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What an icky mess of strawman and false dichotomy! Who is this "theory guy" that never wins in business - someone who does only theory, eh? I wonder how well th
by D_Alex 13y ago
What an icky mess of strawman and false dichotomy! Who is this "theory guy" that never wins in business - someone who does only theory, eh? I wonder how well the "practice guy", who acts without any thinking whatsoever, comes out in comparison.
As an aside and fuel for furhter thought, here is one of my favourite quotes (from Less Wrong):
"As a general idea, high level intellectual exploration should consume substantially more time than goal-directed action, but there are few social encouragements to behave in this manner so the only people who do so are essentially those who are addicted to such intellectual exploration and have no propensity or willingness to take action at all."
- _sabe_ 13y agoAnd what is the definition of winning? If you're a theoretical problem solver, you are probably getting your kicks from doing just that. And that's "winning" for you. Now if you only care for money, "winning" would naturally be when you reached your goal of making some. But a lot of people probably would consider winning just getting by being in the moment doing what thrills you (like thinking about how to make the product even better).
- vladmk 13y agoNothing wrong with being a theoretical problem solver and yes I was defining winning by making money. Thinking about making a product is good, but taking action and then testing that result is even better, the point is get it in field, test it you can only theorize so much.
- James_Duval 13y agoHe has a point though. Look at his awful blog post. It's appallingly-written, doesn't make much sense, invokes various logical fallacies - and hit the front page of HN! "So here I am getting this post out in the field ASAP, let me know what you think lets talk about all the theory people we've, how does it still exist in this "lean startup" world? Perhaps we should go from lean to anorexic startup. I've never heard of a company launching too fast as Paul Graham says very few do and so far I know none." A garbled mess of nonsense. And yet here we are, talking about it! Proof that, at least sometimes, taking action without any kind of meaningful thought behind it is capable of generating success.
- CPAhem 13y agoyes - survival of the noisiest: talk first, think later.
- vladmk 13y agoThey say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, it may be ugly, but that is the way my view is that is the way the real world works. I still condone thinking, but at the end of the day taking action and reviewing still wins look at all the pivots in start ups. Ideally you want to do both of course, but most people do more thinking than anything.
- vladmk 13y agolol thanks for being the one person that sees something. My point in the article was to facilitate a discussion and you're right I wrote it on the fly in 10 minutes glad you got the point.