The magic of generating new ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#11

Post by dawg- » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Nietzsche describes the problem beautifully in Beyond Good and Evil:

"However independent of each other [philosophers] might feel themselves to be, with their critical or systematic wills, something inside of them drives them on, something leads them into a particular order, one after the other, and this something is precisely the innate systematicity and relationship of concepts. In fact, their thinking is not nearly as much a discovery as it is a recognition, remembrance, a returning and homecoming into a distant, primordial, total economy of the soul, from which each concept once grew: – to this extent, philosophizing is a type of atavism of the highest order."

..."Where there are linguistic affinities, then because of the common philosophy of grammar (I mean: due to the unconscious domination and direction through similar grammatical functions), it is obvious that everything lies ready from the very start for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems..."

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#12

Post by jeffnappi » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Let me try this with less snark than the previous commenters:

> We take the sun being the center of the universe

You mean solar system.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#13

Post by mkagenius » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Most of the ideas that already exist in the world, I would actively reject out of fear, examples, putting current carrying wires into water (heater), metals weighing 800 kg moving with high speed (cars).

So I guess we (at least I) are rejecting quite a lot of potentially useful ideas?

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#14

Post by thrav » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

dawg- wrote: post #11

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Nietzsche describes the problem beautifully in Beyond Good and Evil : "However independent of each other [philosophers] might feel themselves to be, with their critical or systematic wills, something inside of them drives them on, something leads them into a particular order, one after the other, and this something is precisely the innate systematicity and relationship of concepts. In fact, their thinking is not near…

I know religion probably doesn’t play well around here, but your quote brought a memory rushing back that I feel like sharing.

My very Christian mother once asked me to help her come up with a slogan for the church. I know her pastor well, and know him to be an avid student of history and the literature.

After much thought, I told them this, with the warning that if they used it they’d better be willing to face the consequences of what it means: “The purpose of the church is to remind people who they are. As children, they know. Over time, the world makes them forget.”

In my estimation, Jesus’ goal, and the Church’s job should be guiding people back to what they once knew. Unbridled love and trust in others. Non-judgement. Absolute acceptance, before we learn there’s such thing as a stranger.

Thank you for sharing this passage.

“Their thinking is not nearly as much a discovery as it is a recognition, remembrance, a returning and homecoming into a distant, primordial, total economy of the soul, from which each concept once grew”

Later, my Mom sent me the link to the sermon where the pastor quoted my statement and my warning, and followed it with, “My friend might be onto something, because in thinking on the text with his proposal in mind, I recalled one of Jesus’ declarations, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’”

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#15

Post by paideic » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Whoops. That's what I get for trying to reply to a post right after waking up.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#16

Post by IAmGraydon » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

> Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for.

I absolutely agree. Actually, I think that truly original thought is something that the majority of the population never experiences in their lifetime. Most thoughts that seem original are just recombinations or reinterpretations of existing ideas.

Want to test just how hard original thought is? Try to visualize exactly what it would be like to be a 4-dimensional being. Or how about a 2-dimensional being. You might be able to form an abstract idea based on examples (like the “flat lander” concept), but you will find it pretty much impossible to hold in your mind a visualization of what it would really be like. Why? Because due to the physical laws that govern our universe, it is impossible for you to have ever experienced this or anything even close to it. Therefore, it is left purely to your mind to create the visualization from nothing. This is like a neural net that has been trained with little or no data. There’s just nothing to go on, so extrapolations cannot be made.

Now visualize an elephant standing on a chair on top of the Empire State Building. Easy, right? But surely you’ve never seen that with your own eyes. Why can you imagine it so easily? Because you’ve seen enough parts of the visualization that you can recombine them in your mind to create whatever reality you wish.

Whether we’re artists or engineers, we’re all just thieves in the end. Most of us, that is. The few who are truly original create the fuel that pushes our civilization forward.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#17

Post by dawg- » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

thrav wrote: post #14

dawg- wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nietzsche describes the problem beautifully in Beyond Good and Evil : "However independent of each other [philosophers] might feel themselves to be, with their critical or systematic wills, something inside of them drives them on, something leads them into a particular order, one after the other, and this something is precisely the innate systematicity and relationship of concepts. In fact, their thinking is not near…

I know religion probably doesn’t play well around here, but your quote brought a memory rushing back that I feel like sharing. My very Christian mother once asked me to help her come up with a slogan for the church. I know her pastor well, and know him to be an avid student of history and the literature. After much thought, I told them this, with the warning that if they used it they’d better be willing to face the c…

Awesome story, thanks for sharing and I'm glad the quote took you there :) I think reading Nietzsche from a christian perspective is a very interesting pursuit. The whole "God is dead" thing has been really misrepresented and if any religious person could get past that, I think they would find a lot to like in his writing.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#18

Post by otras » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

These two different ways your brain works on ideas, focused and diffused, were my biggest takeaways from Barbara Oakley's Learning How To Learn class. I've found that actively going between them, say by studying hard for 90 minutes and then going for a long walk, has been tremendous for learning.

Highly recommend the course (or the book form, A Mind for Numbers).

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#19

Post by ReptileMan » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

>We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today

Only if you define the universe as the solar system ...

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#20

Post by fudged71 » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #3

“ These stories suggest that an initial period of concentration—conscious, directed attention—needs to be followed by some amount of unconscious processing.”

These (unconscious processing) moments for me almost always happen in the shower. I'd love to find another ritual that gets me in a similar mindspace.