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“The greatest problem in life: Knowing enough to think you’re right, but not knowing enough to know you’re wrong.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Thoughts are fragile,” said Sir James Dyson in a recent interview.
He would have known, given the determination it took to protect the fragile idea he’d been pursuing his entire life: a bagless dishwasher.
Dyson initially found it difficult to get money for his idea that he still owns 100% of Dyson Limited, the manufacturer of “cyclonic” vacuum cleaners (which are, in fact, better than those with bags).
Because such ideas are “easily dismissed” by people who know how to fail, Dyson warns would-be designers and entrepreneurs that “professionals are dangerous.”
Experience, he argues, doesn’t just increase knowledge – it increases reasons to 1) not try things and 2) stop trying hard things.
That’s why they hire 17-year-old students to work at Dyson.
“If you’re used to it, you know why you shouldn’t do something or why you shouldn’t do something,” he explains. “Even if you’re inexperienced and a young engineer… you don’t have any problem.”
Having endured such expert indifference, Dyson now appreciates the ignorance he needs to ignore.
He said: “I like to do things irrationally because it makes us do things differently, and we always have to find different ways of doing things.”
Similarly, Henry Ford was told around the world that his different approach was not worth pursuing: The internal combustion engine could not compete with the steam engine.
Ford persisted, of course, and steam engines were soon on the verge of extinction.
“That’s how smart they are,” he wrote in his book the history of his life. They are so wise and helpful that they always know exactly why something cannot be done.
Like Dyson, Ford chose employees with “an attitude where nothing is impossible.”
He said: “When a person gets to be ‘experts’ in mind he warned“many things are impossible.”
Most of the time, those things are really impossible.
But the opportunity cost of not pursuing the impossible is high: Dyson is now a $20 billion company and Ford Motor Company still produces four million cars a year.
Such dubious success stories are proof that, in business, naivety and ignorance can be competitive advantages.
“If I wanted to kill the opposition with unfair means, I’d give it to professional opposition,” Ford said with a laugh. He would have such good advice that I can be sure he would do very little work.
Startup investor Paul Graham makes the same argument, crediting the naivety of youth to tech trends.
“One reason why young people sometimes succeed and old people fail,” he he says“It’s because they don’t realize that they are not wise.”
This lack of awareness helps young entrepreneurs to benefit from the investment strategy – borrowing confidence from what they think will be successful in the future: “When they start working on something, they surpass their achievements,” Graham explains. “But this gives them the confidence to continue working, and their work goes well.”
Dyson, for example, developed his skills if the engineers believed it would help him one year of manufacture of cyclonic washing machine.
It took him 14 years.
If he had known this, it is unlikely that he would have started – so it is good that he does not know.
“Someone with discerning eyes,” Graham adds, “sees their original incompetence for what it was, and perhaps becomes too lazy to continue.”
Dyson was never disappointed.
“I woke up happy every morning,” he recounted of the time he spent creating 5,127 idle pictures. “Even though I know it won’t work, there’s always that chance.”
Don’t change, crypto
Crypto concepts are often easily – and often rightly – dismissed: Luna, memecoins, NFTs.
But I admire the industry’s passion, against the advice of experts, by following them again and again.
Because curiosity, even if it is useless, sometimes pays off: Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins.
Sometimes it is an old idea that crypto revives and there seems to be no knowledge of past failures, as is the case with the prediction markets.
Sometimes it’s an idea that people refuse to let go of – like Zcash.
All in all, it has been a disappointing year for crypto, but the recent success of things like prediction markets and Zcash is proof that corporate youth, ignorance, ignoring experts and unwise persistence are all competitive advantages.
Crypto in 2025 was not as young as it was, say, Jai Bhavnani founded Rari Capital at the age of 18 in 2020.
And these companies are increasingly staffed by professionals who come from traditional finance.
So it would be throwing away some of the crap that Dyson, Ford, and Graham need so much.
But maybe there is a happy medium to be found?
Dyson was encouraged when people told him his idea for a new vacuum cleaner wouldn’t work: “The more it was rejected, the more I realized I had something,” he said, “because they never gave a good reason.”
In 2026, crypto will continue to be told by many experts that it will not work – often with good reason.
His success may be a work that ignores wisdom.
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