Maybe there are better ways to come to agreement on the feasibility of discovery. Perhaps we should look at the success rate of startups? Do you have other ideas?
From lsusr’s response to my comment above, I think they’re saying that learning new skills makes you more able to recognize the right problems to solve, as well as to execute on potential solutions.
So there is a prediction here. Learning a new skill will be more positively correlated with identifying better ideas than they had before, as compared with an equal investment of time deepening a skill they already possessed.
How can we operationalize this?
One way is that we could create a dataset of startup founders. We’d look at their age and the number of previous companies they’d founded or worked for. Optimally, we’d find a way to quantify how different from each other these companies were.
lsusr’s framework might predict that, controlling for age, founders who’d worked for a greater number and diversity of companies would achieve greater personal wealth than those who’d worked for a smaller number and less diverse range of companies.
Because this is a loose heuristic, with a solid argument in both directions, I think we should insist on careful data-gathering in a carefully operationalized manner before we accept anything as more substantial evidence than the plausibility-supporting anecdotes we already have access to here.
I base my estimate of the feasibility of discovery on my personal experience of startup (and non-startup) entrepreneurship. The number of worthwhile projects I can pursue is way higher than the number of projects I have time to pursue. For example, I coded and deployed an ML-based language learning app that I use for self-study but I don’t open it up to the public because I’m working on more important projects.
Maybe there are better ways to come to agreement on the feasibility of discovery. Perhaps we should look at the success rate of startups? Do you have other ideas?
From lsusr’s response to my comment above, I think they’re saying that learning new skills makes you more able to recognize the right problems to solve, as well as to execute on potential solutions.
So there is a prediction here. Learning a new skill will be more positively correlated with identifying better ideas than they had before, as compared with an equal investment of time deepening a skill they already possessed.
How can we operationalize this?
One way is that we could create a dataset of startup founders. We’d look at their age and the number of previous companies they’d founded or worked for. Optimally, we’d find a way to quantify how different from each other these companies were.
lsusr’s framework might predict that, controlling for age, founders who’d worked for a greater number and diversity of companies would achieve greater personal wealth than those who’d worked for a smaller number and less diverse range of companies.
Because this is a loose heuristic, with a solid argument in both directions, I think we should insist on careful data-gathering in a carefully operationalized manner before we accept anything as more substantial evidence than the plausibility-supporting anecdotes we already have access to here.
I base my estimate of the feasibility of discovery on my personal experience of startup (and non-startup) entrepreneurship. The number of worthwhile projects I can pursue is way higher than the number of projects I have time to pursue. For example, I coded and deployed an ML-based language learning app that I use for self-study but I don’t open it up to the public because I’m working on more important projects.