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Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

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Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#11

Post by delecti »

jjoe wrote: post #10

Does this mean Reddit is a more auspicious environment for new ideas to flourish? HN is way too confined of a place for "foolishness", that Asimov sees as conductive, to be permitted without things going haywire.

I would absolutely agree with that assessment.

One of the (potentially) negative sides of the same phenomenon is the acceptance of and tendency towards memes. They can certainly be annoying, but a strong flow of memes is indicative of a lot of culture and ideas bashing up against each other until some of the bits stick together in a novel way.

A cleverly applied meme comment on a Reddit thread can easily get hundreds or thousands of upvotes. Front page HN threads don't even get any meme comments, because people here know that their comment would be buried immediately, if not outright deleted (I admit to being much less familiar with the inner workings of HN than Reddit). Reddit threads are definitely a place of quantity over quality, but the sheer volume of creativity swirling around is bound to uncover a couple gems.

All of that said, I've never viewed HN as a place for ideas to be generated. This is a fantastic whetstone with some brilliant minds, but it can also be merciless.

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#12

Post by genericone »

Interesting idea here:

Draw from a pool of people who wish to be involved in cerebratory pursuits, and who are willing to accept and give ideas freely to others. Out of this pool, some combination of 4 or 5 individuals within the same geographical region can be drawn randomly from this group for cerebration sessions following a few Asimov Cerebration Guidelines (ACGs):

-"ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness."

-"short reports to write, or summaries of their conclusions, or brief answers to suggested problems, [and be paid for that]"

-"educate the participants in facts and fact-combinations, in theories and vagrant thoughts."

-"meeting in someone’s home or over a dinner table at some restaurant"

-"a session-arbiter will have to sit there, stirring up the animals, asking the shrewd question, making the necessary comment, bringing them gently back to the point."

After the session, the session can be given an evaluation by each of the participants:

A. did the session feel neutralized by any of the participants reputations?

B. was any insight gained?

C. was the session jovial?

I think I, as well as some others, would be interested in attending something like this if it could be organized well.

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#14

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jjoe wrote: post #10

Does this mean Reddit is a more auspicious environment for new ideas to flourish? HN is way too confined of a place for "foolishness", that Asimov sees as conductive, to be permitted without things going haywire.

Even more-so a place like 4chan, hence why it seems to churn out memes and follow on's more than anywhere else.

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#15

Post by scrollaway »

delecti wrote: post #11
jjoe wrote: post #10

Does this mean Reddit is a more auspicious environment for new ideas to flourish? HN is way too confined of a place for "foolishness", that Asimov sees as conductive, to be permitted without things going haywire.

I would absolutely agree with that assessment. One of the (potentially) negative sides of the same phenomenon is the acceptance of and tendency towards memes. They can certainly be annoying, but a strong flow of memes is indicative of a lot of culture and ideas bashing up against each other until some of the bits stick together in a novel way. A cleverly applied meme comment on a Reddit thread can easily get hundreds…

HN is a fantastic display of creativity, but it is certainly not one where creativity happens. That's OK and I bet most of us prefer it this way.

To put it in simpler terms, Reddit is more input-oriented, while HN is more output-oriented.

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#17

Post by Ollinson »

jjoe wrote: post #10

Does this mean Reddit is a more auspicious environment for new ideas to flourish? HN is way too confined of a place for "foolishness", that Asimov sees as conductive, to be permitted without things going haywire.

I agree.

If everything on reddit interested me or was of the same quality there would never be any experimentation (foolishness) and I'd get lost in my own little world.

A lot of people love the way the sausage tastes but they stick up their noses at how it's made.

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#18

Post by drawkbox »

jjoe wrote: post #10

Does this mean Reddit is a more auspicious environment for new ideas to flourish? HN is way too confined of a place for "foolishness", that Asimov sees as conductive, to be permitted without things going haywire.

Any open market is the same, it will always innovate more than a closed market.

As an example the indie games or games on mobile will always be more adventurous and maybe 1% true gems better than other markets because the market is so big and allows anything. Contrast to the old school console days where mobile didn't exist, filled with greatly cookie cutter clones and rarely an innovation because it was 'too risky'. The ideas were there, just no avenue because it was curated away.

I personally believe any open market will always beat a closed one even if 99% of the open market is not as good. The broad differentiation of games/apps for instance only happens when many, many compete. A closed/curated market too closely will lose out on some big innovations. The same goes for internet vs old school publishing.

Side note: reddit moderations and subreddit moderation provides participation and value but is also somewhat limiting in terms of creativity. Reddit has shifted from heavily voted/democracy to a bunch of smaller partial democracies with a few dictators (similar to workplaces) and does threaten that creativity a bit. However the ability to setup any subreddit and comment with any vanity account have added exponential value in terms of creativity.

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#19

Post by siscia »

ronilan wrote: post #16

Very disappointing. The author seems ignorant of the entire science of Psychohistory. Since it is now possible to predict human development hundreds of years into the future no idea is really new anymore.

May you elaborate ? How you claim that is possible to predict the human development ? In which way ? It to me seems a very over-simplification...

Anyway, from the wikipedia the first time the term "psycho-history" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory#Emergence_as_a_di...) is been used is 1958, it is a good guess to say that the article is been written no later than the 1960...

I guess we can forgive Asimov...

Re: Isaac Asimov Mulls “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

#20

Post by snowwrestler »

ronilan wrote: post #16

Very disappointing. The author seems ignorant of the entire science of Psychohistory. Since it is now possible to predict human development hundreds of years into the future no idea is really new anymore.

That's what it seems like, but it was really just robots all along.

(Spoiler alert needed for a book published in 1986?)

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