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the difference is that all of these beliefs are rooted in change and/or going against the grain...which is exactly PGs point.
by davemel37 12y ago
the difference is that all of these beliefs are rooted in change and/or going against the grain...which is exactly PGs point.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y agoI think PG's point conflates a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, including: 1. Experts as people with unusual technical competence in one or more related fields. 2. Experts as 'big picture' prophets of the future. 3. Experts as 'small picture' refiners of future tech. 4. Experts as packagers, innovators, and marketers who create new markets for the work of 2 and 3. 5. Experts as investors who look for all of the above and try to work out if they can make money from them. Aren't these mostly unrelated job descriptions? There's no reason why a brilliant academic who understands compiler design would have anything useful to say about the future of consumer electronics. Likewise, I wouldn't have expected Steve Jobs to contribute much to (say) research into room temperature semiconductors. Steve Jobs was brilliant at packaging and selling stuff, not at theoretical physics. PG's real point seems to be that if you 'hire' smart, creative, hard-working people, they're more likely to do something useful for you than people who aren't smart, creative, or hard-working. Which is surely true (if they're not difficult) but doesn't have much to do with expert predictions about the future. It's kind of a retread of Spolsky's 'smart, gets things done', with a more entrepreneurial twist and an implied 'has original insights'. (Spolsky being an excellent example of all four.)