> But overambitious is only obvious in retrospect.
I disagree. If you're trying to do, say, implement five revolutionary things no one's ever done all at once, so you can tell people you're going to go from zero to sci-fi in a couple years, there's an extremely high likelihood you're being overambitious. That's something that's obvious from the start.
> Go tell that to Thomas Edison, I guess. Or Nikola Tesla.
The vast majority of people, including engineers and business leaders, are not Edisons or Telsas. Sometimes people get lucky or they have unusually well-resourced and competent teams to tackle an unusual amount of stuff at once. That's why I qualified my statement with "there's an extremely high likelihood..." Given Neuralink is facing "a federal probe and employee backlash" over shoddy practices, I highly doubt they have the unusually well-resourced and competent teams to not be overambitious.
What's an example of Edison or Tesla doing multiple "revolutionary things no one's ever done all at once"? I'm genuinely interested, but details matter a lot. For example, the Edison company's contribution to electric light was mainly extending the life and reducing the amperage of light bulbs. Other people had already demonstrated the potential of electric light.
I disagree. If you're trying to do, say, implement five revolutionary things no one's ever done all at once, so you can tell people you're going to go from zero to sci-fi in a couple years, there's an extremely high likelihood you're being overambitious. That's something that's obvious from the start.