Off-topic: way cool to see the name Antero Alli mentioned on HN! Which of his books have you read? I am currently reading Angel Tech and The Eight-Circuit Brain.
A fairly normal person might decide on New Year's Eve that, this year, everything is going to change. "I'm going to stop watching TV, I'm going to eat only healthy foods, get plenty of exercise, and spend 8 hours a day working towards my goals."
But, of course, that person won't do most or even any of those things in a sustained way. The reason is that the person's second order desires, feelings like the impulse to eat ice-cream or the urge to put off making a certain phone call or writing a particular program, those desires are almost always more powerful than first order desires (like goals or ideals).
That's because our behavior is ruled as much or more by subconscious motives as conscious ones, and those subconscious motives aren't governed by the decisions we make or the picture we have of the life we want. They're ruled by an imprint of your childhood, by habit, and by anxiety, depression, and so on.
Another easy example is addiction. It's not that most alcoholics don't want to stop drinking. They can't, because their second order desire to drink is much more powerful than their first order desire.
I've known this was true for me for some time, but this year I really came to understand it and see it happening throughout every day of the year. And I realized the extent to which this dynamic dominates most of the people I know, and how difficult or impossible it is for anyone to overcome their subconscious motives with conscious ones. It's very, very hard and very emotional work to address your subconscious and most people aren't interested in doing it. So the patterns that govern their lives just continue, and they can't gain any freedom from their own conflicts.
You know, in a way he is not that wrong. Bad things often are necessary for good things to happen. Crime may not the best example, though. But a good example would be striving for excellence. People who come from the rock bottom are often insanely driven to reach the ultimate heights. People who are happy and mellow by default most often don't feel the need to do so. Kind of like how a grain of sand irritates an oyster into making a pearl.
Many tech guys on HN often ask: what use are business co-founders?
Superior domain knowledge would be one thing. If I'm going to team up with a business guy, I want him to be a top notch expert in his field.
There's a tendency for tech guys to discount domain knowledge, believing that it's just a matter of "hacking something out in a weekend, after all it's just a matter of shovelling data" (I used to fall into this trap myself - now I know the value of domain expertise).
Domain knowledge is money-printing sauce in so many industries.
I think the reason young hackers often dismiss domain experts is because they associate the idea of domain knowledge with old people who don't get tech. It's true that most old business people don't understand technology, but it's also true that most young hackers have no clue how to make money.
Now if you can combine domain knowledge with the ability to recognize the potential, and have a realistic vision for the novel application of technology, then you have gold. It might not be the most grandiose idea, but it's 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more reliable than trying to be the next Google or Facebook.
tldr.io seems nice, anyone tried it?