
Obvious to you. Amazing to others. - sahillavingia
http://sivers.org/obvious
======
AndrewDucker
This is why it annoys me when someone posts a link to some advice on HN, a
bunch of commenters are talking about how they had never thought of it before
and how useful it is, and then someone has to leap in saying "This stuff is
old hat. Everyone has heard of this before. I thought of it myself back in
1843."

Because everyone has to learn some time, and what is obvious to one person
isn't obvious to the next one. And anything which helps people realise
something true is worth repeating from time to time.

~~~
cperciva
_someone has to leap in saying "This stuff is old hat. Everyone has heard of
this before. I thought of it myself back in 1843."_

Aside from the last part of that, I have some sympathy for people who make
such comments. Often ideas are presented as "new" which are covered in any
basic undergraduate textbook in the field; if someone working in the field
isn't aware of these ideas, it simply means that _they didn't do their
homework_.

There's a place for brilliant new ideas, but it generally comes _after_
reading a book (or doing a google search) to check if a problem has already
been analyzed to death.

~~~
Xurinos
At first I agreed with what you said, but then I realized that not only is it
an elitist sentiment, it also misses the mark.

I graduated from a university that is known for its CS department. I can still
remember most of the concepts that were introduced. I can also imagine that if
you work with a narrow slice of that curriculum for 10 years after graduation,
you might forget or get rusty on a good number of unused algorithms or ways of
thinking.

But I have also seen a lot of cases where different universities focus on
different things in their curricula. For example, my university did not
mention the phrase "functional programming", although that concept was well-
known for over 15 years before my attendance. I was blissfully unaware of
first-class functions. This is not new stuff, but several years after I
graduated, I discovered it for the first time.

And imagine my surprise and glee when I discovered over six years after my
graduation first-class classes, multimethods (or generic methods), and the
like. Suddenly, languages like C++ and Java -- which a lot of universities
force-feed their students -- seem very restricting. Yet all this is fairly
basic, just different ways to think about and approach our problems.

The reality is that college can give you only so much, and you must accept
that others coming from other colleges have been exposed to a different array
of concepts and know about those more than you. You have to continue your
career forward where the college left off.

And it sure helps when a place like Hacker News can occasionally bring up
these various subjects. On the one hand, it exposes different people to new
ways of thinking, and on the other hand, it might encourage other readers to
join the field.

This stuff _is_ old hat. But mentioning that and that you thought about it
back in 1843 is a meaningless ego massage that, no, does not deserve sympathy.
In a significant system, you cannot develop alone. Bring others up to your
level, and learn from them, too.

~~~
cperciva
_This stuff is old hat. But mentioning that and that you thought about it back
in 1843 is a meaningless ego massage that, no, does not deserve sympathy._

I agree -- I did say "aside from the last part".

------
xenophanes
> I'll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they
> were playing or saying was pretty obvious.

No, Feynman specifically said it takes a lot of effort and top quality
understanding to explain stuff well enough for it to seem obvious to others.
He didn't think it was automatic.

He further thought, for example, that being a good physicist takes a lot of
imagination to come up with new and different ideas. In other words,
physicists have to think of non-obvious stuff.

It's weird to assume someone who had lots of new and important ideas, and who
put tons of effort into being a clear explainer of ideas, would be someone to
just assume their ideas are obvious.

A sibling comment discusses people who don't do their homework before writing.
I think people should not _talk about public figures_ without doing their
homework -- if you don't know what someone is about just stick to the topic
instead of invoking his name.

~~~
sivers
Great point, and I totally agree. I recklessly picked Coltrane and Feynman as
two extreme examples without knowing their thoughts on their work.

Sometimes little tiny essays like this can be too vague if they use no
examples at all. The examples are never the point, though, and it's assumed
the example will just get translated in the reader's head into their own more
personally-meaningful example.

But FWIW the Feynman interview that I was trying to find was his moment of
seeing the spinning plate, which I think led to his Nobel prize-winning work.
I couldn't find that interview, but I thought I remembered him saying that it
seemed obvious at the time.

~~~
scott_s
The point of the anecdote with the spinning plate is that he was surprised by
the physics of it, once he worked it out. That is, what he thought was
obviously true turned out to not be true.

That kind of playful work - done for the fun of it after a long period of burn
out - got him back on track for the work that eventually led to his Nobel.
Interesting anecdote, but I don't think it's related to your thesis.

------
philwelch
_Hit songwriters, in interviews, often admit that their most successful hit
song was one they thought was just stupid, even not worth recording._

A lot of times, hit songs don't have much depth to them, even if they're
catchy on the surface. A musician is probably perceiving the lack of depth
more than the catchiness, whereas the listeners who make it a hit song
perceive the catchiness long before the lack of depth catches up to them.

~~~
kingkilr
Maybe that's true of "pop" (whatever the heck that means) music, but I think
it's a legitimate statement on musical quality. For example Springsteen just
released an entire album of songs that he wrote back in the 70's but never
published, even fellow songwriter Steven Van Zandt basically said he has no
idea why they weren't released.

~~~
jamesbritt
Brian Eno wrote talked an unreleased album of his, My Squelchy Life, in an
interview:

    
    
        What happened was, I finished a record and as nearly always 
        happens to me, in finishing the record I started to get a 
        glimpse of the next step. There's always a cutting edge and
        a trailing edge to what you are doing. Well, when I 
        finished that record, I knew what the cutting edge was. 
    
        The record was due out in September 1991. And so I went
        straight back into the studio and had begun working on some 
        new material, which followed what I felt was the cutting 
        edge of this soon-to-be-released record.
    
        Then the company said, "Well, September is a terribly bad 
        time to release; can you leave it to February?" And I said, 
        "I don't mind leaving it to February, but I won't release 
        this record then. I'H release what I've finished in
        February, which is likely to be quite a lot different." 
        So that record just disappeared in the mist of time and I 
        carried on working with the new material, and that's 
        what became Nerve Net. 
    
    

[http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/audi...](http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/audio93a.html)

------
jamesjyu
Tangentially related: when you stop yourself from creating a product because,
after hours of research, you find "something out there already that does it".
But, if that existing site/product is so obscure that it took you hours of
research to find it, then they've failed.

It may be obvious to you, because you're doing market research, but it may be
totally obscure to an actual consumer looking for the solution.

------
rlpb
The catch is that while this might apply to some specific brilliant ideas,
most ideas you might come up with are probably not new and not amazing. The
risk is in your own bias of your assessment in the other direction.

Although as startups go, we know that it is all in the execution.

------
bobf
Additionally, things you or I may find easy are often difficult for large
quantities of people who would be willing to pay for it. I've recently become
more self-aware of this, after seeing lots of examples of successful companies
created to solve problems I thought were easy to solve. I'm a sysadmin, so
things like Git repository hosting seem easy to me, but are certainly seen as
genius by GitHub's thousands of users.

------
hkon
I've been thinking about this a lot after I began working as a programmer. I
think my ideas are pretty obvious and simplistic.

But after reading a bunch of books and blogs over the course of a couple of
years. I have come to realize that stating the obvious is pretty hard. And
only a few, will think of the obvious for the many.

------
jasonwilk
We thought WhiteyBoard.com was pretty obvious, but now it's killing it! It's
true, you are your own hardest critic. Let your users decide for themselves
whether your idea is awesome or not. Then listen to your users, because they
will help you make your idea go from obvious to amazing.

------
bliss
It's a fair (well trodden) point, but of course, let's not forget that often
things that seem obvious to me seem that way because quite frankly they are
obvious. I mean this anti-gravity machine I've got sitting here, who would
want that...?

------
Mz
_Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?_

Well, yes and no. My problem is that other people find it so "amazing" it
moves it into "incredulous"/incredible...ie "I don't believe you and think you
are lying" territory. :-/ Still working on figuring out how to talk about my
ideas without going down in flames, being called names, yadda yadda. Phooey.

(And, yes, I still think some of it is terribly obvious and is based in part
on things that are "common knowledge", so I remain somewhat baffled by the
strong reactions.)

~~~
chipsy
I think the convention is that it's "ok" to be amazed by material goods and
observable feats, but it's not "ok" to be amazed by lifestyles, philosophies
and moral codes, or speculative experiments.

A: "How did you make so much money, B?"

B: "I got up early every day, worked hard, kept learning and stuck to my
principles."

A: "But there must be some kind of trick. How did you _really_ do it, B?"

Ego also comes into play, since people lacking self-respect will see
themselves as a static entity seeking outside validation, not a work-in-
progress that grows through achievement. Suggesting otherwise attacks their
blind spot, and they'll tend to react to it as a threat.

~~~
Mz
It seems to me my biggest issue is with individuals who are doing
substantially better than expected and have been amazing other people for some
time but whose achievements fall far short of mine. These individuals are
typically defacto social gatekeepers. It is a catch-22 because offending them
alienates a large number of people but kowtowing to them in order to stay on
their good side would involve agreeing with them at times when I really don't.

~~~
neworbit
Hah. They have enemies. Find them and explain.

If you're talking about Bill Gates, sell to Larry Ellison "Here's how I'm
going to put a thumb in his eye." Or at a more accessible level, tell the same
thing to Calcanis as regards Arrington.

~~~
Mz
Nice idea but I don't think it applies in this situation.

------
seiji
Recent example: Try explaining web app session stealing (to other web
developers or management) two months ago versus now. Two months ago you get
blank stares or outright disbelief, but now you get "oh, to protect against
firesheep? yeah, let's use SSL everywhere."

It was just as obvious two months ago as today, but now people have a one word
conceptual model to use without needing to understand cookies, browser
requests, proxies, broadcast domains, or cross site issues.

Obvious to us. Amazing to the normals.

~~~
scott_s
Hmmm. I agree with your conclusion, but I wouldn't say that Firesheep is a
"one word conceptual model." Rather, it's a concrete instance, _not_ a model.

That was the problem with before: in order to understand the threat, you
needed to have a sophisticated mental model to be able to convince yourself
"Yes, while I am unaware of any actual threats that use this, but I can see
the potential for abuse." You needed to be able to deduce a threat from first
principles. But once an actual threat exists, you get a shortcut; you can work
backwards from the known threat rather than forwards from the system itself.

------
stuartk
This is encouraging to those looking for ideas for startups, it basically
means that someone will find your idea 'amazing' or 'genius'.

The trick is, not just finding 1 person, but many people who think it. And not
only that it's amazing, but so amazing that they'll pay you for it.

On the plus side, this should mean that for any reasonable idea, given the
size of the internet, you should be able to find at least a small bunch of
people that will pay for your 'genius'.

------
xal
This is so obvious to me that I'm amazed that anyone finds this idea amazing.
Pretty meta.

------
ntoshev
I think his advice is correct but doesn't matter in practice. People post
stuff online when they learn something and when they are excited about it
(some people try to keep blogs just for marketing purposes and usually it
doesn't work). If you are a good writer and happen to be slightly ahead of the
mainstream, your stuff gets popular. If you are far ahead or with the
mainstream, or behind - then it doesn't.

~~~
SapphireSun
I dunno man, I have a whole bunch of stuff I'd write up, but the soon as I sit
down, I dispair that anyone would think it was interesting because it was so
obvious. It's happened to me a whole bunch of times. This advice helps in
practice because it's way better to just spit stuff out until you hit upon
something cool than bury it all. The stuff that will last will last.

~~~
ntoshev
If the stuff you'd write seems obvious and boring, you probably waited too
much after you figured it out. I'd say write it up immediately, even if it's
unpolished.

------
deskamess
I suffered from this. I have a couple of ideas that I did not think much of,
only to have it (or a facsimile) go IPO/public about a year later to much
fanfare. I still remember my "private payments between friends" idea which
came along before PayPal. The concept came about after lunches where someone
would pick up the tab for someone else due to "forgot my wallet" syndrome. For
me the trust barrier seemed too high - but ventures like PayPal prove that
people sometimes part with information easier than I assumed. And I never
imagined the size/transaction volume that PayPal would grow to - props to
them.

In the end, execution is the key and it does not have to be perfect on day
one. Half baked can be made 3/4 baked and so on...

------
malnourish
Quite a true piece, this is. Often we feel like this, but what I find more
awe-inspiring is when I feel an idea that I have come up with is great, I meet
someone with a rather similar idea.

------
Spreadsheet
I have the exact opposite. I take a long time and much effort to come up with
an idea, and then find out that it has already been found a long time ago, and
it seems obvious.

~~~
kranner
That sounds like the same phenomenon, actually, not the opposite. Just flip
'you' and 'others'.

------
marv_in
This is a great article but I do wonder if it isn't merely trying to produce
more wantrepreneurs (a term I learned while lurking on HN)

I think almost everyone would feel enlightened by the title but the way the
article is written, it seems it's tailored to inspire those who cannot build
but would want to dream rather than those who can build but feel like the
implementation of a concept is obvious enough and requires no extra polishing.

------
alexyoung
I like trying to see where things that are obvious to me aren't to my clients.

I was recently working on building a mobile app for a web service, and I
suggested to my client that he could open the API and give out the
documentation. He didn't understand why, so I said developers might build more
apps on their platform, or make little things like widgets.

It blew his mind, but it seemed totally obvious to me, so obvious that I
almost didn't suggest it.

------
rguzman
_I'll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they were
playing or saying was pretty obvious._

This is probably true, yet largely irrelevant. Whether someone's ideas are
obvious to them or not matters little compared to how much impact those ideas
have.

~~~
ejames
It may be irrelevant in the big picture, but I think it's quite relevant and
interesting from a psychological point of view that talented individuals
sometimes have difficulty judging their own work because, from their
perspective, it was easy and obvious.

It seems particularly relevant for mental or theoretical work where choosing
the right approach has a great deal of leverage. If "all" you have to do is
"just" look at a problem in a certain way, or examine the equation like so, or
frame the issue from a particular viewpoint, then the resulting breakthrough
may simultaneously be quite stunning to people who didn't think of it and
quite obvious to people who did. Changing your viewpoint is as easy as
deciding to do so - it's a task that doesn't even require the mental effort
of, say, memorizing the dictionary, or similar feats of mental and memetic
agility. But knowing that you can change your viewpoint, and choosing exactly
the right viewpoint to use, is an extraordinary ability that not everyone has.

