5 ms·

I guess because I think that Hyperloop is a really dumb idea I must be extremely envious. This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism. The cr

by gman83 5y ago

I guess because I think that Hyperloop is a really dumb idea I must be extremely envious. This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism. The critics are envious, they're trying to look sophisticated, they're not real domain experts, etc.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
This kind of attitude seem to be very common among 'ambitious' founders, especially the YC crowd.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Historically parodied as "One day the world will understand my true genius. And then you'll all be sorry!" It's trivially easy to disprove. Just read some vintage issues of Byte to see an impressive number of not entirely crazy novel ideas from established domain experts which crashed and burned. Of course some of these ideas - a minority - turned out to be successful. But a little digging shows success was not about the quality of the tech, and more the quality of the marketing, with some occasional monopolist strong-arming. In fact this is very much the US model. Take an okay to good idea, hype it into the stratosphere with a massive marketing and brand recognition campaign, and sell it at an inflated price. If you're lucky you can pitch it as a B2C Veblen lifestyle good or a B2B strategic corporate necessity. Win. That's very different to debating the tech itself purely on intrinsic technical merits. In a very literal sense it's a different argument happening in a different space. It's neither helpful nor clarifying to imply it isn't.
  - biztos 5y ago
    > Just read some vintage issues of Byte I still have the AI issue of Byte[0] and there still aren’t any robots that can draw for shit. /s [0]: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-04 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-04
  - TimPC 5y ago
    I don't think most crazy ideas crashing and burning is good enough to disprove the thesis. Even if 1 in 100 ideas that can bring about 10x change in important areas are all that succeed, we need those ideas to improve things. I think if you look for marketing you'll find it, so even ideas that win on technology can look like monopolist strong-arming if that's what you're looking for. Also not all ideas that win on technology are the very best the technology could be, they are often the right compromise that's a good deal better than what they competed against. Windows for instance did a lot of strong arming monopolist tactics but was also the clear technical winner on PC for ease of use for much of its existence. I don't think the monopolist tactics would be enough if the average joe found it too hard to use.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      >> Even if 1 in 100 ideas that can bring about 10x change in important areas are all that succeed, we need those ideas to improve things Even by your own math this is a bad idea, with 1 in 100 leading to a 10x improvement we'd be better to stick with what we've got.
      - TimPC 5y ago
        That’s not how math works. 10x improvements don’t necessary capture 10x revenue. And 100 experiments don’t necessarily cost 1x revenue each.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    The word “idea” might be the problem. “Business plan” or “business strategy” might be better? Even “mission strategy”? That encompasses the idea and how to get it executed and what resources are needed to get it to be sustainable, over what timescale. This applies to business but also charity, non profit, political efforts etc. Notice I didn’t mention profit or even revenue. These days ideas can go a long time being supported by investors who see the strategy. For example I am thinking of YouTube, Tesla etc. But there needs to be a strategy. Like a rocket launch or starting a campfire there might need to be different stages where the idea to the uninitiated looks very different at each stage, but it’s all part of the same master plan. For example. Uber was a taxi firm + app at first. Peer to peer came later.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
  If so that suggests it's the right attitude to have.
deadite 5y ago
Not the first time, not the last time. We were misogynists when we were criticizing Elizabeth Holmes. It comes with the territory.
- dang 5y ago
  That conflates different cases in a way that strikes me as misleading.
  - deadite 5y ago
    The gist of it is that there was a flippant, reactionary tone to anyone criticizing Theranos, that attempted to brush off valid criticism with "you don't like her because she's a woman" or "you want to see the company fail because it's run by a woman". No, actually, I just want to see some data, regardless of who is in charge. Save the "women run the show in SV" rhetoric and flashy cover page photography for Vogue. This is strictly a business analysis. If we can't have a civil discussion about these things without being accused of being sexist, or envious, or whatever other pejorative people use to redirect criticism or probing questions, then we might as well not have a discussion at all because we all know how these things go. The comments write themselves. Having said that, it's tiresome to have the same pile-on garbage of negative comments every time a PG article is posted. The last 4-5 of his articles invite so much backlash and scathing kneejerk rhetoric, I wonder why these people use HN forums at all.
    - dang 5y ago
      > there was a flippant, reactionary tone to anyone criticizing Theranos That's inaccurate. No doubt some responses were like that; "anyone" is an extreme exaggeration. The internet hivemind (which is all of us) leaps from a few data points to anyone, always, everytime, etc., surprisingly seamlessly. Truth be told, one can even substitute "single" for "few" in the previous sentence without too much loss of fidelity—but perhaps it's cynical to insist on it. This is largely just how human memory works, but I pay close attention to it because it deeply affects this community's perception of itself, and that is a big problem because such false feelings of generality skew sharply negative. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20false%20feelings%20of%20generality&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... p.s. I completely agree that we need to have substantive discussion about these things.
mcguire 5y ago
This is one of the major problems with PG's essays---he frequently assigns the worst possible motives to the people he disagrees with.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
  gman83 did the same: "This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism."
  - philosopher1234 5y ago
    but did he do it incorrectly, or frequently?
Rapzid 5y ago
Your just not a domain expert on ideas though. Just look at all the words he wrote on ideas. You should be more open to his absurd belief in the idea of Mighty App being a game changer.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't be snarky or take HN threads even further in the flamewar direction. No matter how you feel about $person or $subject, it's bad for community to pee in the swimming pool this way. It encourages the more discerning swimmers not to stick around—and we're trying for something else in any case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by gman83 5y ago

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

This kind of attitude seem to be very common among 'ambitious' founders, especially the YC crowd.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Historically parodied as "One day the world will understand my true genius. And then you'll all be sorry!" It's trivially easy to disprove. Just read some vintage issues of Byte to see an impressive number of not entirely crazy novel ideas from established domain experts which crashed and burned. Of course some of these ideas - a minority - turned out to be successful. But a little digging shows success was not about the quality of the tech, and more the quality of the marketing, with some occasional monopolist strong-arming. In fact this is very much the US model. Take an okay to good idea, hype it into the stratosphere with a massive marketing and brand recognition campaign, and sell it at an inflated price. If you're lucky you can pitch it as a B2C Veblen lifestyle good or a B2B strategic corporate necessity. Win. That's very different to debating the tech itself purely on intrinsic technical merits. In a very literal sense it's a different argument happening in a different space. It's neither helpful nor clarifying to imply it isn't.
- biztos 5y ago
  > Just read some vintage issues of Byte I still have the AI issue of Byte[0] and there still aren’t any robots that can draw for shit. /s [0]: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-04 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-04
- TimPC 5y ago
  I don't think most crazy ideas crashing and burning is good enough to disprove the thesis. Even if 1 in 100 ideas that can bring about 10x change in important areas are all that succeed, we need those ideas to improve things. I think if you look for marketing you'll find it, so even ideas that win on technology can look like monopolist strong-arming if that's what you're looking for. Also not all ideas that win on technology are the very best the technology could be, they are often the right compromise that's a good deal better than what they competed against. Windows for instance did a lot of strong arming monopolist tactics but was also the clear technical winner on PC for ease of use for much of its existence. I don't think the monopolist tactics would be enough if the average joe found it too hard to use.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    >> Even if 1 in 100 ideas that can bring about 10x change in important areas are all that succeed, we need those ideas to improve things Even by your own math this is a bad idea, with 1 in 100 leading to a 10x improvement we'd be better to stick with what we've got.
    - TimPC 5y ago
      That’s not how math works. 10x improvements don’t necessary capture 10x revenue. And 100 experiments don’t necessarily cost 1x revenue each.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  The word “idea” might be the problem. “Business plan” or “business strategy” might be better? Even “mission strategy”? That encompasses the idea and how to get it executed and what resources are needed to get it to be sustainable, over what timescale. This applies to business but also charity, non profit, political efforts etc. Notice I didn’t mention profit or even revenue. These days ideas can go a long time being supported by investors who see the strategy. For example I am thinking of YouTube, Tesla etc. But there needs to be a strategy. Like a rocket launch or starting a campfire there might need to be different stages where the idea to the uninitiated looks very different at each stage, but it’s all part of the same master plan. For example. Uber was a taxi firm + app at first. Peer to peer came later.
qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
If so that suggests it's the right attitude to have.

deadite 5y ago

Not the first time, not the last time. We were misogynists when we were criticizing Elizabeth Holmes. It comes with the territory.

dang 5y ago
That conflates different cases in a way that strikes me as misleading.
- deadite 5y ago
  The gist of it is that there was a flippant, reactionary tone to anyone criticizing Theranos, that attempted to brush off valid criticism with "you don't like her because she's a woman" or "you want to see the company fail because it's run by a woman". No, actually, I just want to see some data, regardless of who is in charge. Save the "women run the show in SV" rhetoric and flashy cover page photography for Vogue. This is strictly a business analysis. If we can't have a civil discussion about these things without being accused of being sexist, or envious, or whatever other pejorative people use to redirect criticism or probing questions, then we might as well not have a discussion at all because we all know how these things go. The comments write themselves. Having said that, it's tiresome to have the same pile-on garbage of negative comments every time a PG article is posted. The last 4-5 of his articles invite so much backlash and scathing kneejerk rhetoric, I wonder why these people use HN forums at all.
  - dang 5y ago
    > there was a flippant, reactionary tone to anyone criticizing Theranos That's inaccurate. No doubt some responses were like that; "anyone" is an extreme exaggeration. The internet hivemind (which is all of us) leaps from a few data points to anyone, always, everytime, etc., surprisingly seamlessly. Truth be told, one can even substitute "single" for "few" in the previous sentence without too much loss of fidelity—but perhaps it's cynical to insist on it. This is largely just how human memory works, but I pay close attention to it because it deeply affects this community's perception of itself, and that is a big problem because such false feelings of generality skew sharply negative. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20false%20feelings%20of%20generality&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... p.s. I completely agree that we need to have substantive discussion about these things.

mcguire 5y ago

This is one of the major problems with PG's essays---he frequently assigns the worst possible motives to the people he disagrees with.

qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
gman83 did the same: "This smells like a way to justify ignoring difficult criticism."
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  but did he do it incorrectly, or frequently?

Rapzid 5y ago

Your just not a domain expert on ideas though. Just look at all the words he wrote on ideas. You should be more open to his absurd belief in the idea of Mighty App being a game changer.

dang 5y ago
Please don't be snarky or take HN threads even further in the flamewar direction. No matter how you feel about $person or $subject, it's bad for community to pee in the swimming pool this way. It encourages the more discerning swimmers not to stick around—and we're trying for something else in any case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html