New industries come from crazy people (2021)

https://www.palladiummag.com/2021/02/02/new-industries-come-from-crazy-people/

by jacobobryant • 4 years ago

114 93 4 years ago

RagnarD• 4 years ago

"Crazy" here is just a euphemism for: Well out of the ordinary. Should it be surprising that the ordinary, the mundane, the average, the rock-no-boats, never accomplish great things? Why would they? Those who're complacent about the world as it is - or worse, sneeringly nasty at anyone stepping beyond the status quo - have no ability to be a Henry Ford or a Nikola Tesla or an Elon Musk. Why would such minds be limited to just building a business? Of course they aren't ordinary.

mikrl2• 4 years ago

I don’t think they mean ‘crazy’ in the mentally ill sense because nothing could be a bigger detriment to leadership than the irrational outbursts associated with manic episodes and the crushing inability to function associated with depressions.

Although Elon Musk likes his LSD or so I’ve heard, and a ‘trip’ is basically a self induced euphoric psychosis which can be compared to a schizophrenic episode.

LBJsPNS2• 4 years ago

Spoken like someone who has never dropped acid before. Schizophrenic episode indeed.

sammalloy6• 4 years ago

Although Elon Musk likes his LSD or so I’ve heard, and a ‘trip’ is basically a self induced euphoric psychosis which can be compared to a schizophrenic episode.

You might want to revisit the literature. That idea, known as pychotomimetism, is an old one, and was disproved in the case of LSD many decades ago.

However, you are not solely to blame as the mainstream drug literature continues to promote this error (much of it is bunk), and even the Wikipedia page on pychotomimetism continues to list LSD (without a source, of course).

Although it’s been a while since I took a gander, I’m fairly certain that the leading researchers stopped treating LSD as a psychotomimetic in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The idea you are defending came out of the 1950s. A lot has changed in our understanding since that time.

The more current paradigm for LSD borders on its therapeutic and entheogenic properties, which are admittedly difficult to categorize and verbalize beyond certain metaphors, analogies, and mythological symbols. As an atheist, it interests me, because when you take LSD, you realize that this experience is the root of religion.

And if you’re someone who considers themselves religious and you’ve never had a psychedelic experience, well, you’re missing out on an opportunity to truly understand what religion is and what it’s all about, and how it works in the human mind.

The experience itself goes far beyond that oddity, of course. In addition to that insight, you will also receive a new perspective on the arts, as every imaginable design, pattern, and image will appear during your trip.

There are, of course, many other highlights one could discuss. For me, I’m convinced it helped me recover memories from my childhood, and some people will tell you it can lead to closure on things in your life by promoting acceptance and peace of mind. Obviously, it’s not for everyone, and should be used wisely and with caution, just like anything else.

croes3• 4 years ago

the ordinary, the mundane, the average, the rock-no-boats

Most great things are accomplished by them, often by teams of them. They don't just run around and brag about their success.

For instance Polio wasn't nearly eradicated by people like Musk, it where hard working ordinary people.

BTW most of the things attributed to Musk are done by his employees, the ordinary guys who never accomplish great things /s

mmsimanga3• 4 years ago

I think you are conflating things here. The gentleman who came up with the polio vaccine is the "crazy" person who decided not to accept the status quo. That polio should be literally a death sentence. I am not saying the hard working people who administered the vaccine should not be acknowledged, they should be but we cannot equate administering the vaccine to inventing the vaccine.

ClumsyPilot• 4 years ago

Exactly, most things are acconplished by scaling an existing solution to billions of people.

Danitation was created by digging thousands miles of pipes, nanufacturing billuons of toilets, designing facilities to produce billions of bars of soap.

Peolle is sillicon valley run in circles chasing innovation in transport, but more than half of high speed rail in the world eas built over the past 9 years in china. 90% of eorld electric busses run in china. India has probided toilets for 600 million people. All of that required soneone to pick up a shovel, and political will to organise shoveling.

bawolff2• 4 years ago

Yeah, but people definitely thought variolation (for smallpox) was crazy initially.

I think the idea is crazy people make the proof-of-concept, non-crazy people perfect the idea.

With the important note that things getting moved forward by crazy people is not the same thing as saying most crazy people move things forward. Most do nothing of note.

amelius• 4 years ago

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

worldsavior• 4 years ago

Finally someone says it. Always felt like it.

crazygringo• 4 years ago

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

— Reinhold Niebuhr, the Serenity Prayer

LBJsPNS2• 4 years ago

"And the strength to bury the bodies deeply."

Matumio• 4 years ago

Ah, the Serenity Prayer is so confident. No process of trying or stumbling. Never doubting the wisdom you learned. Asking god to grant it, just like that. Well, you can pray.

taeric4• 4 years ago

I get a large distaste in my mouth when reading pieces like this. Supposed "crazy" people can be found everywhere if you expand your definition enough. Passionate, would work as well. Somehow contriving that the "crazy" ones are the ones that successfully expand and create industries feels way too selection biased. Especially since there is nothing learnable from the examples that are picked.

Worse, it ends with:

     America was not always the only country that permitted breakthrough industrialists to build unproven new industries and upend the economic order, but it is today.

Which is at sharp odds with every story of how expensive construction is in the US compared to what we call developing nations. Or nations that typically give wider authority to the government builders than the US does.

sneak• 4 years ago

* some kinds of unproven new industries (excluding construction/housing)

As someone who has a US passport, loves cities, and lives half the year in the US, this is particularly frustrating to me. It seems that no matter how wealthy or powerful you become, it's still basically illegal to build innovative things on land you own in the US (anywhere near other people).

tw98521358• 4 years ago

That’s true in most countries, you need to pay off government officials/protection. That can either be done legally or illegally but it has to be done.

mmsimanga3• 4 years ago

Interesting. In my home country in Africa building in the cities and towns is also quite difficult. There are all sorts of regulations along with corruption you have to deal with. From as far back as I can remember most people still wanted to own a house in the town or city. It was seen as more prestigious. We would bear with it and eventually build your home. However in the last 10 years or so with availability of solar panels and drilling boreholes being cheaper I have noticed a shift. People now migrating back to the villages. Two main reasons, the land is free and there are no building regulations. The village headman allocates you your land and you good to go. There are some rules to follow with how deep your pit latrine needs to be but that's about it. There has been an explosion of all sorts of building designs in the villages, some good and some not so. But lack of regulation has been good. Oh final note another "disadvantage" with building in village is that there are no title deeds. Homes are passed down to kids or other relatives

echelon• 4 years ago

how expensive construction is in the US

We're in a pit of success. Our workers cost a lot, and that's generally a good thing.

We could lighten regulations and import immigrant workers, but the real turnaround will be when automation finally teaches construction. AGI or robotics or whatever. Give it 50 years and costs will come right back down.

taeric4• 4 years ago

Sorta? My understanding is most of the cost is in regulatory compliance, combined with less exercise of imminent domain.

That is, construction was cheaper back when we had no regard for the people that owned or had interest in the land we were constructing on. The so called "spite mounds" of the Seattle regrade are a good example. Some were literally for an owner that was out of town. Not sure that kind of crap should fly.

twblalock3• 4 years ago

Construction costs are only one aspect of the US economy.

Silicon Valley would not have happened elsewhere. Neither would the dot-com era, or a viable electric car industry (proved out by Tesla). Every FAANG is American and their only viable competition is in China.

I don’t know what the next transformative industry is going to be, but I’d be shocked if it came from a risk-averse place like Western Europe.

taeric4• 4 years ago

Faang is definitionally American. :)

Silicone valley would probably also not be possible with modern regulations. But... That has a name. Regulatory capture is far from new. And doesn't require crazy people.

Looking at tech and ignoring how much brain and money power was thrown at nuclear technology is doing a disservice to why the US was so far ahead in many fields for a long while.

WalterBright2• 4 years ago

The success of FAANG in America is, in large part, due to a lack of regulation of the software industry.

For example, I don't need a license to write software, or sell it. I don't need any signoff from regulators. Nor is there a cottage industry of suing software developers. There are no laws specifying how the software is written.

sammalloy6• 4 years ago

Silicon Valley could not have happened elsewhere

I’ve discussed this here before, I think, but SV could have happened in the UK, as they were well ahead of everyone else in some areas. The reason it didn’t, as I’ve been repeatedly told by people who live there, is because at that time they had an entrenched culture that was "anti-anorak", or against hacker culture. The funding wasn’t there because proto-hackers were looked down upon by the establishment as powerless nerds incapable of furthering societal progress. On the other hand, SV happened in the US because these so-called anoraks were given a chance that bore fruit with a large defense budget to further the post-WWII era of technological development.

honkler• 4 years ago

is this supposed to be a surprising insight?

lkrubner4• 4 years ago

Consider the agricultural revolution of the early 1700s, Charles Townshend, walking around after his cows, noting every poop, taking detailed notes about every poop, and then a year later, what grew where that poop was, and what were the cows eating when they created that poop? His neighbors certainly regarded him as eccentric, having such a fascination with poop. And yet the whole modern world is indebted to him for his odd obsession. And likewise, Jethro Tull's obsession with designing a machine that could replace the workers his father and grandfather had worked with.

gamblor9563• 4 years ago

Townsend developed the 4 crop rotation system, not fertilizer.

lkrubner4• 4 years ago

Do you understand what the 4 crop rotation system is? The key thing is what he did with animals on the fields that were fallow. He brought in animals and had them poop on the fields that were fallow, so in future years they'd be more productive. The poop is a key part of the 4 crop rotation system.

crooked-v• 4 years ago

And likewise, Jethro Tull's obsession with designing a machine that could replace the workers his father and grandfather had worked with.

And who would have thought that he could win a heavy metal award with a flute? The man was a true innovator.

mbg721• 4 years ago

If you think that was good, just wait until you hear about Chris Columbus.

mellavora• 4 years ago

yeah, flutes aren't even heavy!

<side note> If I remember how the band Jethro Tull got its name, it is because they had to change the band's name after every gig. The band was that unpopular, and would be told to never come back. Until one day they got lucky, and that day's name was Jethro Tull.

mkl95• 4 years ago

With the current interest rates and inflation, those people will also need to be well off to even get started.

thinkmcfly• 4 years ago

or you need a vulture capitalist to come in and steal 49% of any good idea

kosasbest• 4 years ago

Something often said: 'We don't use the word crazy around here'. I'm sorry but bandying around that word is vague and misleading. Authors really need to be more specific. This is why we have distinct terms like ADHD, Neurodiverse, Eccentricity, etc.

johndhi• 4 years ago

Disagree. Seems like a useful word and the article title conveys its meaning quite well. The multiple interpretations of 'crazy' are exactly what makes the title interesting. Crazy looney or crazy like a fox?

andai• 4 years ago

I think the gist is that people who think differently are often thought insane, but are also disproportionately the ones who will stumble upon new and useful ways of doing things.

dinkumthinkum2• 4 years ago

Neurodiverse, that’s just leftist propaganda. It’s like calling someone “vertically challenged” or something equally silly. People use the word “crazy” in this context and we all know what it means unless we are very pedantic or completely unaware of words having meanings other than the most literal, dry definitions. But if you read English in that way then articles like this are not for you, really, which is not an attack. It’s just there for most people, we want to read more engaging content that something that reads like a 1970s instruction manual.

aortega• 4 years ago

Be careful with the redefinition of words, as it's a basic 101-mind-control-technique.

civilized2• 4 years ago

As always, seeking lessons by studying only the successful suffers from nasty selection bias. Maybe most new industries come from crazy people, but you're probably not one of them. Most crazy people just lose everything being crazy.

sammalloy6• 4 years ago

Most crazy people just lose everything being crazy

Rich crazy people are known as eccentrics, precisely because they don’t lose their wealth and safety net.

heavyset_go• 4 years ago

Agreed and there's a big difference between having a weird idea and mental illness, and it's strange to see them conflated.

Most people who end up like Kanye, for example, don't become insanely rich, they end up alienating everyone in their lives if they don't take care of themselves, and eventually end up in prison, institutionalized, homeless or dead.

afarrell• 4 years ago

This is an important thing to keep in mind when engaging with institutions which make most of their money from outliers. Their incentives are not aligned with the stability of your mental health.

(Though they don’t follow their incentives perfectly because institutions are still made of humans who care about people)

Juliate• 4 years ago

Exactly.

No one is an island.

The supporting network around you also plays a significant part.

relativ575• 4 years ago

And as usually the case when people brought up selection bias, or survivor bias, you made the assumption that he only studied the successful. He never said he did.

I agreed that most attempts to invent new industries ended up in failure, by either crazy or regular people. That's because it's insanely hard to do so in the face of competition by the incumbents, not to mention going against the opinion of logical and well reasoning smart people, who are of course right 99.9 % of the time. For those who succeeded however, they are crazy -- as defined by the author -- most of the time. I think that's what the author intends to convey. If you can think of any new industry that invented by "normal" people who work within the system, I'd love to hear.

civilized2• 4 years ago

I am discussing what was actually written - that is what "study" refers to in my comment. The article talks about only the successful.

I see no point in speculating about what the author may have thought about but omitted from the article.

bjornsing• 4 years ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mtftHaK9tYY

college_physics4• 4 years ago

As individuals we need some reassurance that our actions matter and there is no better way to achieve that than to identify "great men" (somehow these characters are always male) and posit that they somehow managed to single handedly change history.

Thinking is systems, discontinuous, non-linear collective phenomena precipitate social changes like a breaking wave. Invariably somebody will be at the cusp and a smaller number might even have the energy, ruthlessnes and thick skin to survive there for a longer period.

This makes them no more "responsible" for a new industry than a molecule is responsible for the existence of the wave. But paint that well placed molecule with a fluerescent marker and it does a good job identifying the location of the discontinuity.

This is really the main role of the "crazy people". To signal to the silent "normie" multitudes the existence of a shock front.

colechristensen3• 4 years ago

Nonsense, there are plenty of circumstances where a lone person or small group was responsible for great change. The thing that’s missing from people’s attention is that usually this change was ripe and if not one person, another would have come along in a short time. The many occurrences of scientific discoveries happening completely independently at almost the same time demonstrates this.

And there certainly have been great women, too often somebody else got credit for far too long, but there have been plenty.

Khun, summarized, said that (in science but really applicable anywhere) development tends to happen with long periods of many people making incremental changes interspersed with short bursts of paradigm shifts where the basic assumptions change… often led by small groups or individual outsiders.

college_physics4• 4 years ago

The thing that’s missing from people’s attention is that usually this change was ripe and if not one person, another would have come along in a short time

This is more or less what i am saying. When conditions are ripe for change, change happens, irrespective of whether there is a "crazy person" around or not. Individuals mostly make a small difference in timing.

dinkumthinkum2• 4 years ago

Why do you say they are always male? That just sounds like leftist propaganda as well. I’m not sure yet the rest means other than I think you deny the reality of this phenomena described.

college_physics4• 4 years ago

All the examples in the post are male and there is even a "great man" theory of history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

scaredginger• 4 years ago

I think 'crazy' isn't the right word here. I'm not a psychologist, but I think a lot of this behaviour is consistent with autism or ADHD

kleer001• 4 years ago

And 'crazy' is the non-pc word for that umbrella of non-standard neurotypes that are just-barely normal-ish. Crazy is a fine word. Let's not hop on the euphemism treadmill.

hooande• 4 years ago

"Having a different opinion than the consensus" isn't the same thing as "crazy". The article does this for many of its examples. It's tautological that people who start new industries do so by questioning the status quo. But simply having a different point of view doesn't make you a crazy person.

postsantum• 4 years ago

Crazy is the knee-jerk word when you need to describe heterodoxy. If you spend more than a second to think about it, you might come up with different words. But not "crazy", which is effectively a placeholder

bawolff2• 4 years ago

"Crazy" is informally used to mean acting outside the norm - e.g. "i had a crazy idea" when people say things like that, they do not (neccesarily) mean crazy as in have a mental health problem.

hamdouni• 4 years ago

Marie Skłodowska Curie wasn't "crazy" and her radium extraction method from pitchblend ignited an industry

New industries come from crazy people (2021)

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