Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by stockboss 973 days ago
what would have happened if Mark Zuckerberg saw the failures of other social networks and "learned from experience" and didn't create Facebook? these billionaires keep trying precisely because they've succeeded in areas where others have failed, so they believe they can do it again. are they always right? no, but eventually someone will come up with something that works. if no one ever tries, no one ever will.
3 comments

What failures did he learn from? The other two social networks at the time, Friendster and Myspace were both hugely popular still when he launched Facebook.
> what would have happened if Mark Zuckerberg saw the failures of other social networks and "learned from experience" and didn't create Facebook?

The world would be a much better place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

Even setting that aside, your premise doesn’t hold: you can’t “learn from experience” by watching others. The whole point of the phrase is that you have to do it yourself to learn.

> if no one ever tries, no one ever will.

That's not enough. Repeating the same stupid ideas again and again and again without learning from past failures is not a viable approach.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

They're not the same ideas, they don't look a priori stupid, and you won't know for sure until you try.

The only stupid thing is following this absurd "argument" from the article. Kids, stoves. Seriously, what the fuck? Giving up on things after first negative experience is no way to live a life - literally, you would not survive to adulthood if you followed that brilliant idea.

Wishful thinking. "Don't say we can't travel the stars, maybe someone will come up with FTL, you never know until your try, look at the wright brothers", etc.

At some points you have to stop trying stupid things.

Here the stupid idea is thinking education is a solo activity while in truth it's a social one. A 50's multiple choice quiz on papers is the same as a quiz on computers. It's a very small part of what learning is about.