Hacker News Reader

Comment by quantummagic | Hacker News Reader

Pragmatically speaking, a half-assed answer now, is often better than a perfect answer tomorrow.

Something like the time value of money. But on the other hand, a bad answer can have negative value. Although "wrong and early" is better than "wrong and late".

If “wrong” breaks things, then late is better than early.

Quite often the only way to know if you're wrong or right is to start building it.

I don't know. There's a lot of instances where the first movers lose because they were a bit wrong and others learned from their mistakes.

Yeah, we live finite lives. Time is the one thing the vast majority of us aren’t getting more of. Of course speed is a priority. This isn’t a “capital” thing, it’s a fundamental part of the human experience.

> the vast majority of us

Is that a reference to the "live forever" people trying to solve aging?

No, but I do think modern medicine occasionally grants a few people more time than they would have had otherwise. New cancer therapies, evolving treatments for cystic fibrosis, etc.

Very hit or miss if you’re in a group whose life expectancy sees substantial improvement in your lifetime though.

We aren't improving the world by releasing a firehose of slop. It's possible to use your limited time to destroy or extract value instead of creating it.

The flip side of that is, why spend your finite life in a way that's not enjoyable? If the experience of constantly being under pressure to deliver, to go faster, to work more, to produce more, isn't enjoyable - then it's a waste of a life.

Speed itself isn't the priority. You've got to ask what the direction is. If you're working on a project that is meaningful to you personally (maybe because it is very meaningful to others you care about!) then you'll want it to be done.

There is pleasure in completing things. In actually producing something, and moving on to the next thing. It isn't enjoyable to have paralysis by analysis... too afraid to take the next step, because you have less than perfect information. In the pathological case (since we never really have perfect information), there are people who never get anything done.

Depends what the cost of failure is.

If you're designing powerpoints or entertainment software; perhaps that's true. In the worst case you'll be embarrassed for producing AI slop or lose some revenue.

If your tool has the power to seriously harm or inconvenience people if built wrong, then it's just investor-fuelled myopia.

Yes, but a grand prize result being awarded to an AI slop submission is not it. It deteriorates the legitimacy of the whole contest if all that matters is convincing an AI rather than critical reviewers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com