Regarding time, it seems to me that the attitude with which an idea is embraced has as much to do with its credibility as the amount of time spent on it. God is plausibly the idea which has had the most time spent on it, but not very successfully. Most of Newton’s time was spent on it, for instance. In philosophy, concepts from evidential decision theory to epiphenomenalism have absorbed massive effort by capable people. In a more practical domain, so have essentially all ideologies and movements, yet the intellectual output of almost all ideologies and movements seems to rapidly level off.
Also, I don’t think that your objection to the co-CEO issue works well within Robin’s usual frame of status-competition. If co-CEOs are needed for decision making, just hire two non-twins, but if you are looking for incredible productivity as a status symbol twins are advantaged. Many companies, but particularly the Virgin group, clearly benefit from this.
For a clearer case, if you can tell a VC that you completed 4 Bachelors degrees in 3 years while working half-time and coding some open-source software, then twins who hired a third party to play them in the open-source community have a huge advantage.
Regarding time, it seems to me that the attitude with which an idea is embraced has as much to do with its credibility as the amount of time spent on it. God is plausibly the idea which has had the most time spent on it, but not very successfully. Most of Newton’s time was spent on it, for instance. In philosophy, concepts from evidential decision theory to epiphenomenalism have absorbed massive effort by capable people. In a more practical domain, so have essentially all ideologies and movements, yet the intellectual output of almost all ideologies and movements seems to rapidly level off.
Also, I don’t think that your objection to the co-CEO issue works well within Robin’s usual frame of status-competition. If co-CEOs are needed for decision making, just hire two non-twins, but if you are looking for incredible productivity as a status symbol twins are advantaged. Many companies, but particularly the Virgin group, clearly benefit from this.
For a clearer case, if you can tell a VC that you completed 4 Bachelors degrees in 3 years while working half-time and coding some open-source software, then twins who hired a third party to play them in the open-source community have a huge advantage.