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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

A nitpick:

don’t try to identify a precise thing in the future. better model: columbus. “there’s something west. i’ll sail westward”.

I bristle at seeing Colombus propped up as a model. The guy was wrong (he thought the earth was smaller than it actually was, so attempted to sail west as a shorter route to the East Indies), wrong (he discovered the Carribeans, not mainland America), wrong (he still thought he found the East Indies, i.e. south-east asia!).

But alas, actual truth carries less rhetorical power than popular myths.

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You're missing it dude. Columbus' conclusion was wrong when he started, but he had the right instincts to start sailing. This is what PG is saying - you don't know the future, so start sailing in an interesting direction and maybe you'll find something big.

Something about a pivot in there too....

I see your (and PG's) point, and I think he tied it to a terrible example. Basically, Colombus won big despite being wrong on so many aspects. In truth he was just very (incredibly) lucky. Thus I take the point as "do something stupid, you might just get lucky on something unrelated!".

But I understand that PG's real point is "trust your instincts, don't listen to the naysayers, but adapt to the circumstances".

I don't think it should be necessary to be right about a lot of aspects. Going out and discovering how thoroughly wrong you are is a huge achievement.

Even better when your friends can arrange for you to get paid a couple million for that.

With the extra benefit that had Colubus not stumbled upon an unknown continent, he would have died.

I don't think my job is anywhere as risky.

Just curious...who funded Columbus? It's a dream of lot of people to sail in some interesting direction hoping to hit it big. I think it's important to have a vision (however approximate that might be). But not a lot of people can afford to sail towards that vision without caring to achieve shorter-term milestones. In the process though, you may learn something more about the reality that changes/influences your vision...

There are some things you can't say. I'm about to say one of them.

Paul Graham is now a pundit and member of wall st west (Silicon Valley). He has a vested interest in pimping his product - Young impressionable developers. You can take anything he says with an iceberg sized chunk of salt.

Actually, take away the loaded words ("pimping"?) and what are you saying? People have interests so one shouldn't believe everything? That's pretty thin.

It's clear what Paul's values are - he's been writing about them since long before YC. I wish someone like him had been saying such things back when I was a "young, impressionable developer".

If you build a warp drive to reach the unicorn herds of Rigel, will it matter if you discover Rigel doesn't have any unicorns?

The guy was more right than the flat earthers, and his acting trumped any amount of right or wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

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