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by Tycho 5551 days ago
You're jumping the gun. The good ideas tend to be the ones which people bother to implement. You don't just pick an idea at random and go for it.

If you want to say 'the true value of many ideas which startups are based upon cannot be determined very easily due to conflation with other variables (luck, timing, expertise, effort)' then fine, but just say that (though that is hardly a problem exclusive to measuring the worth of ideas). What I object to is this 'good ideas are worthless' doublespeak which butchers logic and the English language.
1 comments
bad_user 5551 days ago
First, you should reread what I said -- no, you don't pick an idea at random, and ideas can have a negative impact on your product (it's right there, in my comment).

    'good ideas are worthless' doublespeak which 
    butchers logic and the English language.
The article says:

    People have to realise that an idea is worth 
    nothing. A good idea with great execution has
    value, but without this execution, it’s worthless.
And it is the truth, simply because ideas cannot be classified as good or bad until the implementation happens. You can't call someone out for stealing your idea, if you're sitting on in from 2009, and not doing anything about -- in this context, the idea is worthless.

If you don't think it is -- try having a "good idea" and then sell it.

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Tycho 5551 days ago
You don't pick ideas at random, but then you can't classify them as good or bad either? So how do you pick them?? Random also matches up with your lottery analogy.

The logic of the article's statement is still flawed anyway.

    A good idea [without great execution] [is] worthless.

    A good idea is worthless.
^ That's what the sentence reduces to, and it's nonsense. And talking about selling is a massive oversimplification of the issue.
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bad_user 5551 days ago
IMHO, that's not a possible reduction -- things have value with context attached (what is value anyway without context?). And if evaluated by boolean algebra, it also doesn't compile as ... second statement implies first statement, but not the other way around, unless first statement is false ;)
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Tycho 5551 days ago
Sure, a value must be rooted in another concept, ie. it must be a value to someone (ultimately they'd judge it in the context of does it improve their life, although a whole chain of other values may be necessary to reach that point), but so in turn must value judgements such as 'good' or 'bad' be in the context of value. (Which was my original point.)

For instance we have images of far away galaxies that don't exist anymore, you certainly cannot sell one of them and they have no value to us - so it would be ridiculous to talk about faraway nonexistant galaxies being good or bad.

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