Ask HN: What do you do when your insight (& vision) scares you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you do when your insight (& vision) scares you?

10 pointsthrowaway83476815 comments

What do you do in the following case:

- You have have gained some insights about a specific domain, to solve some challenges in this domain

- You want to setup an organisation to solve this problem

- The insights are completely paradigm shifting. When you talk to others about the problem, and solutions. You can see they are not getting to the root causes. They are just scratching at the surface.

- The vision of what this organisation could be, and the change it could initiate drives fear in you

- You are afraid of telling people what the idea & plan (how to) because you think they will call you crazy!

* As an example :

We have a hypothetical world, tataoine. On tatoine there are tribes, and all tribes resolve conflict between each other by fighting. They never do anything else.

So an entire industry has popped up in order to build swords - 95% of people are building swords in the same way for generations.

- Some forward thinking folks have come about and said your methods of building swords are not optimal. So they have optimised the method of building

- Some other folks have come about and said maybe we need new types of swords, so now they are building light sabres

NOW:

- This insight began with some first principals thinking. What should this thing actually be, no other assumptions. How can we actually solve for the right problem (resolving conflict)

- The realisation is that sword makers are producing swords for a world that no longer requires swords, but everyone still continues because they think its best

  -  Because there is so much swords produced, organisations spring up to architect "conflict" so that they can leverage the swords

- This is what keeps the system going

- Along comes someone and says, hey instead of first resorting to war. Maybe we should just speak to each other first.

- Completely different paradigm on how to resolve conflict)

Insight was gained due to my own struggle with trying to solve a challenge in my own personal life, and not finding any satisfactory solutions.

* This is just an example, the insight has nothing to do with ACTUAL war. Just wanted to throw in the light sabre reference :)

If you have something truly paradigm changing you are not going to be able to get reasonable suggestions about it from big public discussions, and even less if you don't say exactly what it is but just use an analogy that does not (it seems from your concluding remark) map very well to the actual problem your insight solves.

When you say you have gained some insights about a domain, it sounds also like you might be a crank, for example if I gained some insights regarding topology and stochastic processes and was going to devote time to working on it, I would actually be a crank and end up sending my important mathematical proofs around to people who would be hard put to respond charitably to my ravings. Not saying that's you, but lots of otherwise sensible people gain insights into something outside their normal realm of expertise and then go on mad errands to save the world, generally very intelligent people, not realizing that these domains require more than just intelligence to gain an insight into them but also many years of study.

Finally when someone says they have a paradigm changing thing but cannot divulge it, some people may feel the person is either pretentious and does not realize they do not have paradigm changing thing, or that the person is unhinged (because talking about paradigm changing things before the paradigm has been changed will naturally sound unhinged to some people)

All of which says if you believe strongly you can change the paradigm you will have to do something to show it to people, and even the people you show it to (in my experience) will probably be too limited to see then possibilities in what you propose. The proof is in the pudding, and the weirder the pudding the more you will have to work to get people to eat it and realize how delicious it actually is.

Also when someone says their idea sparks fear in them because of the implications this is also a weird thing, because it implies what - a possible result of your idea is dystopia, mass extinction...? This contributes to the whole feeling like maybe you are overthinking the situation.

I was going to reply similarly but you did it much more eloquently!

> If you have something truly paradigm changing you are not going to be able to get reasonable suggestions about it from big public discussions

To be more clear, i am not looking for discussions on the actual problem and/or solution. I am trying to figure out how to deal with the "fear" part. If anyone has experiences regarding this it would be really useful.

> When you say you have gained some insights about a domain, it sounds also like you might be a crank

The reason for the abstraction, was so discussion can be foucused on dealing with the "Fear" part as mentioned above. I have a whole lot of self-doubt:

- Is it really paradigm shifting?

- Is it possible?

- Can it be done?,

- Can i do it?

> Finally when someone says they have a paradigm changing thing but cannot divulge it, some people may feel the person is either pretentious

Fully undersand this. There is a reason for not divulging on this forum. Mostly what i have been doing is having conversations with other people about it. Never introducing it as "paradigm shifting".

My conversations are usually around - Testing my assumptions - Testing experts understanding of the problems

Mostly when i ask the "experts" in the area, they mostly agree that it is broken, it is not doing what it supposed to do. However they are caught in an never-ending cycle, and do not see a way out.

> All of which says if you believe strongly you can change the paradigm you will have to do something to show it to people, and even the people you show it to (in my experience) will probably be too limited to see then possibilities in what you propose. The proof is in the pudding, and the weirder the pudding the more you will have to work to get people to eat it and realize how delicious it actually is.

Fully Agree, anything completely new hits up against old mental models, and ways of doing things.

> Also when someone says their idea sparks fear in them because of the implications this is also a weird thing, because it implies what - a possible result of your idea is dystopia, mass extinction...?

This is fear in me, not about the IMPACT the this will have.

* Are there any strategies people in a similar situation have used to move pass this? *

Remember when Blackberry succeeded in the market by calling their text-messaging device a "two-way pager" even though, technically, it was a mobile computer with modem and not at all a pager?

Chances are you'll fare best by hiding your earth-shattering new paradigm behind a veneer of familiarity. Then nobody has to know you have deep insights no one else has.

Whenever I catch myself believing I have a unique world-changing insight, I just need to think some more to then realise what is ignorant/grandiose about it.

(As an example; the actual reason for wars is not ideological, or "hate", or failure to communicate, or anything such. It's just "fighting for resources".)

1. been through this process of "falsification" Yet the logic is sound. 2. It could be self-delusion (possible)

Hence have been testing assumptions.

Honestly, reading this post, I think I can validly extrapolate that you should be asking a therapist about this and not Hacker News. Outside of that, are you afraid of people calling you crazy or are you afraid of people telling you that you're _wrong_?

You should act on it! Your insight is important and valuable, but it’s just a starting point. Read some startup literature on validating problems. I recommend The Mom Test. You will want to talk to people to understand their existing behavior, without imposing your vision on them. Once you’ve elicited this from people, you will want to assess whether your conceptualization of the world was right. It might turn out that people were warring because it gives men something to feel manly about. Then your conflict resolution approach will have no effect. If you have validated that the problem exists, then the journey starts. You will have to figure out how you’re going to deliver your solution, how to promote it such that your audience will be receptive. Etc etc. But start with problem validation and be prepared to kill your precious vision at the altar of truth.

You seem like an idealist. So let me say two things:

1. don’t reject startup advice or business advice. Whatever your noble vision of the world, it will need a delivery and distribution mechanism to spread it. That will look like business and marketing. If you’re averse to it because it is “impure” you will only hinder your efforts.

2. It doesn’t matter if the world is not as it “should be”. Let’s say people are building swords because they just like fighting and feeling manly. It doesn’t matter that there is a theoretically better way to resolve conflict. Accept the world as it is and be humbled. It is you who was wrong, not every other person in the world.

Just spill the beans! If it's that different, it'll be hard to make it happen, so people won't just "steal" it.

1) I would love to hear your idea.i won't call you crazy but I may point out the issues with the idea.

2) Try not to care about other people calling you crazy. If you can't then talk to people anonymously

Can this be applied to a small group (for example an island in your tataoine example) or everyone in the word must agree?

Is this about a technology change or a political change?

Yes it can be applied to a small group (i.e it can be scaled down). i.e there is a plan to start small, but also grow big.

Can you start it without ruining your finances, or you must quit your job and sell your home?

The problem with your example is that there are still a lot of people making swords. The idea of "lets have a talk instead of fight" is nice, but the peace won't last long when there's someone making swords for everyone who disagrees with you.

To keep peace you need bigger stick than the others..

Note: I cannot edit, so see my comments below.

Looking for people who have experienced similar self-doubt, and how you moved pass this.

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