41–50 of 50 posts
Permutation. You take an old idea, and you pull out all the variables and you start permuting upon them.
Yes! ... but which variables? Permutations grow exponentially as you add dimensions, so you can't have too many.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I disagree - I've had a few novel ideas here, they may not have been universally novel but were definitely ideas that came up from threads I read, that I'd not seen or considered previously.
Sure HN isn't structured towards this sort of creativity but it still provokes it on occasions.
Forums are as input or output orientated as one chooses IME.
Edit: this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8487385, might be an example - I've not seen config undo-history in browsers before?
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 permi…
To get a summary of the book you can also view his TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_com...
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..…
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 permi…
This is a very interesting idea. Perhaps taping a sample session with some extraordinarily easeful people and showing it to participants can help model the openness involved. I'd be game.
This reminds me of Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve Jobs and how it detailed his many eccentric habits and behaviors early on before starting Apple... how he never took showers while working at Atari, his odd dietary habits, his daily wardrobe, etc. But that's why he was able to "think different"... "A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-a…
When he went around asking others what they thought, every single person said he was nuts and it would never work. That made him extremely excited - and more determined than ever - because he knew he was on the path of doing something truly different.
Although the stories themselves were quite mundane, what struck me as I somehow forced my way forward in the stories, was Asimov's clairvoyant tone while writing. Most of the things he wrote, even in apparent jest, hold true today.
And never have I been so enthralled by a bunch of essays as Asimov has done it... Reading his second momoir and many more essays underline his wisdom more and more.
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 permi…