If its a big idea, break it down into smaller pieces and try to prototype smaller parts - eg before organizing 100m, see if your idea works on 20 people. Also, try to boil the big idea down to an actual example where it does/does-not work or apply.
Also - review the history/literature of your idea. This is key. You will always find historical analogues for just about any idea you can conceptualize. Someone will have had the same or similar idea before, and it will likely be in the historical record somewhere. Read the history, to go further, faster.
And if the big idea is worthwhile, share it with others and get their views - but try to use your ears to listen. Don't listen with your mouth (as so many do).
Recognize also that big ideas and results that come from them, often start - in science especially - from careful observations of small anomalies. Try to pay attention to see things that others miss - often these micro-observations are both the source of and can hold the solutions to something that turns out to be really significant.
Also, if the big idea is also a problem, you might benefit from using the tricks and techniques of creative thinking algorithms of De Bono - invert the idea, transpose with random phrases, etc.
And final comment - beware of "big ideas" that are just sophistry and obfuscation. You deal with those by using courtroom techniques to pull out the truth, and show that your counterparty is either just "talking his position", or perhaps outright lying.
Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#22If its a big idea, break it down into smaller pieces and try to prototype smaller parts - eg before organizing 100m, see if your idea works on 20 people. Also, try to boil the big idea down to an actual example where it does/does-not work or apply. Also - review the history/literature of your idea. This is key. You will always find historical analogues for just about any idea you can conceptualize. Someone will have…
that was a superb set of brilliant advices... ty for your time to answer it
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#23As a consultant, breakdown the problem into to its constituent pieces ensuring that each part mutually exclusive, completely exhaustive (MECE) this approach helps to make sure the entire solution set is covered, nothing should be missed out or overlap. Of course this can be difficult when the solution set is extremely open ended or broad,but it's good for organising ideas
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#24What's the goal? If you want to just stop thinking about it, write it down somewhere.
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#25I post big ideas on Twitter and see if anyone bites.
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#26> What is the best way to organize a liberal democracy of >100M citizens?
Start by defining "best".
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#27If its a big idea, break it down into smaller pieces and try to prototype smaller parts - eg before organizing 100m, see if your idea works on 20 people. Also, try to boil the big idea down to an actual example where it does/does-not work or apply. Also - review the history/literature of your idea. This is key. You will always find historical analogues for just about any idea you can conceptualize. Someone will have…
Scale variance of complex systems: a solution that works for 20 people rarely works for 200k or 20M people.
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#28When confronted with this question:
> What is the best way to organize a liberal democracy of >100M citizens?
Ask yourself this: Can you reformulate the question into questions that make more sense?
Who can/should organize a liberal democracy of >100M citizens? What are relevant criteria to assert that a liberal democracy has been organized in "the best way"? Is it possible to agree on a fixed set of criteria? Is it possible to draw a model that matches reality? What game rules are you going to feed your model? Can you discern first principles that you're going to agree on and keep to build on top of?
The more questions and follow up questions you ask, the more concrete/tangible your answers will become.
Also, ask questions about yourself too. For instance, which biases can you identify with yourself? Are you able to avoid them?
In this case: how do you want to answer "best way"? If you are seeking an answer in absolute terms, then you may risk ending up in a logical tarpit discussing the existence of objective truth. Here you have a red flag: Is this question even a complete or answerable question?
So, it helps to question the question itself too. Maybe you need to bend the question before it can yield a worthwhile answer?
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#29I described my approach to large new projects here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896237
For more free thinking the best thing is to keep it in the back of your mind and stay close to a notebook at all times. With several similar ideas they will cross-pollinate and put you in a mindset to explore them further.
Re: Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?
#30I think a useful reference here is the idea of "wicked problems", which is a kind of problem where the structure of the problem makes it hard to solve - because you cannot even know what a solution is until you make your problem statement more precise (but by that point, you have already determined a solution). This is not the case for all "large" problems, but it's definitely a case for organizing a liberal democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem