> "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to."
Should be:
"When everyone has a printing press, the most persuasive ones are the ones people listen to"
Should be:
"When everyone has a printing press, the most persuasive ones are the ones people listen to"
Where it all goes wrong is that it is very expensive to test an idea and determine whether it is good, whereas an idea that is very attractive to repeat and copy without testing is much fitter and the more it resists testing the better it is.
This is why the whole framework for protecting IP is broken as well - we incentivize coming up with ideas, but ideas are worthless - it's evaluating and testing ideas that is valuable.
We're letting the world burn for the sake of online advertising revenue and broken business models.
And a good tautology like this one can at least help people realize the difficulties in distinguishing merit from success.
Which puts it up a step from overconfident generalizations.