4 ms·

That sort of “I googled for 30 seconds, and found a cheaper option, why does this project exist” type response is anti-curiosity and anti-learning. It is possi

That sort of “I googled for 30 seconds, and found a cheaper option, why does this project exist” type response is anti-curiosity and anti-learning. It is possible that the YouTuber guy is a total idiot and decided to make a $1000 wheelchair instead of buying a $200 one, but that shouldn’t be a default assumption, haha.

singhrac 2y ago
I couldn’t upvote this enough. A lot of drive-by cynicism I see these days is really just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions (this guy must be an idiot, etc.). I see it a lot in practice especially when discussing early-stage business ideas.
- chipdart 2y ago
  > A lot of drive-by cynicism I see these days is really just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions (this guy must be an idiot, etc.). You're talking if guys pitching overpriced and underquality gear is completely unheard of, or if flawed business ideas are a rare occurrence. I get it, support and enthusiasm is always nice to have. But if you descend into the real world you'll see that more often than not you'll see a mix of fraud and overconfident people pitching undercooked ideas that they under deliver, and you're criticizing those who might as well have experienced that first-hand for a few times.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Well, I guess since I disagree with you, I must be an inhabitant of this non-real world. Dang, I wish I’d thought to deem myself the arbiter of reality. But from here, floating in the imaginary clouds, the error of the cynics was pretty easy to spot. It was that there are different types of wheelchairs and the cynics were just googling up the bargain-basement mass produced ones. I guess in the real world everything (including medical devices) is one-size-fits-all?
  - kelnos 2y ago
    There's another choice, though: instead of being a drive-by cynic, just move on and don't comment. It's not like these people are providing a valuable service, steering everyone away from the dumb scams. They're just pattern matching and assuming everything they doesn't seem to make sense (in their generally not-well-informed opinion) must be bad. It's unnecessary, and is noise just as often as it's not.
    - chipdart 2y ago
      > There's another choice, though: instead of being a drive-by cynic, just move on and don't comment. Unfortunately that recommendation is also pushed by snakeoil salesmen.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  > just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions The word you're looking for is "arrogance." HN comment sections are no better than reddit, if not worse, with people arrogantly making all sorts of statements that are demonstrably false with a simple google search.
  - zeroq 2y ago
    HN demographic is worse in the sense that you have more people who think if they earn more than they peers their opinion weights more.
Suppafly 2y ago
>It is possible that the YouTuber guy is a total idiot and decided to make a $1000 wheelchair instead of buying a $200 one, but that shouldn’t be a default assumption, haha. Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It is possible, but one thoughtful takedown by somebody who actually knows the field is worth more than an infinite number of uninformed googled results.
- plorkyeran 2y ago
  If you have some actual knowledge about a thing and can explain why it's pointless and already existed then that's a great thing to post. That's very different from just assuming that something you have no knowledge about is pointless, though. We certainly see lots of pointless reinventing in tech, but if something appears to be a pointless reinvention of something you could find in 30 seconds with no prior knowledge, it nearly always isn't a pointless reinvention of that and you just don't know enough to understand what's different.
- II2II 2y ago
  > Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists. There are a couple of reasons for that. The most obvious is that they did not do their research prior to embarking on the project. The less obvious is they did extensive research before embarking upon the project. Plenty of tech popped up in the 70's and 80's that flopped or only found a niche market, that later turned out to be quite popular. Sometimes the tech wasn't ready, other times it was just too expensive when it was introduced, yet other times he market simply wasn't ready for it.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists. I think it’s worse than than. Amongst the people doing the work, someone usually knows that there is a product out there that already does the job, but the higher ups think they know better.
nine_k 2y ago
Indeed. If I google for 30 seconds, and see a stark contradiction with what somebody offers, I try not to conclude that that the guy in question is a fool. This is always possible, but rarely true. Instead I conclude that likely my understanding is lacking, and maybe educating myself a little bit would be beneficial. Either I find out something new and potentially useful about the world, or finally see through a swindle and understand how it works, which is always a good skill to exercise.
janalsncm 2y ago
> anti-curiosity and anti-learning You nailed it. If I could go a bit deeper, I think the drive-by cynicism comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of people. Statistically, you are probably not significantly smarter or dumber than most people you meet. In other words, someone who has spent months or years on a problem probably knows more about it than you do if you’re just now reading about it. So if someone with more experience is doing something you think is dumb, your first reaction should be to ask why rather than dismiss.
- mikepurvis 2y ago
  Especially if one of the people is an engineer/maker and the other has the lived experience of being a wheelchair user. It’s wild to think they might have embarked on this venture without first googling for thirty seconds to see what else might be on the market.
anigbrowl 2y ago
One of the more valid use cases for AI is scanning forums an auto-labeling/hiding low quality comments.
- GlacierFox 2y ago
  Low quality comments or comments you don't agree with?
JustSomeNobody 2y ago
It’s like being outraged and asking “Trek and Cannondale exist, why do we need fifty other bike makers?” When some new manufacturers pop up. I don’t get the negativity.
hatthew 2y ago
My cynical assumption is that most startups start out with a grand vision that they overpromise and underdeliver on. Especially if it's a content creator, where I assume that they started with a need to monetize their brand and then came up with a product idea. This guy claims to be different in that he has enough money already and he's just trying to make the world a better place, but pretty much every startup makes claims about how they're different and therefore they're going to succeed. They can't all be right. I'd prefer to hear unbiased opinions about viability from intelligent people on HN/reddit/twitter rather than biased opinions from the guy who's trying to market his company. I'm not saying that this wheelchair is going to flop, I'm just defaulting to skepticism of new ideas in general.
zeroq 2y ago
> anti-curiosity and anti-learning It's the epitome of current state of the internet. We're on a social platform with coins to be gathered, which doesn't induce a deep, well though discussion, rather short snarky comments that gets clicked.
pbhjpbhj 2y ago
Asking a question is "anti-curiosity"? The piece raises at least a half-dozen possible answers, not all of which are compatible. The author pushes the "low cost" angle quite heavily at the start, so there being much cheaper options is reason enough, IMO, to ask the question what the point of the project is. They say the chair won't make money, but it's a for profit company. They say they want it to be employee owned and to make their employees lots of money. The author basically says 'it's a good second chair' (not a quote) that lacks in some features their own chair has. The piece also talks about cutting out expensive considerations like assessment by a physio and assessment of pressure points - that doesn't sound great, although if it's just a second chair, maybe those matter much less. It seems more like the YouTubers decided to make a $2M wheelchair - real estate, machinery, employees, etc. Then see if they could spin it out to a short lead-time, online customer-specified production. Good luck to them. Hopefully it will turn into a great example of a cooperative that's producing well-engineered affordable wheelchairs.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  >Asking a question is "anti-curiosity"? It's not asking questions though there's a lot of saying 'how is this cheaper? I found this crappy thing on amazon [that's clearly a completely different design] . why are they making this?!'. I've yet to see a cheaper option that's the same type of chair. The ones I keep seeing posted are collapsible ones that are used in hospitals which are much heavier and way worse than the product in the article, they're not fitted to the user and much more likely to cause issues. When comparing to a similar product these chairs actually are much cheaper than what's out there.
jojobas 2y ago
He's certainly not an idiot, and it's clear he wants to sell $1000 wheelchairs in order to earn money.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  He does not get paid for it though. At least he says so.
Double_a_92 2y ago
Probably because of the title. A 1$k wheelchair doesn't sound like anything special. While their selling point is that it's a $1k wheelchair that is actually worth that money.

singhrac 2y ago

I couldn’t upvote this enough. A lot of drive-by cynicism I see these days is really just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions (this guy must be an idiot, etc.). I see it a lot in practice especially when discussing early-stage business ideas.

chipdart 2y ago
> A lot of drive-by cynicism I see these days is really just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions (this guy must be an idiot, etc.). You're talking if guys pitching overpriced and underquality gear is completely unheard of, or if flawed business ideas are a rare occurrence. I get it, support and enthusiasm is always nice to have. But if you descend into the real world you'll see that more often than not you'll see a mix of fraud and overconfident people pitching undercooked ideas that they under deliver, and you're criticizing those who might as well have experienced that first-hand for a few times.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Well, I guess since I disagree with you, I must be an inhabitant of this non-real world. Dang, I wish I’d thought to deem myself the arbiter of reality. But from here, floating in the imaginary clouds, the error of the cynics was pretty easy to spot. It was that there are different types of wheelchairs and the cynics were just googling up the bargain-basement mass produced ones. I guess in the real world everything (including medical devices) is one-size-fits-all?
- kelnos 2y ago
  There's another choice, though: instead of being a drive-by cynic, just move on and don't comment. It's not like these people are providing a valuable service, steering everyone away from the dumb scams. They're just pattern matching and assuming everything they doesn't seem to make sense (in their generally not-well-informed opinion) must be bad. It's unnecessary, and is noise just as often as it's not.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > There's another choice, though: instead of being a drive-by cynic, just move on and don't comment. Unfortunately that recommendation is also pushed by snakeoil salesmen.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
> just a lack of curiosity and bad faith assumptions The word you're looking for is "arrogance." HN comment sections are no better than reddit, if not worse, with people arrogantly making all sorts of statements that are demonstrably false with a simple google search.
- zeroq 2y ago
  HN demographic is worse in the sense that you have more people who think if they earn more than they peers their opinion weights more.

Suppafly 2y ago

>It is possible that the YouTuber guy is a total idiot and decided to make a $1000 wheelchair instead of buying a $200 one, but that shouldn’t be a default assumption, haha. Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists.

bee_rider 2y ago
It is possible, but one thoughtful takedown by somebody who actually knows the field is worth more than an infinite number of uninformed googled results.
plorkyeran 2y ago
If you have some actual knowledge about a thing and can explain why it's pointless and already existed then that's a great thing to post. That's very different from just assuming that something you have no knowledge about is pointless, though. We certainly see lots of pointless reinventing in tech, but if something appears to be a pointless reinvention of something you could find in 30 seconds with no prior knowledge, it nearly always isn't a pointless reinvention of that and you just don't know enough to understand what's different.
II2II 2y ago
> Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists. There are a couple of reasons for that. The most obvious is that they did not do their research prior to embarking on the project. The less obvious is they did extensive research before embarking upon the project. Plenty of tech popped up in the 70's and 80's that flopped or only found a niche market, that later turned out to be quite popular. Sometimes the tech wasn't ready, other times it was just too expensive when it was introduced, yet other times he market simply wasn't ready for it.
lostlogin 2y ago
> someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists. I think it’s worse than than. Amongst the people doing the work, someone usually knows that there is a product out there that already does the job, but the higher ups think they know better.

nine_k 2y ago

Indeed. If I google for 30 seconds, and see a stark contradiction with what somebody offers, I try not to conclude that that the guy in question is a fool. This is always possible, but rarely true. Instead I conclude that likely my understanding is lacking, and maybe educating myself a little bit would be beneficial. Either I find out something new and potentially useful about the world, or finally see through a swindle and understand how it works, which is always a good skill to exercise.

janalsncm 2y ago

> anti-curiosity and anti-learning You nailed it. If I could go a bit deeper, I think the drive-by cynicism comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of people. Statistically, you are probably not significantly smarter or dumber than most people you meet. In other words, someone who has spent months or years on a problem probably knows more about it than you do if you’re just now reading about it. So if someone with more experience is doing something you think is dumb, your first reaction should be to ask why rather than dismiss.

mikepurvis 2y ago
Especially if one of the people is an engineer/maker and the other has the lived experience of being a wheelchair user. It’s wild to think they might have embarked on this venture without first googling for thirty seconds to see what else might be on the market.

anigbrowl 2y ago

One of the more valid use cases for AI is scanning forums an auto-labeling/hiding low quality comments.

GlacierFox 2y ago
Low quality comments or comments you don't agree with?

JustSomeNobody 2y ago

It’s like being outraged and asking “Trek and Cannondale exist, why do we need fifty other bike makers?” When some new manufacturers pop up. I don’t get the negativity.

hatthew 2y ago

My cynical assumption is that most startups start out with a grand vision that they overpromise and underdeliver on. Especially if it's a content creator, where I assume that they started with a need to monetize their brand and then came up with a product idea. This guy claims to be different in that he has enough money already and he's just trying to make the world a better place, but pretty much every startup makes claims about how they're different and therefore they're going to succeed. They can't all be right. I'd prefer to hear unbiased opinions about viability from intelligent people on HN/reddit/twitter rather than biased opinions from the guy who's trying to market his company. I'm not saying that this wheelchair is going to flop, I'm just defaulting to skepticism of new ideas in general.

zeroq 2y ago

> anti-curiosity and anti-learning It's the epitome of current state of the internet. We're on a social platform with coins to be gathered, which doesn't induce a deep, well though discussion, rather short snarky comments that gets clicked.

pbhjpbhj 2y ago

Asking a question is "anti-curiosity"? The piece raises at least a half-dozen possible answers, not all of which are compatible. The author pushes the "low cost" angle quite heavily at the start, so there being much cheaper options is reason enough, IMO, to ask the question what the point of the project is. They say the chair won't make money, but it's a for profit company. They say they want it to be employee owned and to make their employees lots of money. The author basically says 'it's a good second chair' (not a quote) that lacks in some features their own chair has. The piece also talks about cutting out expensive considerations like assessment by a physio and assessment of pressure points - that doesn't sound great, although if it's just a second chair, maybe those matter much less. It seems more like the YouTubers decided to make a $2M wheelchair - real estate, machinery, employees, etc. Then see if they could spin it out to a short lead-time, online customer-specified production. Good luck to them. Hopefully it will turn into a great example of a cooperative that's producing well-engineered affordable wheelchairs.

rtkwe 2y ago
>Asking a question is "anti-curiosity"? It's not asking questions though there's a lot of saying 'how is this cheaper? I found this crappy thing on amazon [that's clearly a completely different design] . why are they making this?!'. I've yet to see a cheaper option that's the same type of chair. The ones I keep seeing posted are collapsible ones that are used in hospitals which are much heavier and way worse than the product in the article, they're not fitted to the user and much more likely to cause issues. When comparing to a similar product these chairs actually are much cheaper than what's out there.

jojobas 2y ago

He's certainly not an idiot, and it's clear he wants to sell $1000 wheelchairs in order to earn money.

Mashimo 2y ago
He does not get paid for it though. At least he says so.

Double_a_92 2y ago

Probably because of the title. A 1$k wheelchair doesn't sound like anything special. While their selling point is that it's a $1k wheelchair that is actually worth that money.