
Too Young to Know It Can’t be Done - icey
http://steveblank.com/2010/10/13/too-young-to-know-it-can%e2%80%99t-be-done/
======
v21
I read in the Code Book that this was how Clifford Cocks ended up inventing
asymmetric cryptography. In fact, I recently took my books out of storage and
put them on some shelves, so I can quote exactly.

"For the next three years, GCHQ's brightest minds struggled to find a one-way
function that satisfied Ellis's requirements, but nothing emerged. Then, in
September 1973, a new mathematician joined the team. Clifford Cocks had
recently graduated from Cambridge University, where he had specialised in
number theory, one of the purest forms of mathematics. When he joined GCHQ he
knew very little about encryption and the shadowy world of military and
diplomatic communication, so he was assigned a mentor, Nick Patterson, who
guided him through his first few weeks at GCHQ.

After about six weeks, Patterson told Cocks about 'a really whacky idea'. He
outlined Ellis's theory for public-key cryptography, and explained that nobody
had yet been able to find a mathematical function that fitted the bill.
Patterson was telling Cocks because this was the most titillating
cryptographic idea around, not because he expected him to try to solve it.
However, as Cocks explains, later that day he set to work: 'There was nothing
particular happening, and so I thought I would think about the idea. Because I
had been working in number theory, it was natural to think about one-way
functions, something you could do but not undo. Prime numbers and factoring
was a natural candidate, and that became my starting point.' Cocks was
beginning to formulate what would be known as the RSA asymmetric cipher.
Rivest, Shamir and Adleman discovered their formula for public-key
cryptography in 1977, but four years earlier the young Cambridge graduate was
going through exactly the same thought processes. Cocks recalls: 'From start
to finish, it took me no more than half an hour. I was quite pleased with
myself. I thought, "Ooh, that's nice. I've been given a problem, and I've
solved it." '

Cocks did not fully appreciate the significance of his discovery. He was
unaware of the fact that GCHQ's brightest minds had been struggling with the
problem for three years, and had no idea that he had made one of the most
important cryptographic breakthroughs of the century. Cocks's naivety may have
been part of the reason for his success, allowing him to attack the problem
with confidence, rather than timidly prodding at it. Cocks told his mentor
about his discovery, and it was Patterson who then reported it to the
management. Cocks was quite diffident and very much still a rookie, whereas
Patterson fully appreciated the context of the problem and was more capable of
addressing the technical questions that would inevitably arise. Soon complete
strangers started approaching Cocks the wonderkid, and began to congratulate
him. One of the strangers was James Ellis, keen to meet the man who had turned
his dream into a reality. Because Cocks still did not understand the enormity
of his achievement the details of this meeting did not make a great impact on
him, and so now, over two decades later, he has no memory of Ellis's
reaction."

Note that it wasn't just his naivete that helped, it was also his deep
knowledge of a field incidental to where the solution was thought to lie. You
gotta know some shit, too.

------
mceachen
Just speaking as an engineer, not as a entrepreneur-in-training:

Saying "it's impossible" to any decent engineer should be like swinging a
steak in front of a hungry german shepherd. I don't care how old they are.

If they shrug and accept the "impossibility" of a technical hurdle without due
diligence, those same people will be susceptible to "do it this way, trust me,
(I have EXPERIENCE|I'm the ARCHITECT)." Those people should _always_ be able
to at least give a modicum of explanation or proof as to what reasoning is in
play to make something a good or bad idea.

~~~
ojbyrne
Indeed. Now I understand (and can justify) my reaction when someone says "it
should be simple."

------
k0n2ad
"One of the traps of age is growing to accept the common wisdom of what’s
possible and not."

Only if you accept it.

~~~
barrkel
The trouble is, most of the time (i.e. almost all the time), it's more
efficient to assume that the common wisdom is correct. If you don't accept
this wisdom, you'll end up making noob mistakes long after you "should know
better".

It also doesn't help that society almost colludes in this. People are more
forgiving of youngsters making mistakes; they are far more likely to dismiss
the same when the person is older, as they infer that since that person hasn't
learned by now, they're clearly not very bright / good at what they do /
whatever.

~~~
k0n2ad
Point taken - but are we talking about "common wisdom" in general, or "common
wisdom of what's possible"?

~~~
barrkel
I think the common wisdom of what's possible is only broken by breaking one of
the links in the chain of reasoning that makes people think it's impossible,
and all those links form common wisdom in general.

Usually, when you think something is impossible that turns out not to be, it's
because one of your assumptions was incorrect. But looking for the bad
assumption is usually like looking for the bad stone in a pyramid - each
assumption is in turn held up by other assumptions, and so on. And it's made
more complicated by cross-relationships which can add an exponential aspect to
the problem.

Usually, the bad assumption looks obvious in retrospect, but it's seldom that
way before the insight.

~~~
k0n2ad
That being said, I just pulled some stuff out of my code that I really
shouldn't have :) Thought I was going to start a revolution there.

------
keeptrying
The ability to invent has NOTHING to do with age.

Steve Wozniak was a genius at electronics. He had more "experience" in
electronics than anyone else 20 years older than him. He succeeded because he
had the motivation to build something and the knowledge to execute it.

The same is true for every example that he cited. The inventors, in each case,
had much more "experience", within those fields, than anyone else. They used
this to create something new.

The younger you are (ie no family), the more time you have to tinker with
things. And I think this plays a big role.

You can rattle of hundreds of counter examples: Oprah, JK Rowling, Mark Pincus
...

------
sanj
Why do we adulate the young who are too naive to know it can't be done, but
demonize the stupid managers who are too stupid to know it can't be done?

~~~
trustfundbaby
Because the young people, in question, go out and do it themselves, the stupid
managers try to _make_ others do the work based on a vision of things that the
people _actually_ doing the work don't share.

------
mcantor
This reminds me of the anecdote about the math student who showed up late to a
lecture and saw three equations on the board; he assumed they were homework,
so he copied them down and worked on them. When he came to the next class, he
said, "The homework was really hard; I could only solve one of the equations,"
to which his professor replied, "Those weren't homework--those were three of
the most renowned unsolved equations in the field of mathematics." I forget
where I read this, but I have always chosen to believe that it is true,
because, damn... that's awesome.

~~~
wheaties
It was only a single problem in statistics. The professor's name eludes me.
He's still alive and teaching.

~~~
btilly
2 problems. George Dantzig got them both.

<http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp>

------
tel
Blank suggests that youth brings on this attitude, but there are other ways.
For instance, Dr. Fred Jelinek[1] (tragically, recently deceased) made huge
innovations in the field of speech recognition by diving into the field from a
different direction and applying statistical methods where people thought the
only path forward was phonetics and linguistics. It's the total revolution
that underlies huge amounts of speech and language technology we take for
granted today and was only possible by the introduction of a wildly unexpected
idea to an impossible problem.

A implied moral being to tackle problems you really shouldn't have any reason
to, I suppose. It might be life changing.

[1][http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/09/remembering-
fred-...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/09/remembering-fred-
jelinek.html)

------
edw519
Great subject. Of all the things we talk about here at hn, sometimes I think
this may be the most important. The best lesson my mentor ever taught me was,
"I didn't know that I couldn't do it, so I did it." I think that this
attitude, as much as anything else, helps us accomplish great things.

I've always had a problem, though, with the implied correlation between this
attitude and age. I imagine we all have lots of counter-examples: younger
workers who don't believe something's worth trying and older workers who are
relentless in trying new things.

OP mentions lots of 20 and 30 year olds with can-do attitudes on very
ambitious projects. From this he infers that older workers don't think the
same way.

Let me suggest an alternative conclusion: anyone in the 40's or 50's with such
a can-do attitude is probably extremely successful and therefore, less
available. Most of the workers I regularly encounter in their 40's and 50's
have jaded attitudes. The go getters are still out there, just harder to find.
So when you do find them, you've struck gold. Heavy experience and great
attitude make a formidable combination.

~~~
lkrubner
I feel like Steve Blank is talking more about how much time people have been
in an industry than how old they are. He writes:

"Knowing that “it can’t be done” because you can recount each of the failed
attempts in the last 20 years to solve the problem can be a boat anchor on
insight and imagination."

This wouldn't really apply to people like me who switch careers when they hit
30. The tech industry was all bright and shiny and new to me when I first took
an interest in it at age 31. Steve Blank is conflating age and time spent in
an industry.

~~~
arethuza
"recount each of the failed attempts in the last 20 years to solve the problem
can be a boat anchor on insight and imagination"

Anyone who thinks like that should read some Karl Popper on the weaknesses
inherent in inductive reasoning.

------
ramen
"I once asked Ivan, 'How is it possible for you to have invented computer
graphics, done the first object oriented software system and the first real
time constraint solver all by yourself in one year?" And he said "I didn't
know it was hard." \-- Alan Kay on Ivan Sutherland.

------
Alex3917
"Too Young to Know It Can’t be Done"

I think more common than this is that young people don't understand that just
because you have a good product doesn't mean you have a good business. So
they'll build a bunch of crazy stuff with no business model, or start a
business with 10% margins, and 99% of them will fail but occasionally one of
them will work out.

------
dangero
"And if they’re really strategic older founders hire engineers in their 20′s
and 30′s who don’t know what they’ve been asked to do is impossible (exactly
the strategy of my partner Ben at E.piphany.)"

That sounds a lot like age discrimination to me. He should be careful saying
things like that, because it's illegal to hire based on age in the US.

~~~
Tamerlin
He's probably advocating that for the same reason that EA and Amazon prefer
junior developers: they're more willing to tolerate being treated like slaves
than seniors.

------
wheaties
This is exactly how the Helium-Neon laser came about. At the time there were
published articles on how infeasible a gas based laser was to create. The
researcher who came up with them didn't know about the papers and hadn't done
a full literature search. He just plugged away. Now they're widely used and
adopted for most everything.

------
kia
While I agree with this, it should be noted that unfortunately many of these
young people fail. And sometimes they can't recover from their failures.

------
agentultra
_Accumulated experience can at times become an obstacle in thinking
creatively._

And other times it can be an aid. Many good ideas need time to circle around
in one's head until they meet the right inspiration. See the popular talk,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU>

I'd say that not knowing something cannot be done isn't always the best
approach. Those instances where it worked out seem serendipitous at best. One
cannot rely on ignorance to get them through the day, surely.

------
nadam
Let's take the probability distribution of how much money people make with
their projects. I think if we take the set of young people then this
distribution has extremely big variance. I think that this distribution for
experiened people has much smaller variance and I guess it has a bigger
expected value.

I can higlight it with a game industry example: for every John Carmack there
are thousands of young programmers who start their game engines but fail. And
even if John Carmack was quite young when he became successful, he was not
inexperienced.

Those thousands who cannot make the extremely big hit become more experienced
and try to optimize for bigger expected values. And I think they are right. We
have only one life. Taking risks is essential to success, but you can very
easily live your life without success if you take only huge risks all your
life.

tl;dr: 'Is it possible to do that?' is a bad question. What is the probability
to successfully do that? Is better. And experienced folks have much better
answers for the latter question than inexperienced folks.

------
MrFlibble
Young or old, people often suffer "analysis paralysis" and cannot take that
first step.

I think this old joke sums it up.

A woman prays every day, "Oh lord, please let me win the lottery." Months go
by, years go by and still nothing. No matter how often, how loud or how hard
she prays, she still doesn't win the lottery. Finally one day in tears she
cries out, "Why won't you let me win the lottery? I've been good, I've been
faithful..."

A voice booms out of the clouds... "First You Have To Buy A Ticket!"

TL;DR If you don't put yourself into the game you cannot lose, but you cannot
win either.

------
chrischen
It's really naiveté. More experienced "smarter" people will know how difficult
some task really is and may not even start it. Someone young is likely naive,
perhaps over confident in the simplicity of a task, and will drive head on
into solving it. Of course once progress is made that becomes motivation to
continue.

This doesn't mean that being naive is perfect. The majority of the people who
try the difficult task will probably still just crash and burn, but the
naiveté compels more than normal numbers of people to risk it in the first
place.

------
jdp23
Totally agree that accepting the conventional wisdom that something is
impossible, or getting trapped in looking at how everybody else has failed to
accomplish it, is a boat anchor on creativity.

On the other hand, realizing that a problem is trickier than it seems on the
surface, and leaning from others’ attempts to solve it (including what worked
as well as what didn’t) is hugely valuable.

It’s a choice everybody makes for themselves, independent of age.

------
andrewnimmo
This is an overly sentimental and nostalgic treatment rather than an objective
view of how things get done. It would be more insightful to consider the
effort, connections, training and education, and no doubt stubbornness and how
they can affect an outcome rather than focussing on some fanciful, spooky
notions of a rose-tinted world where travelling to the moon isn't rocket
science.

------
gamble
No one remembers the people who scoffed at those who said it was impossible,
only to discover it really was impossible.

Also, keep in mind that the boy genius entrepreneur is a stereotype that
really doesn't apply outside of the software industry, if it even applies
there. The average entrepreneur is over 40, and the average age of
_successful_ entrepreneurs is even older.

~~~
sblank
Actually the meme that the "average entrepreneur is over 40" comes from a
Kauffman Foundation report that is a great starting point for a discussion.
However, it needs to be read very carefully.

The founders referenced in the study are not the typical venture/angel funded
technology startups. According to Krisztina Holly, one of the reports authors,
“only 11% and 9% for VC and angel financing.” It’s those 20% that I would
classify as “Scalable Startups” and where I am really interested in
understanding the founders ages.

The rest of the enterprenuers fall into a category I would call “small
business.” Nothing wrong with that, but it makes the age comparison an Apples
and Oranges discussion.

In summary, the Kauffman report, which lots of people now use to point to the
fact that entreprenuers average age is 39, may say that. But it may not. There
is not enough information in the current report to understand the founders age
in technology startups who get risk capital.

steve

------
dbrannan
I believe part of the issue is what was not possible previously is now
possible due to better tech, faster processors, more available memory, cheaper
development than in the past. So, yes, a younger generation may give it a go
anyway not fully understanding that 10 years ago writing a larger query like
that was probably a bad idea.

------
zbruhnke
Some of my best brainstorming sessions turned out to be things that weren't
technically "legal" but damn were they fun ... this article is oh so true. As
a youn tech professional I know how true this can be and how refreshing a
younger mind can be at times .... great article

------
danbmil99
One way around this is to change careers, or at least your subspecialty, at
least once a decade.

------
Mz
Some of my favorite quotes/comments on the topic:

"Fools go where angels fear to tread" -- "Maybe god is just waiting for a
fool." -- (something I read somewhere, I think)

" _Impossible_ means it just hasn't been done before." -- (something my
youngest son says -- he may have read it somewhere)

"There is always a first" -- (from the Kung Fu TV series, the old master
indicating they will accept him into the priesthood even though he is not
full-blooded Chinese)

"Ignorance is bliss" -- (something I often say about overcoming the long list
of problems my oldest son had/has, in part because no one gave me the long
list of frightening and prejudicial labels he qualifies for until well after I
had done all kinds of things other people say cannot be done)

"While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done." --
Helen Keller

"What? Like it's hard?" -- Elle Woods/"Legally Blonde", in reply to her ex-
boyfriend expressing surprise that she got into Harvard law school (the even
bigger punchline is she finds out later he was wait-listed and his daddy had
to make a call whereas she got in on her own merits)

------
lovskogen
Duplicate, flagged.

~~~
almost
You should post a link to the story this is a duplicate of rather than just
posting "Dup!".

~~~
lovskogen
I'm sorry.

~~~
almost
It's not too bad, I just thought you'd like to know why you were getting the
downvotes :)

~~~
lovskogen
I've learned my lesson ;-) Thanks!

