Smart people will think your idea is stupid | Hacker News Reader

Smart people will think your idea is stupid

13 pointsdavemel3712 comments

When the printing press was invented 93% of the population was illiterate.

The first guy to own a fax machine, what did he do with it?

Smart people will look at the world around them and think your idea has no place in the world. They will discourage you and insist your idea is stupid. Maybe even they are right...for today at least.

What about tomorrow?

Want to know if your idea is worth pursuing? If you believe in it enough to ignore the smart people. If you believe enough to work on a stupid idea for the slight chance of making something great...

Go, Do Something Stupid! Invent the printing press. Change the world.

-adapted from Seth Godin speech at Authority Intensive 2014.

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"When the printing press was invented 93% of the population was illiterate."

Assuming Seth Godin meant Gutenberg: Printing press was invented at the time when demand for books was raising and old methods were not sufficient anymore. Gutenberg was in printing business at the time of his invention.

Also, Gutenberg was financially unsuccessful.

"The first guy to own a fax machine, what did he do with it?"

Just a guess: He probably brought multiple of them and used them to fax documents within his own company. That would be useful and I can see market for that.

They were trying to create functional fax machine for years before succeeding, so there must have been something apparently useful about it.

The first fax machine was made using synchronized pendulums and large pieces of paper with black and white rectangles.

They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Sometimes, smart people will think your idea is stupid because your idea is, in fact, stupid.

While it's certainly possible for smart people to be wrong and for a "stupid" idea to work out great, this seems more faux-inspirational to me than anything else. Genuinely smart people tend to have very good reasons for believing your idea might not work, and to just entirely disregard the thoughts of all people who think your idea won't work seems counter-productive. That's not to say they can't be completely wrong though, but so can you.

I think the point is less about whether your idea is smart or stupid... that detail is irrelevant.

What is important? Action is important.

You are better off pursuing a stupid idea than not pursuing any ideas.

"You are better off pursuing a stupid idea than not pursuing any ideas."

How much does it cost to pursue that bad idea? If it is for free, then you are right. If it costs to pursue that idea, then you might have been better off pursuing nothing.

if by cost you mean the potential gain minus the potential loss, than you might be right.

However, if you mean cost without factoring the potential gain from failing (and ignoring benefits like "an object in motion tends to stay in motion") than I would have to disagree.

You are much better off taking action on a bad idea than guaranteeing failure by never taking action.

You are mixing up skeptics and blockers, this coming from a deeply, fundamentally sceptical person. Blockers block any new idea, and there is no way to move or convince them. Skeptics will doubt everything you do - very much like a blocker does - but good arguments can move a skeptic. Basically, I'll just block and doubt everything you say until you fought me and convinced me enough... at which point I will become your best ally.

The problem arises when logic indicates its a stupid idea, but in reality we just lack the information to know that it really is a great idea.

Stupid people will also think your idea is stupid. First to market is extremely overrated. You don't even need an original idea. Proper execution and luck are what you need.

I agree, smart people do tend to have a negative outlook of ideas that originate from sources they tend to underestimate. But I would warn against a gross generalization.

I still think Twitter is stupid/vapid...

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