenomenon whereby a weekend visit to Paris has your uncle explaining the European soul but your year in Kyoto leaves you barely able to generalize at all from your (actual) knowledge of nuance, complexity and diversity of another culture. Everyone is trying to break the mold at various scopes. Meanwhile, you're welcome to reproduce your late-90s success at…

Does YC not count?

Re: Fashionable Problems

#88

Post by sideshowb »

chasedehan wrote: post #74
rbavocadotree wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two areas where I have a little experience: Economics: There are surprisingly little people studying very large, grand, topics such an inequality. You've probably heard of the handful of economists that do. It's unfashionable due to the influence of the Chicago school and it's focus on free market principles, as well as many other factors. Physics: Good luck getting any interest or funding if you are not studying the…

There are a large number of people working on inequality. The two most common fields studying it are: 1) Development 2) Labor Although there are a number of Macro-Economists who have studied the impact of inequality on growth. The reason you may not read about it is that the relationship between inequality and growth is a largely "solved" problem. It is "unfashionable" because of that.

Is it? Can you link me to an econometric review?

Re: Fashionable Problems

#89

Post by gist »

mvp wrote: post #45
gist wrote: post #20

> Even the smartest, most imaginative people are surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who would never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems. How can a statement like that be made? Is there some kind of authoritative directory of 'the smartest, most imaginative people' being 'surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on'. Impli…

Most of his essays have that wise old man who has seen the world kind of vibe to them. If anybody else writes the same things without the success he has had it will be ridiculous to read. I don't think anybody who reads his essays is looking for any scientific report based on facts. They are looking for some sort of confirmation that they are not crazy when they have similar thoughts.

It's in some ways the writing equivalent of the NPR calm and measured voice the intended impact to make it more believable and important and entirely rational sounding and correct.

Re: Fashionable Problems

#90

Post by CM30 »

account73466 wrote: post #58
majos wrote: post #42

This post sorely lacks evidence for its big first claim: > I've seen a similar pattern in many different fields: even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they've all worked on similar things. Anyone want to step in with some examples? Without them, the thrust of the essay seems to be: "If only other people understood what…

I am wondering how far the essay would go if it were not from PG.

Probably not very. I get the distinct feeling that the last few essays were very light on content/interesting insights, and did well on name value alone.

Would be interesting to actually test that to be honest. Get Paul Graham to set up another site under a fake identity, post the next say, three essays there, then submit 'em to HN under the same identity and see the stats.

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