This post by Yvain is my cached thought in response to “Why don’t more rationalists do good thing X?”
Yvain writes:
One factor we have to once again come back to is akrasia. I find akrasia in myself and others to be the most important limiting factor to our success. Think of that phrase “limiting factor” formally, the way you’d think of the limiting reagent in chemistry. When there’s a limiting reagent, it doesn’t matter how much more of the other reagents you add, the reaction’s not going to make any more product. Rational decisions are practically useless without the willpower to carry them out. If our limiting reagent is willpower and not rationality, throwing truckloads of rationality into our brains isn’t going to increase success very much.
I suspect that your limiting factor for being successful at a start-up probably has something more to do with raw intelligence, having a good work ethic and good business partners, making the right connections, or things like being in the right field at the right time [citation needed]. The only evidence I have for this is that in the successful silicon valley start-ups I have observed, the founders have always been hard-working, intelligent people with a reasonable business plan, or at least a solid idea. It seemed that during the period between deciding to found a start-up and actually getting some revenue, there was a lot of hard work and not a lot of rationality used. Maybe you could use x-rationality instead of hard work (or in addition to it?) to be more successful? I have not been able to identify this happening at any point.
Edited for formatting and to add some more content.
In that case, the first step before making a startup is to research how to boost your willpower. Maybe people are simply not creative enough here, and only try a few obvious choices (which includes Beeminder and HabitRPG). Instead of… I don’t know, spending 10 minutes brainstorming a list of 12 crazy ideas, and experimenting with each of them for a month.
This post by Yvain is my cached thought in response to “Why don’t more rationalists do good thing X?”
Yvain writes:
I suspect that your limiting factor for being successful at a start-up probably has something more to do with raw intelligence, having a good work ethic and good business partners, making the right connections, or things like being in the right field at the right time [citation needed]. The only evidence I have for this is that in the successful silicon valley start-ups I have observed, the founders have always been hard-working, intelligent people with a reasonable business plan, or at least a solid idea. It seemed that during the period between deciding to found a start-up and actually getting some revenue, there was a lot of hard work and not a lot of rationality used. Maybe you could use x-rationality instead of hard work (or in addition to it?) to be more successful? I have not been able to identify this happening at any point.
Edited for formatting and to add some more content.
In that case, the first step before making a startup is to research how to boost your willpower. Maybe people are simply not creative enough here, and only try a few obvious choices (which includes Beeminder and HabitRPG). Instead of… I don’t know, spending 10 minutes brainstorming a list of 12 crazy ideas, and experimenting with each of them for a month.