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Kevin Pezzi, MD

I developed technology to instantly
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such as rapists, robbers, home invaders,
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Iconoclastic views on economics, politics, technology, science, and life.

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

President Obama's home run: the JOBS Act

President Obama signed the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act into law, thus permitting business financing via crowdfunding. Translation? Startups can obtain startup capital from online investors.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) wrote, “After observing how quickly our nation’s leaders were able to learn and embrace a new and democratic form of capital formation, I am more confident than ever that the U.S. will once again retain its title as the world’s most dynamic and entrepreneurial marketplace.”

Scott Gerber said the JOBS Act will give “a whole new generation of aspiring young business owners … access to a new pool of capital that they will be able to utilize to rebuild the American dream, and revitalize the national economy.”

By signing the JOBS Act, President Obama hit a home run. Will his perennial critics give him the credit he deserves for that wise decision, or will they ignore it and say that he continues to strike out?

Notes:

Obama Signs 'Game-Changing,' Crowd-Funding JOBS Act
It's official: Your grandma can soon invest in startups
Popular Science: Crowdfunding Pays Off
Excerpt: “New businesses will be able to make their own IPOs, and small investors could act as venture capitalists.”
JOBS Act: What Crowdfunding Means For Your Startup
Can the JOBS Act Jump-Start Entrepreneurship?
Congress Approves Startup-Focused JOBS Act
Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell: 'There Are Steve Jobses All Around Us'
Excerpt: “ … there are plenty of creative, talented visionaries out there today who have the potential to innovate and disrupt the tech industry just like Jobs did.”
Comment: Yes, there are. The problem is that America's system of capitalism has not expeditiously identified them. President Obama changed all that by signing the JOBS Act.
Book: Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent

From the publisher's website: “When looking for employees, ignore credentials. Hire the obnoxious (in limited numbers). … Once you have them, isolate them. Celebrate their failures. Encourage ADHD. Ply them with toys. Encourage them to make decisions by throwing dice. Invent haphazard holidays. Let them sleep. The business world is changing faster than ever, and every day your company faces new complications and difficulties. The only way to resolve these issues is to have a staff of wildly creative people who live as much in the future as the present, who thrive on being different, and whose ideas will guarantee that your company will prosper when other companies fail.”

Comment: Bushnell's advice is also applicable to finding great leaders and geniuses in general. As I discussed in another article, prenatal exposure to higher levels of testosterone makes people more likely to be eminently gifted with extreme creativity and especially fond of sex. We've seen that in über-geniuses such as Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, and other Nobel Prize winners.

The United States now has a bizarre dichotomy about sex, with an odd inversion of acceptability. If America's current sexual mores were applied to Franklin, the USA would likely not exist.

Abraham Lincoln observed, “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “In heaven all the interesting people are missing.”

H. L. Mencken echoed a similar comment: “The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man—that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.”

People who don't raise eyebrows in church generally don't do anything great. There's a reason for that. The juice of genius can also make men more likely to act like men, not angels. Americans desperate for gifted leaders and creators should consider the inimical effects of political correctness and rigid judgmentalism so they don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
How to Hire the Next Steve Jobs: Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's, gave the late Apple founder his first job. Here, Bushnell shares his tips on finding (and keeping) brilliant oddballs.
The Hunt for the Creative Individual
Excerpt: “Some people are more creative than others and are literally bubbling with ideas, while others rarely or never show signs of creativity. What should we look for when searching for creative people?”
Comment: One of the seven creativity characteristics was “Need for originality: Resists rules and conventions. Have a rebellious attitude due to a need to do things no one else does.” Our society imposes many bizarre rules and conventions with no net benefit. Creative people are more likely to buck them, while others perpetuate them. In Finding the Next Steve Jobs, Bushnell discussed this characteristic and some others mentioned in that fascinating article.
Tactics to Spark Creativity
Excerpt: “Why is it that some people rack their brains for new ideas, only to come up empty—while others seem to shake them almost effortlessly out of their sleeves?”
Why The Inventor Of Pong Says We're More Creative Now
Excerpt: “"I believe we have literally thousands of Steve Jobses," but we don't empower them to create. "Look at the way we treat creative people! We just have to detoxify our companies and we'll have innovation flowing out of the ground like oil."”
Q&A: Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell on Innovation, the “Next Steve Jobs” …
Women are more successful at crowdfunding than men, says ESMT Berlin study
Book: Crowdfunding: The Next Big Thing (using the Internet to democratize fundraising)
For the first time in 80 years, normal people can invest in small businesses
The Basics of Crowdfunding by attorney Romy Jurado
5 secrets to how the Kickstarter cooler’s ‘mad scientist’ raised $9.8 million
New Rules Break Down the Walls for New Angel Investors
Quirky: The Easiest Way To Bring Your Ideas to Life
CircleUp: focuses on angel investments in consumer products companies
Microventures: Connecting Angel Investors and Startups
Kickstarter: “A funding platform for creative projects.”
January 28, 2021: Crowdfunding? Check weather forecast first!
Excerpt: “Investors' moods are affected by gloomy weather. New research from Copenhagen Business School recommends entrepreneurs looking for finance should be aware of the weather forecast at the time they want to launch their crowdfunding campaigns.”
If you back a Kickstarter project that sells for $2 billion, do you deserve to get rich?
Excerpt: “Kickstarter doesn't allow creators to offer equity, and the company has said it never will. But a bunch of other crowdfunding sites will soon be launching to fill that gap. … There are already scores of equity-based crowdfunding sites at the starting line — Wefunder, SeedInvest, and Crowdfunder are just a few — waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue final rules later this year.”
Comment: I say yes, you do deserve to share the wealth.
→ Crowdfunder: equity and investment crowdfunding (Peter Diamandis discussed this in Revolution in Fundraising)
Equity Crowdfunding's First Report Card
Equity Crowdfunding Takes Off: What Your Business Should Know
MAKE magazine Vol 56 April/May 2017: Crowdfunding Cheatsheet
Who Is Equity Crowdfunding Right For?
Top Power Women in US Crowdfunding
Andy Murray prepares for post-tennis career with equity crowdfunding
SEC issues final rules on “General Solicitation of 506 Offerings”
RocketHub: “The world's crowdfunding machine.”
Crowd Supply: “A Crowdfunding Platform and Store for the Next Big Idea”
Indiegogo: “The world's funding platform. Go fund yourself.”
How Indiegogo Is Expanding Beyond Crowdfunding To Empower Entrepreneurs
Open Crowdfund: “Open project to make a crowdfunding portal.”
Opencrowdfund has links to many good crowdfunding portal sites and a wiki.
How To Get PR for Your Crowdfunding Campaign
Linguistic style is key to crowdfunding success
Crowdfunding Industry Spotlight #9: Mark Roderick
Mark Roderick – Crowdfunding Attorney
Mark Roderick's LinkedIn profile
Crowdfunding Cheat Sheet
Why Should Startups Consider Crowdfunding?
Pave: a new investment option.
New Tool Helps Crowdfunders Find Backers and Super Backers on Kickstarter and Indiegogo
Amazon Mechanical Turk: a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace
Why Donation-based Crowdfunding Is Here to Stay (and Growing)
Equity Crowdfunding: Why Did The SEC Leave It Out Of New Rules?
Crowdlending: Anatomy of a successful strategy
Why Britain is beating the U.S. at financial innovation
Crowdfunding: What They Didn't Tell You!
Best ways to get seed money through crowdfunding
FCA new crowdfunding regulations due in 6 weeks! The 4 key changes
Small Business Financing: The Definitive Guide
A First Look at YouTube's Crowdfunding Feature
4 Important Crowdfunding Facts about your Patent Rights on Kickstarter (#4 is “Put the Public on Notice”)
Startups give average Joes a seat at the high-rolling investment table
Finding the Right Tune to Serenade the Crowd
10 Things I Learned By Studying Every 'Shark Tank' Pitch Ever Made
“Small Business, Big Ideas” series
Book: Contagious: Why Things Catch On
Book: Make Your Idea Matter: Stand out with a better story
Do Intellectual Property Rights On Existing Technologies Hinder Subsequent Innovation?
Venture Capitalists Don't Respect Female Entrepreneurs
Why US Companies Are Drooling Over Israel's Amazing Startup Scene
Free Crowdfunding Press Release Template
“Crowdemand is a platform that connects people directly to the designers they love.”
Small investors often make poor investments
Pebble Time Shows Us Just How Much Crowdfunding Has Changed
Once idealistic, crowdfunding is now an unholy hybrid of retail, investment, and risk
Software convenes rapid, on-demand 'flash organizations'
It's not just big business: Crowdsourcing creates a 'win-win situation'
January 13, 2022: Crowdfunders: Who are they and why do they donate?
September 14, 2022: Should crowdfunding be this complicated?

The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Kevin Pezzi, MD

President Obama's home run: the JOBS Act

Notes:

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