Bullshit detection class
For how to improve mid-range strategy.... it seems likely to me that a) the world is severely, severely deficient in bullshit detection skills, and that b) one could teach these skills halfway decently, at least to an audience of very smart people who had regular need to use them (as opposed to random dudes off the street, who I'd expect would rapidly forget it all). Almost everyone falls into one of two traps:
- The first group doesn't realize that 95% of super-ambitious new projects are BS, and winds up falling for stuff like Andrea Rossi's fraudulent free energy machine.
- The second group assumes that all super-ambitious new projects are BS, and winds up dismissing MIT Ph.D Eric Drexler as a crank.
Both are Very Bad, because they kill your ability to fund new technology, but even most professional VCs quickly fall into one or the other. So maybe we should offer a class in Bullshit Detection or Technical Due Diligence or something like that at UC Berkeley, like how we organized that effective altruism class.
A friend had some comments, chat screenshots attached