>Are you suggesting that it is difficult to judge what ideas are great and what ideas are idiotic

that's quite an arrogant thing to say and probably will rub a lot of people the wrong way.

but let's give it the benefit of a doubt.

Let's say that there is a quality greatness separate from the qualities of likely to succeed, easy to implement, monetizable and so forth

where idiotic is concerned I would wonder if this is a quality separate from physically impossible, illegal, has obvious undesirable side effects? Is being guaranteed of business failure for an idea you hope to build a business on make that idea idiotic?

Now once we have this question as to what exactly comprises greatness and idiocy in ideas we can say there are many intelligent and successful people who have thought an idea was brilliant and would be hugely successful (two qualities we have separated), which idea then resoundingly failed.

The Segway comes to mind. I remember when that was first revealed, I thought hey this thing is genius, amazing. I sent it round the office, everyone had a big laugh about how stupid it was, including our lead designer who went into a big tirade about how people have bikes (in Denmark), Americans should just get bikes, they were not going to redesign their cities to accommodate the Segway if they don't redesign to accommodate the bicycle etc. etc.

So, was the Segway an idiotic idea, a brilliant idea, or a mediocre one?

I submit it was both brilliant and idiotic.

Our designer who saw the idiocy did not see how we would end up with the computerized autobalancing of the Segway in everything (except evidently bikes), how we would have autobalancing electric scooters, skateboards etc.

the people who saw the technical brilliance of the Segway did not realize how it was just not going to be a successful consumer product.

So - would you have judged the Segway as Brilliant or idiotic or just mediocre, and why?

on edit: clarification, fixed some grammar

The underlying idea made sense. It just looked incredibly dorky compared to the small unicycle things I see zipping around these days. I remember back in the day people used to joke that only an American would be willing to use those things.

That said it will only worsen the obesity epidemic

No, that's not what they're suggesting. That's a straw man that begs the question. They're suggesting there's no such thing objectively. Not everyone agrees on what's great because it's subjective and different people value different things. You're trying to reify your taste and in the process confounding your subjective values whith objective values (which can't exist.) PG does the same thing in one of his essays, whereupon this was repeatedly pointed out.

"Not everyone agrees on what's great because it's subjective and different people value different things."

You are confusing people's disagreement with the competing definitions of "objective" and "subjective". These are separate things. Something can be objectively true and yet people will still disagree about it. Objectively, vaccines for Covid-19 can lower the risk of death for those who get a case of Covid-19 -- people disagree about it, but it is not a subjective question. Objectively, Darwin's theory of natural selection explains much of the development of the diversity of life on Earth, but people still reject the theory. There are many objective facts in the world that people still disagree with, because some people are irrational. What you seem to be confused about is the role disagreement plays in determining whether something is objectively true, which is to say, it plays no role at all -- many things are objectively true, yet fiercely contested by irrational people. The fact that irrational people exist does not mean that everything in the world is subjective, it only means that some people have some experiences which they experience subjectively. George Orwell made the remark that some people could not be brought around to facing to reality till their wrong beliefs were tested on a battlefield, and it is true, if you shoot someone in the brain, the argument that everything is subjective comes to a sudden end.

Except we know for a fact people value different things. It is undeniably subjective. No, you have no argument here. People disagree because they value differently.

You are simply playing with words in a manner that is pointless. There are clearly objective facts about this universe that can be plainly stated. And there are rules of logic that allow us to objectively identify certain sets of assertions as containing a contradiction. Therefore, as I said above, “Are you suggesting that it is difficult to judge what ideas are great and what ideas are idiotic? I actually find this easy.”

Nope. I value different things than you value, because we feel differently about different things (subjectivity!) That's it. It's not complicated.

You keep making the same mistake, which is to assume the existence of feelings disproves the existence of an objective reality. Reality exists outside of our feelings.

Feelings are the only way anyone values anything. There is no evidence of any other kind of value. It's as invisible and non-existent as any god.