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There are some people that only see downsides, that compulsively expect failures. We call them nay-sayers. You want a handful of them in your organization, espe

by pvnick 13y ago

There are some people that only see downsides, that compulsively expect failures. We call them nay-sayers. You want a handful of them in your organization, especially in tech, since they keep your head out of the clouds. But too often they tend to be averse to innovation and derail progress. James Ball, the author of the article, seems to be one of those people. On October 9, 1903, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, the New York times declared "The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected… it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years" [1] I imagine someone like James Ball wrote that article, too. [1] http://www.skygod.com/quotes/times1903.pdf http://www.skygod.com/quotes/times1903.pdf edit: rmc indicated I wrote date as 2013, fixed to 1903

SandB0x 13y ago
Come on, this is a complete straw man. The article is not saying it's physically impossible, because clearly it isn't, it's saying there are legal and logistical problems to consider. Plus, following your argument you could swat away any criticism of any outlandish claim by saying that people once thought the world was flat. Hardly constructive. Not that there are any claims of this magnitude by Amazon or in this article.
- watty 13y ago
  Well the main point of the article was "it's all hot air and baloney". His logistical issues seem like he's grasping for anything he can to discredit the idea. With his added sarcasm ("any second now"), I'd put him in the exact same camp as the NY Times writer.
  - frogpelt 13y ago
    No, he's not grasping. He didn't called it "hot air and baloney" because he thinks it would never physically work. He called it that because he believes it was timed to coincide with Cyber Monday. The bureaucratic hurdles for this are too numerous to mention. It goes in the Hyperloop-from-LA-to-NYC category. I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance. It's Amazon.com marketing hype. Go buy something.
    - skoh-fley 13y ago
      Whether or not it's hype isn't at issue. Hype can exist for real things. Sure, this may be a very well timed reveal, and it's probably not an accident. But that doesn't make the idea any less real.
    - jasonlotito 13y ago
      It's Dan Lyons. He's grasping. > I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance. Getting public support early so they have an easier time of getting the legislation passed to make this possible. Getting public support early so they can get people thinking/accepting of drop off locations in and around their homes and businesses. Getting people interested in working for a forward thinking company, and therefore attracting engineers wanting to work on interesting things. But no. It's just marketing hype. You know what is purely hype in order to get page views? This article by Lyons.
- marknutter 13y ago
  Wait, hold the phone, there are legal and logistical problems to consider?? Thank god somebody wrote this article to cut through the insanity!
rmc 13y ago
> On October 9, 2013, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time Presume you meant 1903 there.... (A reverse Y2K bug!)
- pvnick 13y ago
  Indeed, thank you! Just fixed it.
ramblerman 13y ago
Well put. What threw me off in particular about the article though was the tone. It's fine to be skeptical but you don't need to be a sarcastic prat about it.
downandout 13y ago
In this case though, he's nay-saying for the purpose of bashing Amazon. Once he's done making rather weak arguments about why it won't work (all of the issues he brought up can and will be solved), he makes his anti-Amazon agenda pretty clear (see last two paragraphs). The content of the announcement was inconsequential; he just needed an Amazon story to write about. Many political websites do the same thing: they use a linkbait headline, briefly mention something in the news that is barely tangential to the actual message they want to get out, then say whatever it is they wanted to in the first place. Huffington Post 101.
zb 13y ago
I wonder what he would have had to say at the time about this: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/missile-mail.pdf https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/missile-mai...
- Crito 13y ago
  Hmm, Missile Mail would probably have worked much better if you could have made the missiles land properly at the other end, instead of crashing, made them reusable, and maybe stuck a pilot in them to handle the tricky landing bit.
bloat 13y ago
You've missed the main point of the article. He does spend some time raising practical objections, true. But this is really about Amazon's PR tactics, and how a carefully timed press release about a pie in the sky drone project is raising Amazon's profile in the holiday shopping season and (especially in the UK) pushing negative Amazon stories out of the news.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
>in from one million to ten million years 66 years later we landed men on the moon. Funny how fast things take off once your crack that first big problem. That said, Bezos is a businessman. Everything he does promotes Amazon in several different ways. This video will be used as negotiation muscle with delivery companies. It'll be used during union negotiations within UPS. It'll be used to make Amazon look technologically progressive and not just America's biggest mall. It'll make Bezos look good to investors. It'll spook smaller companies trying to get into this game (how's the nook doing?). It might also lead to actually landing packages on people's front porches.
- pyre 13y ago
  > It'll spook smaller companies trying to get into this game (how's the nook doing?). Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm thinking that Bezos isn't investing in drones to deliver ebooks.
  - drzaiusapelord 13y ago
    My point is that a startup is going to look at how he crushed the nook and decide not to compete in this space now that Bezos has a head start and all the resources of Amazon at his disposal. The nook was a 'me too' effort that never managed to provide the level of value the kindle could.
rimantas 13y ago
> We call them nay-sayers. There is also a strong trend on HN recently. I call it "lack of critical thinking".
- rquantz 13y ago
  Perhaps a better term would be "critical lack of thinking."
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  Here's the thing, though. The problems the 'critical thinkers' point out are usually so obvious as to be completely uninteresting. Strangely these 'critical thinkers' rarely apply their massive brainpower to then thinking of potential solutions for the problems that everyone else has also seen. In other words, no one is impressed by your ability to see problems. Everyone else here can see them too. We've all got brains, thanks. The trick is to use them to solve problems, that's the valuable skill.
  - TillE 13y ago
    Yeah, here's my solution to the myriad problems with this idea: self-driving electric cars as delivery vehicles. It's far more realistic and practical in every conceivable way.
    - mcintyre1994 13y ago
      Are you sure? Self driving cars have to deal with human drivers, cyclists and pedestrians - none of which are in the sky at the same numbers. They also can't communicate intelligently with those in the ways that drones could intelligently avoid collisions by being in constant contact with everything near them. Self driving cars are constrained to roads while drones may be able to fly in different areas. Drones can fly up and down too, so there won't be any traffic jams - they can be avoided even easier since every vehicle can be in communication with each other. For what it's worth I think your solution is likely better, but not in every conceivable way. There are real benefits of taking self-driving cars and giving them 3 dimensions and no human obstacles.
guelo 13y ago
There as some people that we call gullible. You might want a few of them in your organization for entertainment purposes... (trying to practice your style of fancy ad-hominem debating)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
localhost 13y ago
Thank you for this. I turned this into a nice life lesson for my 7 and 10 year old this morning about the possibilities that you can get by taking the long view.
- pvnick 13y ago
  I'm glad to hear that! I find the story inspirational myself, and look to the great innovators like the Wright brothers, Jeff Bezos and of course Elon Musk as role models for looking at the big picture
withad 13y ago
Just because someone was wrong about the Wright brothers a century ago doesn't mean that someone else is wrong about something completely different today. Carl Sagan said it best: "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

by pvnick 13y ago

SandB0x 13y ago

Come on, this is a complete straw man. The article is not saying it's physically impossible, because clearly it isn't, it's saying there are legal and logistical problems to consider. Plus, following your argument you could swat away any criticism of any outlandish claim by saying that people once thought the world was flat. Hardly constructive. Not that there are any claims of this magnitude by Amazon or in this article.

watty 13y ago
Well the main point of the article was "it's all hot air and baloney". His logistical issues seem like he's grasping for anything he can to discredit the idea. With his added sarcasm ("any second now"), I'd put him in the exact same camp as the NY Times writer.
- frogpelt 13y ago
  No, he's not grasping. He didn't called it "hot air and baloney" because he thinks it would never physically work. He called it that because he believes it was timed to coincide with Cyber Monday. The bureaucratic hurdles for this are too numerous to mention. It goes in the Hyperloop-from-LA-to-NYC category. I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance. It's Amazon.com marketing hype. Go buy something.
  - skoh-fley 13y ago
    Whether or not it's hype isn't at issue. Hype can exist for real things. Sure, this may be a very well timed reveal, and it's probably not an accident. But that doesn't make the idea any less real.
  - jasonlotito 13y ago
    It's Dan Lyons. He's grasping. > I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance. Getting public support early so they have an easier time of getting the legislation passed to make this possible. Getting public support early so they can get people thinking/accepting of drop off locations in and around their homes and businesses. Getting people interested in working for a forward thinking company, and therefore attracting engineers wanting to work on interesting things. But no. It's just marketing hype. You know what is purely hype in order to get page views? This article by Lyons.
marknutter 13y ago
Wait, hold the phone, there are legal and logistical problems to consider?? Thank god somebody wrote this article to cut through the insanity!

rmc 13y ago

> On October 9, 2013, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time Presume you meant 1903 there.... (A reverse Y2K bug!)

pvnick 13y ago
Indeed, thank you! Just fixed it.

ramblerman 13y ago

Well put. What threw me off in particular about the article though was the tone. It's fine to be skeptical but you don't need to be a sarcastic prat about it.

downandout 13y ago

In this case though, he's nay-saying for the purpose of bashing Amazon. Once he's done making rather weak arguments about why it won't work (all of the issues he brought up can and will be solved), he makes his anti-Amazon agenda pretty clear (see last two paragraphs). The content of the announcement was inconsequential; he just needed an Amazon story to write about. Many political websites do the same thing: they use a linkbait headline, briefly mention something in the news that is barely tangential to the actual message they want to get out, then say whatever it is they wanted to in the first place. Huffington Post 101.

zb 13y ago

I wonder what he would have had to say at the time about this: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/missile-mail.pdf https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/missile-mai...

Crito 13y ago
Hmm, Missile Mail would probably have worked much better if you could have made the missiles land properly at the other end, instead of crashing, made them reusable, and maybe stuck a pilot in them to handle the tricky landing bit.

bloat 13y ago

You've missed the main point of the article. He does spend some time raising practical objections, true. But this is really about Amazon's PR tactics, and how a carefully timed press release about a pie in the sky drone project is raising Amazon's profile in the holiday shopping season and (especially in the UK) pushing negative Amazon stories out of the news.

drzaiusapelord 13y ago

>in from one million to ten million years 66 years later we landed men on the moon. Funny how fast things take off once your crack that first big problem. That said, Bezos is a businessman. Everything he does promotes Amazon in several different ways. This video will be used as negotiation muscle with delivery companies. It'll be used during union negotiations within UPS. It'll be used to make Amazon look technologically progressive and not just America's biggest mall. It'll make Bezos look good to investors. It'll spook smaller companies trying to get into this game (how's the nook doing?). It might also lead to actually landing packages on people's front porches.

pyre 13y ago
> It'll spook smaller companies trying to get into this game (how's the nook doing?). Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm thinking that Bezos isn't investing in drones to deliver ebooks.
- drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  My point is that a startup is going to look at how he crushed the nook and decide not to compete in this space now that Bezos has a head start and all the resources of Amazon at his disposal. The nook was a 'me too' effort that never managed to provide the level of value the kindle could.

rimantas 13y ago

> We call them nay-sayers. There is also a strong trend on HN recently. I call it "lack of critical thinking".

rquantz 13y ago
Perhaps a better term would be "critical lack of thinking."
waterlesscloud 13y ago
Here's the thing, though. The problems the 'critical thinkers' point out are usually so obvious as to be completely uninteresting. Strangely these 'critical thinkers' rarely apply their massive brainpower to then thinking of potential solutions for the problems that everyone else has also seen. In other words, no one is impressed by your ability to see problems. Everyone else here can see them too. We've all got brains, thanks. The trick is to use them to solve problems, that's the valuable skill.
- TillE 13y ago
  Yeah, here's my solution to the myriad problems with this idea: self-driving electric cars as delivery vehicles. It's far more realistic and practical in every conceivable way.
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    Are you sure? Self driving cars have to deal with human drivers, cyclists and pedestrians - none of which are in the sky at the same numbers. They also can't communicate intelligently with those in the ways that drones could intelligently avoid collisions by being in constant contact with everything near them. Self driving cars are constrained to roads while drones may be able to fly in different areas. Drones can fly up and down too, so there won't be any traffic jams - they can be avoided even easier since every vehicle can be in communication with each other. For what it's worth I think your solution is likely better, but not in every conceivable way. There are real benefits of taking self-driving cars and giving them 3 dimensions and no human obstacles.

guelo 13y ago

There as some people that we call gullible. You might want a few of them in your organization for entertainment purposes... (trying to practice your style of fancy ad-hominem debating)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

localhost 13y ago

Thank you for this. I turned this into a nice life lesson for my 7 and 10 year old this morning about the possibilities that you can get by taking the long view.

pvnick 13y ago
I'm glad to hear that! I find the story inspirational myself, and look to the great innovators like the Wright brothers, Jeff Bezos and of course Elon Musk as role models for looking at the big picture

withad 13y ago

Just because someone was wrong about the Wright brothers a century ago doesn't mean that someone else is wrong about something completely different today. Carl Sagan said it best: "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."