4 ms·

The problem with your logic is that it assumes that you uniquely are able to solve a problem. This is probably not true, especially if I've never heard of you

The problem with your logic is that it assumes that you uniquely are able to solve a problem. This is probably not true, especially if I've never heard of you before. You really should assume there are multiple people smarter than you (a trivial assumption) and that they've thought of the same idea as you. Given this assumption, I think PG's quote is really a snappier way of saying "Ask yourself why these smarter people haven't done it yet." Do you truly believe you stumbled on a solution smarter people legitimately haven't? What advantage did you have that they didn't? Or, if they have thought of it, would they have problems with execution or traction or funding or even just explaining the idea?

chacham15 14y ago
Please dont get personal, this is a theoretical argument. It is natural to assume that there is a variation in intelligence in the computer science world and that there will be people who are outliers. By definition, there are few people who are smarter than the outliers. The idea that someone smarter would have thought of it doesnt apply to them because the number of people smarter than them is very small. The second problem is: how do we recognize these outliers? Take for example, Larry Paige. The problem with 'especially if I've never heard of you before' is demonstrated here. People are never claimed to be really smart until they've done something noteworthy. This, however, is the classic illustration of hindsight. We deem them smart because they have done something smart, not because they are. Therefore, would it be fair to ask Larry Paige those questions at the time that he was founding Google? Furthermore, pg has an entire essay on why smart people have bad ideas: http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html. Therefore, even if there are people smarter than you, that is not to say that they will have that brilliant idea instead of you. An example to that point is Drew Houston and Dropbox. Many people, arguably smarter, had thought of that idea before but Drew was able to execute it in a way that no-one else had thought of.
- masterzora 14y ago
  I am not trying to get personal. I use the second person as a rhetorical device because properly consistent use of the third person sounds really stuffy. That said, you are touching on something I left implicit in my original post. Yes, there is a really small chance that you are the smartest person with the most relevant experience relative to a given problem to approach it. And, if this is the case, that is your valid answer to why you haven't seen someone else do it before. But for most people this is simply not the case and even for the people you are thinking of now as the smartest should assume it isn't the case, at least at first. If analyzing the situation and doing research legitimately leads you to "I am better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this", good for you because you're off to a great start. As far as Larry Page goes, a sibling post said that pg, to name one person, had something very similar to PageRank futher driving in the point that you usually can't count on being the first to figure out a solution. But, regardless, it absolutely would have been fair to ask Larry those same questions at the time he was founding Google. No matter how smart you are, due diligence is a key concept.
  - chacham15 14y ago
    How would Larry Paige or Drew Houston have done research to conclude that they are "better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this"? After all, Google was one of the last search engines to enter the industry. I am not even convinced that that is true. As I said in the last post, given a certain number of people that can solve a problem, what are the chances that they are working on the same problem as Larry or Drew? Furthermore, the amount of time that it takes to prove that an idea is actually a good one is a few years at the least. Next, the range of ideas is so large, that this group of people is going to be heavily segmented in different areas. Lastly, as I pointed out with Dropbox, innovation doesn't always lie entirely in the difficulty of the problem, but also the execution. All of these factors go to increase the minimal size of smart people who can be the first to innovate in their fields.
    - masterzora 14y ago
      > How would Larry Paige or Drew Houston have done research to conclude that they are "better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this"? In a negative sense, mostly. If it's absolutely a good idea that you know you have the solution for and it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of capital to execute and said execution is fairly straightforward and a sizeable market exists and etc, etc then the only possible conclusion is that you are legitimately close enough to the first one to solve the problem that you can go ahead. But odds are against this being the case so you should assume that it's not and then figure it out from there rather than assume that it is the case and you have an easy business ahead of you. Anything else would just be a bad investment of your time and resources.

chacham15 14y ago

Please dont get personal, this is a theoretical argument. It is natural to assume that there is a variation in intelligence in the computer science world and that there will be people who are outliers. By definition, there are few people who are smarter than the outliers. The idea that someone smarter would have thought of it doesnt apply to them because the number of people smarter than them is very small. The second problem is: how do we recognize these outliers? Take for example, Larry Paige. The problem with 'especially if I've never heard of you before' is demonstrated here. People are never claimed to be really smart until they've done something noteworthy. This, however, is the classic illustration of hindsight. We deem them smart because they have done something smart, not because they are. Therefore, would it be fair to ask Larry Paige those questions at the time that he was founding Google? Furthermore, pg has an entire essay on why smart people have bad ideas: http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html. Therefore, even if there are people smarter than you, that is not to say that they will have that brilliant idea instead of you. An example to that point is Drew Houston and Dropbox. Many people, arguably smarter, had thought of that idea before but Drew was able to execute it in a way that no-one else had thought of.

masterzora 14y ago
I am not trying to get personal. I use the second person as a rhetorical device because properly consistent use of the third person sounds really stuffy. That said, you are touching on something I left implicit in my original post. Yes, there is a really small chance that you are the smartest person with the most relevant experience relative to a given problem to approach it. And, if this is the case, that is your valid answer to why you haven't seen someone else do it before. But for most people this is simply not the case and even for the people you are thinking of now as the smartest should assume it isn't the case, at least at first. If analyzing the situation and doing research legitimately leads you to "I am better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this", good for you because you're off to a great start. As far as Larry Page goes, a sibling post said that pg, to name one person, had something very similar to PageRank futher driving in the point that you usually can't count on being the first to figure out a solution. But, regardless, it absolutely would have been fair to ask Larry those same questions at the time he was founding Google. No matter how smart you are, due diligence is a key concept.
- chacham15 14y ago
  How would Larry Paige or Drew Houston have done research to conclude that they are "better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this"? After all, Google was one of the last search engines to enter the industry. I am not even convinced that that is true. As I said in the last post, given a certain number of people that can solve a problem, what are the chances that they are working on the same problem as Larry or Drew? Furthermore, the amount of time that it takes to prove that an idea is actually a good one is a few years at the least. Next, the range of ideas is so large, that this group of people is going to be heavily segmented in different areas. Lastly, as I pointed out with Dropbox, innovation doesn't always lie entirely in the difficulty of the problem, but also the execution. All of these factors go to increase the minimal size of smart people who can be the first to innovate in their fields.
  - masterzora 14y ago
    > How would Larry Paige or Drew Houston have done research to conclude that they are "better/luckier than everyone else who's approached this"? In a negative sense, mostly. If it's absolutely a good idea that you know you have the solution for and it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of capital to execute and said execution is fairly straightforward and a sizeable market exists and etc, etc then the only possible conclusion is that you are legitimately close enough to the first one to solve the problem that you can go ahead. But odds are against this being the case so you should assume that it's not and then figure it out from there rather than assume that it is the case and you have an easy business ahead of you. Anything else would just be a bad investment of your time and resources.