No. No. The steam engine, modern refrigeration and open heart surgery all probably had some naysayers but I don't think they looked like bad ideas to almost everyone. A lot of what qualifies as innovative from your tech community really just might be crap.
From the beginning the complaint with crypto and blockchain is that it didn't fix any problems other than maybe assisting as a tool in laundering/illegal transactions, and it wastes energy to boot. I don't see how the naysayers were wrong.
The metaverse idea didn't even get to the point of hyping a purpose. Nobody even bothered to explain what useful human need or want it fulfilled (beyond what has already been fulfilled for years in gaming).
> But comparing to current state of AI, is sort of comparing to a different stage, where there is the beginning of an early majority
Early majority? That is a bold affirmation.
I think these large language models are pretty neat. I also lived through the first AI winters. I would say the hype at this moment isn't even as great as it was then (especially in the 80s). It is a bit tough to explain for those that weren't there - but numerous knowledgable and intelligent people were convinced that the AI singularity was just moments away.
0: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...
The first cycle was ice huts, basically insulated bunkers where you could get ice through the summer that was collected in winter. This industry got totally replaced by the first of commercial refrigeration, that could generate and store ice from water. Which got disrupted and replaced against, with home refrigeration, someone can make ice at home, or get ice from a bigger version at a store.
The point I was trying to make, perhaps badly worded, was that these disruptions weren't obvious ideas by those in the industry. Otherwise they would have embraced the change technology allowed and rode into the new markets.
We're looking in hindsight, and going it's obvious it's a good idea, because we all have a fridge and can make ice at home. But at the time, those who owned the entire industry, couldn't see it.
Ok, now, can you explain me why anybody would ever want to go in the Metaverse? (In a way that doesn't sound like an indie game or some chatroom created by a small team?)
When and if that happens is anyone's guess, though.
Cool. How about brain surgery? Clarification: how about brain lobotomies?
Without the benefit of hindsight, can you explain how open heart surgery is "clearly" good and innovative while the later is harmful. I mean, everyone knows it's a good idea: it even won a Nobel Prize.
The fact is, everyone only obviously knows an idea was crap or obvious in hindsight.
Many of the indications for open heart surgery are no longer valid or standard of care today, replaced with either vascular access or medical management... and brain surgery is a more fair comparison then a specific procedure (open heart surgery is not a single procedure either), for which plenty of lives have been improved.
Which by the way, lobotomies (temporal lobectomies, but a rose by any other name) are still an accepted treatment for epilepsy. Sidebar: Frontal lobotomies were not without controversy over their well known effects even when they were contemporary.
Neither is "clearly" good nor harmful. I never sought to engage in this black and white thinking.
And to my original point it is completely obvious to me and many in my field why it is beneficial that we should be researching alternative treatments to epilepsy other than lobectomies (which doesn't feel like the final word on epilepsy, as helpful as they have been for some), and this goes for a whole host of neurological and psychiatric treatments in general. Unfortunately the technology hasn't gotten us there yet - that doesn't mean it isn't obvious to me why work in these areas would be net beneficial. And some of those ideas are not going to pan out in the long run, no shit. This is the limitations of technological progress, not some issue of vision.
I don't think the metaverse is comparable as no one has ever explained to me how, let alone Meta, how it is not Second Life with more bells and whistles.
> The fact is, everyone only obviously knows an idea was crap or obvious in hindsight.
Well I have plenty of hindsight for all that shit.
Saying “no” multiple times as if a statement is so absurdly wrong is such a meme at this point and another interesting difference between face to face and online interactions. I can’t imagine having a discussion with friends and someone throwing a bunch of “no”s out.
There is innovating, trend following and what I’ll term trend completion.
Innovation creates new categories. Crypto was innovative. It looks like a losing bet, but nobody can doubt it was daring. Trend completion doesn’t create new categories, but it delivers on a promise. The iPhone is in this category. A product delivered against the incompleteness preceding it. (And synthesising categories.)
Absent that tangibility or specificity you have trend following. Facebook didn’t create the VR/AR category. It hasn’t delivered a product. It hasn’t even described a uniquely compelling vision. It jumped into a fad because others were doing it and then flailed around helplessly while executives penned PowerPoints.
I disagree really strongly with this. Innovative things look like impractical long shots that have obvious upsides but that violate conventional wisdom around what is possible. The smartphone is a great example of this: it was obviously innovative, and the idea was obviously great before it actually became reality, but the practical limitations of hardware made it impossible until one day it wasn’t. Same for generative language models. The real innovation for both of these things is that some element constraining a good idea changes and someone notices and can act on it decisively.
Some version of the Metaverse has always been possible in one form or another, but no one acts on it because it doesn’t benefit the users it depends on for success. The fundamental limiting factor is participation incentive, and technology doesn’t change that.
[1] which I totally don't buy. If you think about the early internet as an example - the vast majority of people I knew didn't _understand_ it, and/or didn't _care_ and certainly didn't have any sense of its future, but no one that I knew thought it was a bad idea. If they thought about it all they thought it was irrelevant to them until they absolutely got it and couldn't get on board fast enough.
But some ideas are obviously bad within that framework. I could invest millions trying to build a commuter-friendly transportation rocket, but that's obviously not worth trying. Any potential critics would almost certainly be right.
And this is in contrast to what YC likes to call tarpit ideas, because there are lots of ideas that look good but everyone who tries to tackle them fails for whatever reason.
So we can say metaverse was a bad bet for Facebook, but that's sort of looking in hindsight at the struggles that tech has and the unknown market. And it appears to be a big bet and lost.
But comparing to current state of AI, is sort of comparing to a different stage, where there is the beginning of an early majority seeing the progress and now seeing the excitement. But go back a couple of years, and more of us would be naysayers, talking about how bad the tech is, or various failure modes.