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To paraphrase from "Jurassic Park": this is Heidegger. I know this. Although it doesn't ruin his short essay, "instinct" is unfortunate. Executive knowledge ab

To paraphrase from "Jurassic Park": this is Heidegger. I know this. Although it doesn't ruin his short essay, "instinct" is unfortunate. Executive knowledge about the kind of nascent industry the article (and HN typically) discusses isn't "natural", or a mere knack like playing music by ear. It's tacit knowledge: it can't be codified. In Heidegger-speak: market potential can't be reduced to a stockpile of "presence", of something that's stared at and analyzed like a tool on a shelf. Rather, it's always already operational, "ready-at-hand": what's needed is neither in the tool nor in my theory of the tool, but in the operational-skill-in-action. Moreover: the skill to size a market doesn't live in any particular brain. "Sizing a market" can't be disentangled from the general problem of capitalism -- capital allocation in order to yield more capital. It's not like hammering a nail, it's like building a house. No single person can build a house: house-building, as nascent industry-building, lives in a community of practices. This is the crux of processes like YC "schools" and focal points like the Silicon Valley.

viola11 11y ago
Instinct is indeed unfortunate, and I think it is misleading to the point of hilarity too! The notion that sizing a market (as others have mentioned: a Fermi problem) is the same kind of knowledge as that which makes babies close their mouths and wave their arms when immersed in water? Venture investing truly is child's play :D Let "sizing a marked" mean "estimating the number of products that can be sold to a given population of persons". An very precise estimate of this number is currently very hard to provide, but giving an order of magnitude estimate is clearly a Fermi problem. Note that the difficulty is providing an accurate and tight bound, not an accurate but imprecise one and that the latter might be valuable too. Solving a Fermi problem requires estimating a series of numbers from everyday experience. One then multiplies these number together in a mechanical fashion, which could be done in a "ready-at-hand" way by use of a tool. Evidently the process invariably requires contemplating one's every-day experience, and since ordinarily that experience is simply lived this meta-action is an act filled with "presence". By the way, the problem of capitalism is solved, and the solution shows that it will allocate capital optimally; this is one of the main arguments in favour of capitalist systems. The problem that the social reality in which we live only partially approximates capitalism (see: non-profit organizations) is the big problem economists, and anyone else using classical economic theory in the real world, struggle with.

viola11 11y ago

Instinct is indeed unfortunate, and I think it is misleading to the point of hilarity too! The notion that sizing a market (as others have mentioned: a Fermi problem) is the same kind of knowledge as that which makes babies close their mouths and wave their arms when immersed in water? Venture investing truly is child's play :D Let "sizing a marked" mean "estimating the number of products that can be sold to a given population of persons". An very precise estimate of this number is currently very hard to provide, but giving an order of magnitude estimate is clearly a Fermi problem. Note that the difficulty is providing an accurate and tight bound, not an accurate but imprecise one and that the latter might be valuable too. Solving a Fermi problem requires estimating a series of numbers from everyday experience. One then multiplies these number together in a mechanical fashion, which could be done in a "ready-at-hand" way by use of a tool. Evidently the process invariably requires contemplating one's every-day experience, and since ordinarily that experience is simply lived this meta-action is an act filled with "presence". By the way, the problem of capitalism is solved, and the solution shows that it will allocate capital optimally; this is one of the main arguments in favour of capitalist systems. The problem that the social reality in which we live only partially approximates capitalism (see: non-profit organizations) is the big problem economists, and anyone else using classical economic theory in the real world, struggle with.