5 ms·

Interesting article. I've thought a lot about the slashdot/HN mispredictions of future successes and my random thoughts: 1) A flawed Theory of Mind applied to

by jasode 11y ago

Interesting article. I've thought a lot about the slashdot/HN mispredictions of future successes and my random thoughts: 1) A flawed Theory of Mind applied to the general public: I think it's fairly safe to say that the technical crowd (which includes commentators of slashdot/HN) will lean towards the Asperger/autism spectrum. It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). The famous examples being the slashdot dismissal of the iPod in 2001 and the iPad in 2009. (And Sara McGuire's article that this thread is about has more examples from HN.) 2) Skepticism/negativity is easier to itemize and write, and as a strange bonus, it is perceived as smarter and more insightful analysis. Looking at all the things that are "wrong" with a product might be described as a type of "closed-ended" thinking. On the other hand, imagining the different ways a product could succeed involves more "open-ended" analysis. The problem of writing open-ended thoughts is that it looks like naive futurism, or unsophisticated cheerleading. (E.g. haha, Back to the Future's Bob Gale thought we'd have hoverboards in 2015! Dean Kamen thought Segways would sell millions of units and would revolutionize the world! etc). Because of the combinations caused by faulty Theory of Mind and biases towards the shortcomings of products, the commentary on new business ideas will almost always end up being negative.

scrollaway 11y ago
> It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). That's a pretty bad conclusion. Is it any easier for non-"geek/nerds/experts" to judge the iphone on its mass market appeal? I don't think so. In fact that's pretty much what you figured in the BTTF "predictions" failing. The thing is a lot of people here on HN, and in the tech community, like to judge products based on how easy or hard they are to build, and that has zero relation to how good the product is or how successful it will be. For a non-techie, it's in the realm of the impossible either way, so that stuff doesn't matter at all.
- jasode 11y ago
  >The thing is a lot of people here on HN, and in the tech community, like to judge products based on how easy or hard they are to build, and that has zero relation to how good the product is or how successful it will be. This is also true but that wasn't my point. I'm saying that the armchair quarterbacking from nerds is often predicting the business success (the mass acceptance) of a product. There is a huge disconnect between how expert tech communities think and how everyone else thinks. Steve Jobs was one of the few that seemed to bridge this disconnect. But Mike Lazaridis of RIM Blackberry could not. Jobs was more consumer-minded rather than technical. Lazaridis was more engineer-minded rather than consumer (e.g. consumers want a physical keyboard more than a touch screen.)
- VLM 11y ago
  "to judge the iphone on its mass market appeal" Note that you can make a lot of money out of a product that flops in the mass market like an iphone. Out of any group of ten Americans, roughly ten drink water, use indoor plumbing, and have access to utility generated electricity, all rather successful products. Its also true that nine out of ten Americans don't have or use an iphone, however, its possible to make an enormous stack of money out of stuff 90% of the population is uninterested in. For other examples of the same phenomena of making fat stacks of cash off practically no one, see pop music, television, professional sports, AAA video games... Its a failure to understand the market. Around 9 out of 10 comments about an iphone should be somewhere on the spectrum of "eh" to "that sucks" because a random sampling should indicate iphones are only about twice as cool as Congress. People on /. complained about the ipod because they're normies, not because they're nerds. Normies don't like that stuff, look at the actual sales figures, therefore normie hangout like /. is not going to like the product. Denigration and name calling of people who don't like a niche product is just Apple fanboyism.
  - eric_h 11y ago
    > Its also true that nine out of ten Americans don't have or use an iphone [1] suggests that one in four americans own an iPhone. 1) http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/npd-better-than-1-in-4-adult-americans-now-own-an-iphone/ http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/npd-better-than-1-in-4-adult-a...
hluska 11y ago
In regards to point #1, this is my favourite article about engineers and the autism spectrum. Between a (perhaps) higher incidence of autism spectrum disorders and a focus on systemizing thought, this article would argue that you're onto something: http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/engineers-and-autism http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/engineers-an... It makes me wonder if daycares tuned specifically to the needs of children with two engineers for parents. Maybe a slightly earlier intervention would prevent some of the expected kindergarten issues.
mfoy_ 11y ago
A lot of the "negativity" is more like blunt constructive criticism. I think a founder could post a "Show HN", get blasted with "negativity" in the comments, and then address any issues he thought had merit, and end up with a better product. Also, purely "positive" comments such as "Cool idea!" don't add anything to the conversation.
- krapp 11y ago
  I would be more upset if I posted a Show HN that was ignored than one that met with a lot of negativity. At least on HN, you can expect some of the criticism to come from a competent technical and business background, so a thread that gets any attention at all is bound to have some constructive value. That said, though, having your ideas validated or condemned on HN shouldn't mean much in the grand scheme.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
> The famous examples being the slashdot dismissal of the iPod Or more recently, Dropbox, which was Ycombinator financed. Someone linked to an old thread about them and it was largely dismissed as "just FTP" and destined to fail. The famous HN quote is "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." Yes, trivial for just about anyone, right? I'd also add a 3rd bullet point about these forums being echo-chambers. I know I personally rarely write anything against the libertarian loving majority nor do I ever criticize any FOSS projects because in the past when I have, its been downvote central. This has a chilling effect on speech and forums like these just become extremists cheering each other on over time. >will lean towards the Asperger/autism spectrum. I like to think that techies come in all sorts of neurotypicalities, but the ones obsessed with fighting on the internet over politics/tech news are the ones well into weirdo territory. There are lots of techies with moderate views and with great horse-sense. They're just not spending all day on HN and Reddit "correcting" everyone like a real life Sheldon. The non-weirdos seem to be the ones who get shit done and are out there being successful or spending too much time creating to be bothered by online forum debates. The weirdos just have higher visibility.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Also, success is not defined by superficial customer appeal, and certainly not by technical details. Success is defined by a combination of customer appeal, investor persuasion, and ability to execute effective sales and marketing. An initial Show HN typically includes details about the product and maybe the underlying technology, but doesn't usually tell you much about the other elements. So I think it's unfair to judge HN on its prescience, when HN is as much about technical critiques as business potential. It could be interesting would be to look at VC judgements of startups. VCs have a pitch deck, they have some hints about the financials and of customer growth, and they may know something about the reputations of the management team. With the extra detail, you'd expect better prescience. I have no idea if that's what happens, but I think it would be very interesting to test the hypothesis that VCs make expert decisions.
sillysaurus3 11y ago
I think it's fairly safe to say that the technical crowd (which includes commentators of slashdot/HN) will lean towards the Asperger/autism spectrum. It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). What you're describing is a startup investor, not someone with autism. Even pg thought Facebook was lame. I thought the iPad was silly. Predicting the future is hard.
- avn2109 11y ago
  >> "...I thought the iPad was silly." In fairness, the Ipad is silly. The general population is slowly figuring that out. [0] [0] http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/apple-ipad-watch-analysts/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/apple-ipad-watch-analysts/
  - seibelj 11y ago
    I love my iPad. When I'm in bed or relaxing on the couch, it's the perfect form factor for screwing around on the internet.
    - pavornyoh 11y ago
      >I love my iPad. When I'm in bed or relaxing on the couch, it's the perfect form factor for screwing around on the internet. Same here. It also serves as a phone in addition to watching TV on it and what not on it. Good stuff.
Retra 11y ago
>It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). I'd bet that a vast majority of users commenting on HN are not trying to predict what other people think, but whether or not it is worthwhile to invest their own efforts into the subject. I can sit around saying "smartphones are crap" all day long because I don't have a need for them, but that doesn't mean I believe they'll fail because of it. It means I'm personally not going to involve myself in the smartphone business.
- jasode 11y ago
  >I'd bet that a vast majority of users commenting on HN are not trying to predict what other people think, but whether or not it is worthwhile to invest their own efforts into the subject. If you notice, I wasn't claiming that 51%+ of posters are predicting what others think. I was characterizing a common pattern of commentary from a vocal (and possibly minority) HN crowd. As an example, the following is 7 quotes from 7 different people pulled from the top 9 parent posts of the HN Docker thread. After reading each one, ask yourself if the poster was talking about himself, or was he talking about others? - "Most corporate laptops are locked and you can't install anything on them." - "It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating." - "It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it." - "Why would people feel comfortable leaving their valuable stuff on "Drews" server?" - "If you are looking for a wider audience than those who already know the context of dropbox, make a video where you lay out the case for use of dropbox using simple examples from user point of view(think a college student)" - "How are you going to scale up your storage to meet the demands of the users? " - "Your main competition is not USB drives: it is HotMail, GMail, and Yahoo! Mail. Once people are taught the "email it to yourself" trick, they love to use it"

by jasode 11y ago

scrollaway 11y ago

> It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). That's a pretty bad conclusion. Is it any easier for non-"geek/nerds/experts" to judge the iphone on its mass market appeal? I don't think so. In fact that's pretty much what you figured in the BTTF "predictions" failing. The thing is a lot of people here on HN, and in the tech community, like to judge products based on how easy or hard they are to build, and that has zero relation to how good the product is or how successful it will be. For a non-techie, it's in the realm of the impossible either way, so that stuff doesn't matter at all.

jasode 11y ago
>The thing is a lot of people here on HN, and in the tech community, like to judge products based on how easy or hard they are to build, and that has zero relation to how good the product is or how successful it will be. This is also true but that wasn't my point. I'm saying that the armchair quarterbacking from nerds is often predicting the business success (the mass acceptance) of a product. There is a huge disconnect between how expert tech communities think and how everyone else thinks. Steve Jobs was one of the few that seemed to bridge this disconnect. But Mike Lazaridis of RIM Blackberry could not. Jobs was more consumer-minded rather than technical. Lazaridis was more engineer-minded rather than consumer (e.g. consumers want a physical keyboard more than a touch screen.)
VLM 11y ago
"to judge the iphone on its mass market appeal" Note that you can make a lot of money out of a product that flops in the mass market like an iphone. Out of any group of ten Americans, roughly ten drink water, use indoor plumbing, and have access to utility generated electricity, all rather successful products. Its also true that nine out of ten Americans don't have or use an iphone, however, its possible to make an enormous stack of money out of stuff 90% of the population is uninterested in. For other examples of the same phenomena of making fat stacks of cash off practically no one, see pop music, television, professional sports, AAA video games... Its a failure to understand the market. Around 9 out of 10 comments about an iphone should be somewhere on the spectrum of "eh" to "that sucks" because a random sampling should indicate iphones are only about twice as cool as Congress. People on /. complained about the ipod because they're normies, not because they're nerds. Normies don't like that stuff, look at the actual sales figures, therefore normie hangout like /. is not going to like the product. Denigration and name calling of people who don't like a niche product is just Apple fanboyism.
- eric_h 11y ago
  > Its also true that nine out of ten Americans don't have or use an iphone [1] suggests that one in four americans own an iPhone. 1) http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/npd-better-than-1-in-4-adult-americans-now-own-an-iphone/ http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/npd-better-than-1-in-4-adult-a...

hluska 11y ago

In regards to point #1, this is my favourite article about engineers and the autism spectrum. Between a (perhaps) higher incidence of autism spectrum disorders and a focus on systemizing thought, this article would argue that you're onto something: http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/engineers-and-autism http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/engineers-an... It makes me wonder if daycares tuned specifically to the needs of children with two engineers for parents. Maybe a slightly earlier intervention would prevent some of the expected kindergarten issues.

mfoy_ 11y ago

A lot of the "negativity" is more like blunt constructive criticism. I think a founder could post a "Show HN", get blasted with "negativity" in the comments, and then address any issues he thought had merit, and end up with a better product. Also, purely "positive" comments such as "Cool idea!" don't add anything to the conversation.

krapp 11y ago
I would be more upset if I posted a Show HN that was ignored than one that met with a lot of negativity. At least on HN, you can expect some of the criticism to come from a competent technical and business background, so a thread that gets any attention at all is bound to have some constructive value. That said, though, having your ideas validated or condemned on HN shouldn't mean much in the grand scheme.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

> The famous examples being the slashdot dismissal of the iPod Or more recently, Dropbox, which was Ycombinator financed. Someone linked to an old thread about them and it was largely dismissed as "just FTP" and destined to fail. The famous HN quote is "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." Yes, trivial for just about anyone, right? I'd also add a 3rd bullet point about these forums being echo-chambers. I know I personally rarely write anything against the libertarian loving majority nor do I ever criticize any FOSS projects because in the past when I have, its been downvote central. This has a chilling effect on speech and forums like these just become extremists cheering each other on over time. >will lean towards the Asperger/autism spectrum. I like to think that techies come in all sorts of neurotypicalities, but the ones obsessed with fighting on the internet over politics/tech news are the ones well into weirdo territory. There are lots of techies with moderate views and with great horse-sense. They're just not spending all day on HN and Reddit "correcting" everyone like a real life Sheldon. The non-weirdos seem to be the ones who get shit done and are out there being successful or spending too much time creating to be bothered by online forum debates. The weirdos just have higher visibility.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

Also, success is not defined by superficial customer appeal, and certainly not by technical details. Success is defined by a combination of customer appeal, investor persuasion, and ability to execute effective sales and marketing. An initial Show HN typically includes details about the product and maybe the underlying technology, but doesn't usually tell you much about the other elements. So I think it's unfair to judge HN on its prescience, when HN is as much about technical critiques as business potential. It could be interesting would be to look at VC judgements of startups. VCs have a pitch deck, they have some hints about the financials and of customer growth, and they may know something about the reputations of the management team. With the extra detail, you'd expect better prescience. I have no idea if that's what happens, but I think it would be very interesting to test the hypothesis that VCs make expert decisions.

sillysaurus3 11y ago

I think it's fairly safe to say that the technical crowd (which includes commentators of slashdot/HN) will lean towards the Asperger/autism spectrum. It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). What you're describing is a startup investor, not someone with autism. Even pg thought Facebook was lame. I thought the iPad was silly. Predicting the future is hard.

avn2109 11y ago
>> "...I thought the iPad was silly." In fairness, the Ipad is silly. The general population is slowly figuring that out. [0] [0] http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/apple-ipad-watch-analysts/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/apple-ipad-watch-analysts/
- seibelj 11y ago
  I love my iPad. When I'm in bed or relaxing on the couch, it's the perfect form factor for screwing around on the internet.
  - pavornyoh 11y ago
    >I love my iPad. When I'm in bed or relaxing on the couch, it's the perfect form factor for screwing around on the internet. Same here. It also serves as a phone in addition to watching TV on it and what not on it. Good stuff.

Retra 11y ago

>It's easy for geeks/nerds/experts (especially vocal ones) to misjudge how products could be accepted by the masses (who are not geeks/nerds/experts). I'd bet that a vast majority of users commenting on HN are not trying to predict what other people think, but whether or not it is worthwhile to invest their own efforts into the subject. I can sit around saying "smartphones are crap" all day long because I don't have a need for them, but that doesn't mean I believe they'll fail because of it. It means I'm personally not going to involve myself in the smartphone business.

jasode 11y ago
>I'd bet that a vast majority of users commenting on HN are not trying to predict what other people think, but whether or not it is worthwhile to invest their own efforts into the subject. If you notice, I wasn't claiming that 51%+ of posters are predicting what others think. I was characterizing a common pattern of commentary from a vocal (and possibly minority) HN crowd. As an example, the following is 7 quotes from 7 different people pulled from the top 9 parent posts of the HN Docker thread. After reading each one, ask yourself if the poster was talking about himself, or was he talking about others? - "Most corporate laptops are locked and you can't install anything on them." - "It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating." - "It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it." - "Why would people feel comfortable leaving their valuable stuff on "Drews" server?" - "If you are looking for a wider audience than those who already know the context of dropbox, make a video where you lay out the case for use of dropbox using simple examples from user point of view(think a college student)" - "How are you going to scale up your storage to meet the demands of the users? " - "Your main competition is not USB drives: it is HotMail, GMail, and Yahoo! Mail. Once people are taught the "email it to yourself" trick, they love to use it"