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Louie comments on What topics would you like to see more of on LessWrong? - Less Wrong Discussion

25 Post author: Emile 13 December 2010 04:20PM

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Comment author: Louie 14 December 2010 02:20:21AM 7 points [-]

As an entrepreneur, this strikes me as an incredible waste of our community's intellectual ability.

Being an entrepreneur is like being a rapper. You need to deal in the narrow band of ideas that are just good enough that you can make them look ridiculously popular, but also terribly flawed enough that customers need to pay you for a new version of your stuff next quarter. And these great looking, deeply flawed ideas have to be something that you can use to destroy markets with near monopoly powers.

I'd rather see Less Wrong explore actually good ideas... not business ideas.

Also, good entrepreneurship is the ultimate combo of every "dark art" that people repudiate on this site. Just for starters, it requires TONS of self-deception + other deception if you expect to have the motivation to work on it or the investment needed to succeed.

However, I could be wrong here. The alternative of working for others is even worse. It gives you terrible incentives to improve yourself (or even maintain yourself) since you get no improved earnings for better performance... merit pay raises are a joke.