6 ms·

Half Baked

128 points by thm 4y ago

S_A_P 4y ago
This was a fun read but I think it is also not accurate. Paul and John are both geniuses. Both wrote amazing songs without the other. Yes the Beatles output was more consistent but I chalk that up to being younger and more open and agree that having a sparing partner improves every persons game.
rektide 4y ago
What a fun post! The one thing I'd try to add or note is that, in a more public environment, I'd love to see more ability to signal how baked we think our shit is. A lot of being online is just fun & merry making & not heavy, is apt for spitballing & play & exploration, but that mixes in with so many serious, real, important shares in the mileau. Just having a knob, high or low bakedness, seriousness, doneness: this kind of information or annotation or metadata could help us better navigate our information spaces so much more clearly. Some bloggers have adopted attaching epistemic status to their posts. Gwern for example has a write-up on his blog's use of "status"[1], which is to inform the reader essentially of how far they've gotten diving into the topic. [1] https://www.gwern.net/About#confidence-tags https://www.gwern.net/About#confidence-tags
- divbzero 4y ago
  I really like the idea of indicating epistemic status for posts. The closest to that for code might be version numbers where anything under v1.0 should be taken with a grain of salt. This dynamic of spitballing-or-serious appears on HN sometimes when a personal project gets shared by a third party, is good enough to attract serious comments/critiques, but then the author of the project chimes in to say “I totally didn’t expect this to be shared here it’s definitely a work in progress…”
- bthallplz 4y ago
  That's a very cool idea and quite applicable to sites with pages that change over time, such as personal wikis. I think I'll add it to my personal wiki! (Feeds for posts of various maturities can be provided, too, which would be nice!)
waynecochran 4y ago
I have worked with dev's and researchers who have a very sensitive "bullshit meter" which is good a lot of the time, but often prevented me from bringing my half-baked ideas to the table. I would wait until I knew I had something solid.
- zerkten 4y ago
  I'm curious if they changed over time? I've observed this change in myself to a degree. There are things I'd not have let go in the past, but now I catch myself and evaluate the context. There is a fine balance between reducing bullshit that affects an organization and limiting the potential of the organization.
  - waynecochran 4y ago
    Eventually it has always improved over time in terms of others being open to my ideas. It sometimes takes awhile to develop a good reputation to be trusted.
marban 4y ago
Because the half-baked work, shared in a trusting environment, is the fuel for the system that created the works of genius. Half-baked, not half-ass, is the key.
- waynecochran 4y ago
  Yes. If you already have a positive proven history, the more you often you can bring your half-baked ideas to the table.
  - marban 4y ago
    I always try to apply this for an MVP (Yes, terrible word).
- booboofixer 4y ago
  > shared in a trusting environment I thought this was the key. For the beatles it probably wasn't that hard to do. But for other people taking inspiration, know where and when to share. Had the beatles performed their half-baked songs in front of a mediocre band that was to perform the very next day in front of a large audience, what would have stopped this mediocre band from stealing a song and performing it as their own? Closed-source software makes all the money in the world today.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>Paul’s not a genius This post feels like shallow, Malcolm Gladwellish, wrap-a-simple-idea-with-a-random-narrative stuff. Paul McCartney might be the greatest pop musician/songwriter of the 20th century. Some (most?) of his best works were performed after the Beatles. If he's not a genius, then no musician is a genius.
- golemotron 4y ago
  Exactly.
- abbub 4y ago
  Not only all of the above, but for Paul in particular, a genius who was in the midst of one of the largest creative highs of his entire career. I mean, some of the snippets of ‘half-baked’ songs he plays are songs that will figure well into his solo/Wings career. I honestly don’t know how you can come out of watching Get Back with anything other than admiration for human creativity as personified by Paul McCartney during this amazing month that got captured on film.
  - randoglando 4y ago
    It's because it fits his narrative for the book he's selling ("Creativity").
itsoktocry 4y ago
>Paul’s not a genius This post feels like shallow, Malcolm Gladwellish, wrap-a-simple-idea-with-a-random-narrative stuff. Yes, MVPs are good. But Paul McCartney might be the greatest pop musician/songwriter of the 20th century. Some (most?) of his best works were performed after the Beatles. If he's not a genius, then no musician is a genius.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Agree that Paul is a genius, not so sure I agree his best works came post-Beatles. To be sure his catalog post-Beatles is greater, if good songs are a roll of the dice then five decades vs. one is kind of loading the dice.... I'll argue that with John and his "fresh ears" Paul was able to write some of his most creative songs with the Beatles.
- teucris 4y ago
  > If he's not a genius, then no musician is a genius. Maybe there’s no such thing as genius. Maybe what we call genius is the synthesis of many people’s work, or luck, or both. Not to say Paul isn’t an incredible musician. Just that maybe the Beatles were genius, not any single member.
- kansface 4y ago
  > Some (most?) of his best works were performed after the Beatles. I imagine this is a really unpopular and/or uncommon opinion! I do not share it.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    I can't think of a single post-Beatles McCartney song that I like.
    - v-erne 4y ago
      Have you heard Come On to Me ? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJLrtFY7Ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJLrtFY7Ds) For me this is the most Beatles like song by Paul done after Beatles.
m82labs 4y ago
“ By putting themselves in a corner, he created (at no small cost) the conditions where he could do the work.” I think this might be the more important part. I am a firm believer that you do your best and most creative work under known and limiting constraints. With the constraints in place you couldn’t afford to NOT bring your half-baked ideas to the table.
99_00 4y ago
Making mistakes is painful. Risking judgment is painful. Respect to everyone who is able to walk through the pain even for a little while.
Tao332 4y ago
> John is the fifth hammer. I didn't know what this meant. Apparently there is a legend that Pythagoras discovered harmony accidentally by overhearing four hammers working. Upon closer inspection of the forge, he also heard a fifth hammer that was discordant to the other four, so he discarded it. Search "Pythagorean Hammers" for multiple shaky retellings that don't always include the fifth hammer, and a book named after it.
dfee 4y ago
Seth didn’t include a link to the series, but it’s called “The Beatles: Get Back”. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back
psb 4y ago
I was also impressed and surprised by how much time they spent screwing around singing with goofy voices and the like
hebsbxjsndbd 4y ago
The author of this post and I saw wildly different documentaries. It was obvious to me that Paul knew exactly how every part should be arranged and played in his songs, and that half of his battle was bringing folks along.
drcongo 4y ago
"The sound you make is muzak to my ears"
- dlivingston 4y ago
  “That was your first mistake; you took your lucky break and broke it in two.”
paulpauper 4y ago
we need to stop using the Beatles as examples of practice and success. They are such a huge outlier.
- ellyagg 4y ago
  There was a lot less coompetition and optimization back then
garyrob 4y ago
I'm not at all sure the evidence support's Seth's claim that Paul and John were not geniuses, at least at that point in their careers. The music for most recorded song of all-time, Yesterday, came to him in a dream; he went to the piano upon waking up and played it. That's just one example. If you won't call that "genius," as opposed to mere "skill," you have very, very high standards, I would think unrealistically so. But Seth is allowed to share his writing before it's fully-baked. :)
- failrate 4y ago
  I do really like the idea of a genius existing between people, though. That rings true to my experience.
  - garyrob 4y ago
    I like it too. I definitely hear you. For instance, Gilbert and Sullivan... neither of them could have done it alone. Sullivan, in particular, tried, and didn't succeed. But, I think Seth may be pushing too hard to make his point. I think it's very arguable that at least during the 60's to early 70's, John and Paul were both categorizable as geniuses. As another example, John wrote Imagine without Paul, and it is frequently considered one of the greatest songs of all time. If it was a one-off, that would be one thing, but he also wrote some of the greatest Beatles songs with little input from Paul.
kubanczyk 4y ago
The article is about these miniseries (not about the movie): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/ Before you ask, they only stream on Disney+.
- krnlpnc 4y ago
  And sonarr
tiffanyh 4y ago
The tech equivalent of "half baked" is "Beta" software. This was frequent term used in the 2000s. "MVP" software is the modern day equivalent of half-bake/beta.
johnobrien1010 4y ago
I'm a product manager. One of the things I'm moved towards doing with engineering teams over the years is bringing ideas when they aren't fully fleshed out sooner to engineering teams. It really helps do a couple of things- it saves time, if it is a bad idea, I found out sooner rather than later. And if it is a good idea, it gives other people the opportunity to contribute to it, making it their own as well as mine, which helps everyone on the team take more ownership of the outcome and have a better feeling of purpose in life. I think you need to earn credibility before you start doing it but once you have that credibility I highly recommend it.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  It’s great that you share your ideas with your team. I’ve been in both product management and engineering roles and I can say with certainty that everyone has terrible ideas, including (sometimes especially) engineers. The thing is, you can’t tell if an idea has legs until you share it. And even after going through your own filter and that of your colleagues and other disciplines, the only thing that’s actually important is how the product is received by the audience. So holding it all close to your chest is just a really good way of reducing the likelihood of success. And because of this, wherever I can, I try to mock up a cheap prototype of a product first, something that expresses my ideas in a tangible way that others can understand, just to make sure that what I’m working on is actually worth the time.
  - bredren 4y ago
    How do you and GP feel about sharing half baked ideas with customers? For example, replacing a table view that gets limited engagement with a feed with some workflow actions. Half baked at this point might be some static screenshots from figma.
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      In principle I think it’s good practice, but in practice I think it’s risky. It very much depends on your relationship with your customers. It can go wrong in a few ways. Probably the worst way is where the customer takes a half baked demo or idea as a preview and a commitment, and then demands that you deliver it, or complains when you don’t; not all half baked ideas can be turned into a product. Another potential pitfall is that the idea may be seen to represent a change to something important to them, and they get scared. Inducing needless fear is best avoided! They might just tell you that it’s a stupid idea. Which at best is just embarrassing. There are probably many other negative scenarios, but those come to mind from experience. So while on the whole I think you really, really should let customers be part of the ideation process - they are the users and beneficiaries of the work, after all - you have to chose who you include carefully, because the relationship with your customers is fundamentally different to the one you have with your coworkers, and it can go south in really unexpected ways.
golemotron 4y ago
> Paul's not a genius oh, yes he is.
vba616 4y ago
"The driving force behind par-baked is economics," explained Russell Chapman, c.e.o. of Ecce Panis, Carlstadt, N.J. "Scratch baking is very labor intensive and requires skilled labor, which is extremely difficult for our customers to find. The par-baked method is not so labor intensive, and it allows food service operators and in-store bakers to hire less-skilled workers. Basically, they just take product from the freezer and pop it into the oven. Par-baked takes the labor out of their process while allowing them to offer consumers a great quality product." https://web.archive.org/web/20030924144329/http://www.bakingbusiness.com/tech/channel.asp?ArticleID=64959 https://web.archive.org/web/20030924144329/http://www.baking...
DonHopkins 4y ago
And that's why the Halfbakery exists! https://www.halfbakery.com/ https://www.halfbakery.com/ https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Weather_20music#1372541387 https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Weather_20music#1372541387 Weather music The Four Seasons Weather. It's all very well and good, but you can't get it on iTunes. Until now. For several decades, thousands of weather stations around the globe have been recording barometric pressures on a minute by minute basis. In a recent lucrative deal with the Met Office*, MaxCo. has secured the non-exclusive rights to this data. Sped up by a factor of several thousand, and digitally remasturbated, these barometric pressure fluctuations become a dynamic soundscape available on a wide range of regionally-themed CDs. The daily fluctuations in recorded pressure become a rich A above middle C. Spells of sunny, dull or stormy weather add modulations and overtones, whilst the seasonal barometric trends become deep bass notes. Longer-term climate shifts are reflected in gradual transitions of timbre and amplitude. Listen from the comfort of your own armchair to fifteen years of your local weather. Enjoy full stereophony as the pulsing mercury of Africa plays a counterpoint to the slow- shifting monsoon-driven barometry of Asia, or let the perpetual depression over North Wales lull you to sleep. Buy now while weather lasts! [*actually we just had to agree to buy them several packets of Hobnobs] — MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 29 2013

128 points by thm 4y ago

This was a fun read but I think it is also not accurate. Paul and John are both geniuses. Both wrote amazing songs without the other. Yes the Beatles output was more consistent but I chalk that up to being younger and more open and agree that having a sparing partner improves every persons game.

rektide 4y ago

What a fun post! The one thing I'd try to add or note is that, in a more public environment, I'd love to see more ability to signal how baked we think our shit is. A lot of being online is just fun & merry making & not heavy, is apt for spitballing & play & exploration, but that mixes in with so many serious, real, important shares in the mileau. Just having a knob, high or low bakedness, seriousness, doneness: this kind of information or annotation or metadata could help us better navigate our information spaces so much more clearly. Some bloggers have adopted attaching epistemic status to their posts. Gwern for example has a write-up on his blog's use of "status"[1], which is to inform the reader essentially of how far they've gotten diving into the topic. [1] https://www.gwern.net/About#confidence-tags https://www.gwern.net/About#confidence-tags

divbzero 4y ago
I really like the idea of indicating epistemic status for posts. The closest to that for code might be version numbers where anything under v1.0 should be taken with a grain of salt. This dynamic of spitballing-or-serious appears on HN sometimes when a personal project gets shared by a third party, is good enough to attract serious comments/critiques, but then the author of the project chimes in to say “I totally didn’t expect this to be shared here it’s definitely a work in progress…”
bthallplz 4y ago
That's a very cool idea and quite applicable to sites with pages that change over time, such as personal wikis. I think I'll add it to my personal wiki! (Feeds for posts of various maturities can be provided, too, which would be nice!)

waynecochran 4y ago

I have worked with dev's and researchers who have a very sensitive "bullshit meter" which is good a lot of the time, but often prevented me from bringing my half-baked ideas to the table. I would wait until I knew I had something solid.

zerkten 4y ago
I'm curious if they changed over time? I've observed this change in myself to a degree. There are things I'd not have let go in the past, but now I catch myself and evaluate the context. There is a fine balance between reducing bullshit that affects an organization and limiting the potential of the organization.
- waynecochran 4y ago
  Eventually it has always improved over time in terms of others being open to my ideas. It sometimes takes awhile to develop a good reputation to be trusted.

marban 4y ago

Because the half-baked work, shared in a trusting environment, is the fuel for the system that created the works of genius. Half-baked, not half-ass, is the key.

waynecochran 4y ago
Yes. If you already have a positive proven history, the more you often you can bring your half-baked ideas to the table.
- marban 4y ago
  I always try to apply this for an MVP (Yes, terrible word).
booboofixer 4y ago
> shared in a trusting environment I thought this was the key. For the beatles it probably wasn't that hard to do. But for other people taking inspiration, know where and when to share. Had the beatles performed their half-baked songs in front of a mediocre band that was to perform the very next day in front of a large audience, what would have stopped this mediocre band from stealing a song and performing it as their own? Closed-source software makes all the money in the world today.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>Paul’s not a genius This post feels like shallow, Malcolm Gladwellish, wrap-a-simple-idea-with-a-random-narrative stuff. Paul McCartney might be the greatest pop musician/songwriter of the 20th century. Some (most?) of his best works were performed after the Beatles. If he's not a genius, then no musician is a genius.

golemotron 4y ago
Exactly.
abbub 4y ago
Not only all of the above, but for Paul in particular, a genius who was in the midst of one of the largest creative highs of his entire career. I mean, some of the snippets of ‘half-baked’ songs he plays are songs that will figure well into his solo/Wings career. I honestly don’t know how you can come out of watching Get Back with anything other than admiration for human creativity as personified by Paul McCartney during this amazing month that got captured on film.
- randoglando 4y ago
  It's because it fits his narrative for the book he's selling ("Creativity").

itsoktocry 4y ago

>Paul’s not a genius This post feels like shallow, Malcolm Gladwellish, wrap-a-simple-idea-with-a-random-narrative stuff. Yes, MVPs are good. But Paul McCartney might be the greatest pop musician/songwriter of the 20th century. Some (most?) of his best works were performed after the Beatles. If he's not a genius, then no musician is a genius.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Agree that Paul is a genius, not so sure I agree his best works came post-Beatles. To be sure his catalog post-Beatles is greater, if good songs are a roll of the dice then five decades vs. one is kind of loading the dice.... I'll argue that with John and his "fresh ears" Paul was able to write some of his most creative songs with the Beatles.
teucris 4y ago
> If he's not a genius, then no musician is a genius. Maybe there’s no such thing as genius. Maybe what we call genius is the synthesis of many people’s work, or luck, or both. Not to say Paul isn’t an incredible musician. Just that maybe the Beatles were genius, not any single member.
kansface 4y ago
> Some (most?) of his best works were performed after the Beatles. I imagine this is a really unpopular and/or uncommon opinion! I do not share it.
- drcongo 4y ago
  I can't think of a single post-Beatles McCartney song that I like.
  - v-erne 4y ago
    Have you heard Come On to Me ? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJLrtFY7Ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJLrtFY7Ds) For me this is the most Beatles like song by Paul done after Beatles.

m82labs 4y ago

“ By putting themselves in a corner, he created (at no small cost) the conditions where he could do the work.” I think this might be the more important part. I am a firm believer that you do your best and most creative work under known and limiting constraints. With the constraints in place you couldn’t afford to NOT bring your half-baked ideas to the table.

99_00 4y ago

Making mistakes is painful. Risking judgment is painful. Respect to everyone who is able to walk through the pain even for a little while.

Tao332 4y ago

> John is the fifth hammer. I didn't know what this meant. Apparently there is a legend that Pythagoras discovered harmony accidentally by overhearing four hammers working. Upon closer inspection of the forge, he also heard a fifth hammer that was discordant to the other four, so he discarded it. Search "Pythagorean Hammers" for multiple shaky retellings that don't always include the fifth hammer, and a book named after it.

dfee 4y ago

Seth didn’t include a link to the series, but it’s called “The Beatles: Get Back”. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_Get_Back

psb 4y ago

I was also impressed and surprised by how much time they spent screwing around singing with goofy voices and the like

hebsbxjsndbd 4y ago

The author of this post and I saw wildly different documentaries. It was obvious to me that Paul knew exactly how every part should be arranged and played in his songs, and that half of his battle was bringing folks along.

drcongo 4y ago

"The sound you make is muzak to my ears"

dlivingston 4y ago
“That was your first mistake; you took your lucky break and broke it in two.”

paulpauper 4y ago

we need to stop using the Beatles as examples of practice and success. They are such a huge outlier.

ellyagg 4y ago
There was a lot less coompetition and optimization back then

garyrob 4y ago

I'm not at all sure the evidence support's Seth's claim that Paul and John were not geniuses, at least at that point in their careers. The music for most recorded song of all-time, Yesterday, came to him in a dream; he went to the piano upon waking up and played it. That's just one example. If you won't call that "genius," as opposed to mere "skill," you have very, very high standards, I would think unrealistically so. But Seth is allowed to share his writing before it's fully-baked. :)

failrate 4y ago
I do really like the idea of a genius existing between people, though. That rings true to my experience.
- garyrob 4y ago
  I like it too. I definitely hear you. For instance, Gilbert and Sullivan... neither of them could have done it alone. Sullivan, in particular, tried, and didn't succeed. But, I think Seth may be pushing too hard to make his point. I think it's very arguable that at least during the 60's to early 70's, John and Paul were both categorizable as geniuses. As another example, John wrote Imagine without Paul, and it is frequently considered one of the greatest songs of all time. If it was a one-off, that would be one thing, but he also wrote some of the greatest Beatles songs with little input from Paul.

kubanczyk 4y ago

The article is about these miniseries (not about the movie): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/ Before you ask, they only stream on Disney+.

krnlpnc 4y ago
And sonarr

tiffanyh 4y ago

The tech equivalent of "half baked" is "Beta" software. This was frequent term used in the 2000s. "MVP" software is the modern day equivalent of half-bake/beta.

johnobrien1010 4y ago

I'm a product manager. One of the things I'm moved towards doing with engineering teams over the years is bringing ideas when they aren't fully fleshed out sooner to engineering teams. It really helps do a couple of things- it saves time, if it is a bad idea, I found out sooner rather than later. And if it is a good idea, it gives other people the opportunity to contribute to it, making it their own as well as mine, which helps everyone on the team take more ownership of the outcome and have a better feeling of purpose in life. I think you need to earn credibility before you start doing it but once you have that credibility I highly recommend it.

doctor_eval 4y ago
It’s great that you share your ideas with your team. I’ve been in both product management and engineering roles and I can say with certainty that everyone has terrible ideas, including (sometimes especially) engineers. The thing is, you can’t tell if an idea has legs until you share it. And even after going through your own filter and that of your colleagues and other disciplines, the only thing that’s actually important is how the product is received by the audience. So holding it all close to your chest is just a really good way of reducing the likelihood of success. And because of this, wherever I can, I try to mock up a cheap prototype of a product first, something that expresses my ideas in a tangible way that others can understand, just to make sure that what I’m working on is actually worth the time.
- bredren 4y ago
  How do you and GP feel about sharing half baked ideas with customers? For example, replacing a table view that gets limited engagement with a feed with some workflow actions. Half baked at this point might be some static screenshots from figma.
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    In principle I think it’s good practice, but in practice I think it’s risky. It very much depends on your relationship with your customers. It can go wrong in a few ways. Probably the worst way is where the customer takes a half baked demo or idea as a preview and a commitment, and then demands that you deliver it, or complains when you don’t; not all half baked ideas can be turned into a product. Another potential pitfall is that the idea may be seen to represent a change to something important to them, and they get scared. Inducing needless fear is best avoided! They might just tell you that it’s a stupid idea. Which at best is just embarrassing. There are probably many other negative scenarios, but those come to mind from experience. So while on the whole I think you really, really should let customers be part of the ideation process - they are the users and beneficiaries of the work, after all - you have to chose who you include carefully, because the relationship with your customers is fundamentally different to the one you have with your coworkers, and it can go south in really unexpected ways.

golemotron 4y ago

> Paul's not a genius oh, yes he is.

vba616 4y ago

"The driving force behind par-baked is economics," explained Russell Chapman, c.e.o. of Ecce Panis, Carlstadt, N.J. "Scratch baking is very labor intensive and requires skilled labor, which is extremely difficult for our customers to find. The par-baked method is not so labor intensive, and it allows food service operators and in-store bakers to hire less-skilled workers. Basically, they just take product from the freezer and pop it into the oven. Par-baked takes the labor out of their process while allowing them to offer consumers a great quality product." https://web.archive.org/web/20030924144329/http://www.bakingbusiness.com/tech/channel.asp?ArticleID=64959 https://web.archive.org/web/20030924144329/http://www.baking...

DonHopkins 4y ago

And that's why the Halfbakery exists! https://www.halfbakery.com/ https://www.halfbakery.com/ https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Weather_20music#1372541387 https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Weather_20music#1372541387 Weather music The Four Seasons Weather. It's all very well and good, but you can't get it on iTunes. Until now. For several decades, thousands of weather stations around the globe have been recording barometric pressures on a minute by minute basis. In a recent lucrative deal with the Met Office*, MaxCo. has secured the non-exclusive rights to this data. Sped up by a factor of several thousand, and digitally remasturbated, these barometric pressure fluctuations become a dynamic soundscape available on a wide range of regionally-themed CDs. The daily fluctuations in recorded pressure become a rich A above middle C. Spells of sunny, dull or stormy weather add modulations and overtones, whilst the seasonal barometric trends become deep bass notes. Longer-term climate shifts are reflected in gradual transitions of timbre and amplitude. Listen from the comfort of your own armchair to fifteen years of your local weather. Enjoy full stereophony as the pulsing mercury of Africa plays a counterpoint to the slow- shifting monsoon-driven barometry of Asia, or let the perpetual depression over North Wales lull you to sleep. Buy now while weather lasts! [*actually we just had to agree to buy them several packets of Hobnobs] — MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 29 2013