Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?

I don’t think any answer to this question will be satisfactory, as it’s just too easy to say “yeah but what if THAT TOO falls apart?” You just have to figure out how to deaden that questioning of yourself to some extent. There are always going to be a million reasons why you can and probably will fail, I agree that you shouldn’t pretend they aren’t there.

For example, with question driven development in this context it was related to learning how to build a web application in a new programming language or web framework in an efficient way.

But I think the same thing can be applied for a lot of things. It boils down to breaking things down and solving each sub-problem as it comes up linearly and then you bust out Socratic questioning to really explore a specific sub-problem to understand it better.

So for learning a new language one of the first questions you might ask is "how do I install xyz language", which you tackle on the spot. Then you move onto the next question which might be "how do I install xyz web framework", and then you move to the next thing. Before you know it, you're a few hours into learning and you already solved basic things like how to get things installed, have a project generated, maybe respond with HTML on a couple of URL endpoints. Not only have you solved these problems but you have something to show for it too.

Independent of question driven development, Socratic questioning has been one of the most valuable things I learned in the last couple of years. You can think of almost anything, big or small and attack the problem with the same set of questions. It almost works like magic when you combine both for learning and applying something where you're trying to reach an end goal.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/learning-a-new-web-framework-...

[1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-tod...

First, I think it would be naive to think there's any sort of formulaic approach that works for all large questions or ideas. Nor will the same approach work for everyone, or even a notable group of people. With that said, here are some generalizations that may help:

- Your most valuable asset is the perspective of others. When you can, talk about ideas with others and you may be surprised what results. Reminder: read the room and audience. You want willing participants in good spirits, not an annoyed or begrudging focus group :)

- Make sure to zoom out often. For my entire philosophy, I have an outline that fits on a half a page, even if each bullet point can be expanded to an entire essay. Keeping an eye on the big picture allows you to ensure all of the pieces are consistent.

- Keep some sort of documentation of small ideas / notes. I have an entire "idea log" that I transfer from my phone's notes app (filled randomly through my life) every month or so. It's a good way to ensure you don't lose smaller nuances you may encounter. This then requires a "synthesis" on the other end to re-examine these. Often over time, your feelings towards these notes can change and that can be interesting in itself.

- Sometimes I even copy entire conversations into the doc if they are digital. Full context is important. Same goes for links to articles, essays, and books. Think of it as informal citation you can go back to. I spend a good deal of effort cataloging my media consumption (tv, movies, and books in particular) for this reason.

- Scheduling or forcing time to work on ideas tends not to work. If you choose to schedule time, it should be to explore and flesh out details of an idea you have a decent deal of hope or confidence in, not to "brainstorm" for new ones IMO.

I would say the first half of my approach resembles that of a librarian or archivist. I collect sources, perspectives, and various ideas I think of or encounter. Then I sort and organize these. The other half then becomes the synthesis, which is typically more sitting down to write and explicitly focus.

Based on your question, it sounds like you may be trying to do more "synthesis" while you're out and about. I would perhaps recommend focusing on the micro level more when you're out and about, and then see what sort of building block or base that lends later. If you try to tie everything together on the fly, it may limit the development of new ideas you encounter that could actually dramatically shift where your big picture is currently if explored more.

Again, to overstress this, everyone thinks differently. Find what works for you, and don't expect there to be a formula or a strict regiment that will make everything easy for you!

Abstraction gets rid of the irrelevent minutiae of the specific problem and gives us the opportunity to solve the more general problem first. There may be a series of increasingly abstract representations of the problem, like a hierarchy classes in OOP.

My (rather vague) understanding of mathematicians is that they have a menagerie of increasingly abstract math objects (sets, groups, categories), and are able to apply proofs from the more abstract objects to any of the derived objects. This seems to work well for them.

So, if possible, try to solve the problem at the highest abstration layer first. If you don't suceed there then try to solve it at the next layer instead. If you do succeed, then you have a general solution that applies to that abstraction layer and all layers below it (possibly with tweaks, like overridden methods in OOP).

Wrt the specific question ("what is the best way to organize a liberal democracy of >100M citizens?"):- This problem is already fairly abstract, but first, define "best", "organize", and "democracy".

-We can only know a solution is best if we first find all solutions. Depending on the problem, this might not be worth the effort, an aproximate solution might be adequate.

-In this context I assume that 'organise' means getting the population to do something.

-Quite a few countries have elections, are they all democracies?

Some relevent questions to consider are:

-Is the aim to get the population to all agree on an action?

-Is there a clear benefit to a proposed action, or is it subject to unknowns?

-Is the population rational?

-Do they understand the advantages of action?

-Are there any disadvantages of action? Do they understand those?

-In general any solution is likely to have a number of different aspects each with their own costs and benefits (monetary cost, time cost, health cost, ...)

-Are all members of the population equally affected by the advantages and disadvantages, or are subsets affected unequally? This is likely to be unanswerable, given that individuals are likely to assign different costs to different aspects.

-Can they be coerced? (Yes, liberal democracies coerce too! think taxes on carbon fuel for example).

In a problem that compares apples and oranges and shellfish and pyramids, "The best way to organize..." seems to depend on the whim of whoever happens to be pulling the levers of power; there is no best solution to this.

this would get me to a point where i could inquire into the meaning of organize .. in this case probably realizing that there's sufficient self-organization that i'd have to think about needs/support and self-emerging structures.

at that point we could look at how the situation differs from the understanding implied in the question.

its only after i get my and the questioner's terms and models straight that i could begin to define some kind of scale to deal with someone's idea of best in order to work on generating 'deliverables'.

at least for me its best to become an expert in the things i want to change before suggesting changes in or to them; if i don't do that, or start from or with any kind of enthusiasm engendered by the power vested in me by big questions, good outcomes tend to move toward the vanishing point instead of forming solid new baselines.

but thats what you're suggesting the questioner do by having them question the use of the subjective term 'best'. right? :)