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This argument is very well made. But I will say that this doesn't seem unusual to me; there seems to be a "missing middle" in many situations. For instance, in

This argument is very well made. But I will say that this doesn't seem unusual to me; there seems to be a "missing middle" in many situations. For instance, in business, it's easy to get capital for things that are a sure thing - "for the past decade, every dollar we have put into this initiative has generated three dollars of revenue" will get funded every time - and also often pretty easy to get funding for high risk but high reward initiatives - "this is unlikely to work but if it does, every dollar invested will return one hundred dollars" - but it's pretty hard to get funding for medium risk / medium reward initiatives - "this will probably work, and if it does it will be a stable small business". I think the same thing is going on here, and maybe it even makes sense.

notahacker 4y ago
Oh I agree, there's definitely an overlap with the business world and it's not unusual for a business to pursue an expensive (and doomed) moonshot the exec hope will work on the one hand whilst obsessing over comparatively minor productivity differences and cost savings possible in the divisions that actually build and maintain and sell existing product, or for investors to rigorously audit growth metrics for a business that is actually groiwng and then chuck money at other founders despite their pitch because they have a hunch the founders are really good people (but didn't Reddit do well!). I just think it makes the whole thing a lot less "rational" and a lot more we have heuristics that select for people and organizations we like - like other forms of philanthropy - than claimed. And yeah, sometimes that works out just fine.