I've noticed this phenomenon in two friends, one who went to law school and the other to business school. I've always bounced start up ideas off of these guys, since well before they started their programs. All too predictably, the law guy now tends to bring up legal issues first thing, and the biz guy pokes holes in the financial model (both of these guys used to simply attack the idea directly). It's their new pair of glasses at work.

Playing to your strengths is a tried and true strategy...

Once every three months or so FSJ says something that makes people laugh and think (the rest of the time he settles for just making people laugh).

This one struck me as summing a well-known phenomenon up rather well, and with a catchy phrase to go along with it.

I think it already had a catchy phrase: "If your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails."

This phrase has the added benefit of explaining the point.

Agreed. The FSJ thing takes a lot of words to say the same. Maybe its a bit of a grab for credibility.

Oftentimes judgment is clouded by prior experience as FSJ describes.

Unfortunately our dear fake Steve has setup a bit of a strawman. No core idea is disputed, just the qualifications of those trying to approach the problem.

EnerNet and other negawatt proposals attack the same kind of inefficiencies in power utilities as once plagued circuit switched telephone utilities. The two problems are actually analogous, which FSJ hasn't analyzed at all.

eh, i think that one pair of glasses likely leads to cross-pollinization across disciplines which does help us solve problems. in my world, negroponte can bring his laptops to africa, some education expert will bring their knowledge of teaching/classroom dynamics, etc, and all this will be brought to bear on the problem of poverty. competition of ideas will lead to the incorporation of good aspects of these theories and we'll be on our way. the fact is that existing orthodox strategies in these fields have failed which is why solutions from other disciplines are proposed.

Sneering is not an argument, ad hominem circumstantial is not evidence. Fail.

a statement my mentor said once

'People who have made money, think they are really smart in all areas...'

it applies here.

The fundamental fallacy of capitalism is that the monetization of an idea is the only accurate measure of its worth.

Having not thought about it much before, I found the "Metcalfe's Law is Wrong"[1] article more interesting.

[1] - http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/4109

I thought this idea was generally known as "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

or (with credit to Steve yegge) "when all you've got is c++, everything looks like your thumb"

If your going to have one pair of glasses, it should be logic.

If you get two, make it logic and awareness of the immediacy of death.

Most of everything else will fall out of those two ways of looking at the world.

I'm not sure logic will work for your "one pair of glasses". Logic won't help you deal with people because people are rarely if ever logical. As far as awareness of the immediacy of death; well I believe that death is simply part of life - so that won't work for me. Although if you mean awareness of the immediacy of death - as in Carpe Diem - I'm all with ya!

Ad Hominem, dude.

True, but if you are going to go all AdHom on someone, Daniel Lyons/FSJ is probably entirely fair game.

OK, true, although I also threw in the aspect that we don't really know how many pairs of glasses we have ourselves. Also, since FJS is fake, I don't quite see how I can pull an ad hominem on him. It's not like I could attack his personal opinion.

Anyway, yes, I admit it, I really don't like his style. He is a good writer, so why does he have to hide behind the FJS personae (since he revealed his identitiy anyway)? Ad hominen or not, I don't want to take any advice from a dishonest person. Give me xkcd over this any day (why does FJS make it on hacker news???).

ad hominem can have merit, but only when it is funny. otherwise known as "if you're going to insult me, at least make me laugh"