The (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth: Why our lack of experience is a good thing

http://many.corante.com/archives/2007/05/19/the_bayesian_advantage_of_youth.php

by danw • 19 years ago

13 12 19 years ago

many.corante.com

gibsonf12• 19 years ago

If this theory is true, that the advantage of young entrepreneurs is their lack of experience and hence lack of knowledge about what could possibly go wrong, then age is actually not the issue, it's experience in the field. So for older entrepreneurs (30+) that are entering the tech startup world for the first time, they would share the ignorance benefit (assuming this is a benefit)

danw• 19 years ago

I suppose you could also say that reading news.YC makes you a worse entrepreneur! You're learning the rules that others before you have held true instead of just making up your own from scratch.

gibsonf12• 19 years ago

Damn, you're right. I'm outta here! :)

ced• 19 years ago

This works when you want to revolutionize a field, but a lot of the web is much more incremental. Experience should be an asset. Look at Jobs.

mdakin• 19 years ago

The world is not a bag of marbles and it didn't change over night.

Making something people want involves two main constraints: the making and the people.

Human nature has remained constant for thousands of years (read some of the Latin or Greek or Chinese classics and you'll likely agree).

The art of 'making' is shifting faster but perhaps not as fast as some people try to make it seem. Lisp is a 50 year old technology and it's still viable today. The Internet is 45 year old technology and we're still only beginning to realize its potential.

If you are a smart, flexible person doing something you love "experience" will only make you more effective.

zach• 19 years ago

This is like the fifth Clay Shirkey article I've read over seven years or so, and they've all been rambling and uninteresting. I guess I'm too old to read any more.

phil• 19 years ago

I'm pretty skeptical too. I don't think Clay gives nearly enough credit to people's ability to learn new things and forget the past.

I asked the two nearest people (one young, one old) the VCR/PC and radio/phone questions. The old one answered telephone without hesitation, and had to think about VCR. The young one did just the opposite. And, Mike Ramsay was in his 40s when he started Tivo.

startupper• 19 years ago

This writer uses Tivo as an example of something that could not have been founded by older people. Well actually Tivo was founded by Silicon valley veterans Barton and Ramsay. Not exactly young. More like 40+ somethings. Bad example.

machine• 19 years ago

The problem with the colored balls example is that the person drawing the balls from the bag assumes the balls are i.i.d. (independently identically distributed). Put in real world terms, according to the example entrepreneurs believe their field is unchanging. I don't think many entrepreneurs believe this. If the person drawing balls from the bag doesn't make this (wrong) assumption, then he is not at any disadvantage for having seen more draws from the bag.

npk• 19 years ago

The problem is this article is using scientific buzzwords to explain something that can be explained without the buzzwords. 300 years ago, "calculus", 50 years ago FFT, 15 years ago "Chaos Theory, 10 years ago, "Wavelets" and apparently now, "Bayesian statistics."

You raise a good point. I'm afraid that debating the essay on its technical merits will lead you to a fruitless discussion.

JohnN• 19 years ago

the article seems to be suggesting, the older you are, the less original your thinking can be. we know this is not necessarily true but is it generally true? though the "idea" is central to a start-up, older entrepreneurs can add experience if they have dealt with banks, lawyers, vc's, operations, hiring etc in the past. These less glamorous tasks can often be the difference between success and failure. don't write off older entrepreneurs just yet!

bootload• 19 years ago

'... The mistakes novices make come from a lack of experience (kids) ... they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But the experts (grown-ups) make the opposite mistake, so that when a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, they are at risk of regarding it as a fad. As a result of this asymmetry, the novice (kids) makes their one good call during an actual revolution, at exactly the same time the expert (grown-up) makes their one big mistake, but at that moment, that`s all that is needed to give the newcomer a considerable edge. ...'

Interesting. You can see this direct observation with the actions of any child who randomly practice and play with things they encounter to create or do something new. Older, wiser people with years of experience are either bored and see no advantage in play so they don't. Only to realise later that they should have tried this earlier. Is this a natural adaption process that adults outgrow? Is this process a non-optomised way for chance discovery and improvement?

There is also a dark side. Experts are experts for a reason, conservative competence. You don't want your accountant or lawyer advising you on something using trial and error techniques. The lack of experience in some skill-sets will also cause startups to fail ( #14, Poor investor management ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html ). Successful entrepreneurs need to harness playfulness and hope their lack of experience doesn't cause them to fail. Serial entrepreneurs turn the playfulness on or off when required or find alternative strategies to plug areas they don't their inexperience into failure.

Maybe thats why a few grey heads are sometimes an advantage in guiding startups?

The (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth: Why our lack of experience is a good thing

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