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How to get new ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to get new ideas

#101

Post by gizmo »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #87
3dsnano wrote: post #40

i think new ideas come from being naive and possessing the "no-mind" or a childlike sense of wonder. the older i get, the less plastic my brain is and the more depression and other issues start to seep in, get in the way, overcomplicate shit. to be completely free, uninhibited, released from guilt and predjudice. to just think, play, laugh, fart, and yawn. boring days spent looking out the window wondering how crows…

I'm locked in my own personality trap. I don't understand why people buy shit and my toxic also think they are dumb sheep of some made up social values. And I can't change myself to get out of my trap. I always think what I'm going to sell to people has to be really good .. but I just realize it's about a lot of bullshit going on on marketing and sales and network effect vs pure functionality.

You don't have to cynically exploit your customers just because that's what other businesses do. If you can make an excellent product that solves a real problem and charge a reasonable price for it you'll likely do pretty well. Sure, other people will become immensely successful by cheating or by gaming the system in some way. But what difference does that make? Just do your own thing.

Re: How to get new ideas

#102

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

sargstuff wrote: post #66
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #18

I think the key is noticing , which implies being a more passive observer. Most people want to find new ideas, which is being active. I've never had success at actively finding ideas but much more successful just living life, listening and the ideas just come.

got to get out of oen's comfort zone/familar & figure out how the wierd/strange/unknown fits/matches up with what one is comfortable/familiar with. best done on one's own terms vs. letting life exclusively dictate when the wierd/strange/unknown happens. edit:' does result in lot more blue screen issues.

It’s not about whose terms you’re living on, it’s about listening. Most people around us are dealing with mundane things that need fixing, just listening to people’s grievances is a great way to ideate. There are individuals who you just end up meeting through life that have great niche problems that require nothing else other than living and listening to attain them.

Going out and “pursuing” ideas often leads to some confirmation bias as we’re determined to “find” an idea, rather than sitting back and letting the lightbulb go off when you’re not actively trying.

To each their own though.

Re: How to get new ideas

#103

Post by userabchn »

3dsnano wrote: post #40

i think new ideas come from being naive and possessing the "no-mind" or a childlike sense of wonder. the older i get, the less plastic my brain is and the more depression and other issues start to seep in, get in the way, overcomplicate shit. to be completely free, uninhibited, released from guilt and predjudice. to just think, play, laugh, fart, and yawn. boring days spent looking out the window wondering how crows…

We like to believe that the problem is just "our own adult psychosis", but I spend my days around many people over quite a range of ages (including elderly) and it is very obvious to me that cognitive abilities decline in the way shown in the charts you have probably seen (or, it feels to me, even more dramatically) and that it is apparent at an earlier age that we would like to think. Old people lose the ability to infer - if they know two Johns and I say something about one of them (just referred to as "John"), they will be confused even though it should be easy to infer which I meant. That might not be a surprise, but from my experience the same effect can be traced back linearly to much earlier ages, to those mature students in your university class, who were probably only 40, and who continually caused us to roll our eyes by asking questions with obvious answers - even at that age they had lost some of the ability we had to infer the answers from what we had already been taught. Such abilities are useful when coming up with ideas for new products, so I have no doubt that the likelihood of doing it successfully declines rapidly with age.

Re: How to get new ideas

#104

Post by sargstuff »

sargstuff wrote: post #75
Separo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.” - Mark Twain

much more subject material with a joseph campbell / wierd al yankovich take on 'jason and the argonauts' aka weighted gram and the arc-a-oughts.

though moving away from pg rating to statistical r, might result in some twisted python stuff. especially if ast taken to the limitless turing resources extreme.

Re: How to get new ideas

#105

Post by hristov »

guptaneil wrote: post #70
hristov wrote: post #65

HN should have a [chat GPT] tag for stuff generated by chat GPT. So that I can ignore it. I do not mind reading what paul graham said about how to get new ideas. I do not care what chat GPT said. What chat GPT said may or may not be a good summary of paul grahams thoughts, it may be wrong in an important aspect, etc. If Paul Graham wants to say something, he should say it directly and not hide behind a chat gpt layer…

This is PG saying something... he linked to a chatGPT generated response and said he didn't like the response so he wrote his own.

PG was a little ambiguous about this. He said "So I asked: What would I have said?" It is not clear whether he asked himself or ChatGPT.

Re: How to get new ideas

#106

Post by [deleted] »

sargstuff wrote: post #62
3dsnano wrote: post #40

i think new ideas come from being naive and possessing the "no-mind" or a childlike sense of wonder. the older i get, the less plastic my brain is and the more depression and other issues start to seep in, get in the way, overcomplicate shit. to be completely free, uninhibited, released from guilt and predjudice. to just think, play, laugh, fart, and yawn. boring days spent looking out the window wondering how crows…

or be around long enough that have time/resources to find a soluion to what have wanted a soluion to which noone else seems to want to provide. edit: needs of the many refinements out weight the needs of the few refinements

[deleted]

Re: How to get new ideas

#109

Post by sargstuff »

adversaryIdiot wrote: post #107

Hi, Idiot here. How can I reliably find "Frontiers of Knowledge"? Especially in fields I'm not savvy in?

> ... reliably find "Frontiers of Knowledge" ...

currently, search engines/chatgpt seem to fill that roll vs more historical library/university.

aka search term "frontiers of knowledge"

compared with traditional library/university book writer/teaching assistant

note: sed & awk not required to do text replacement, but good editor certainly helps

But if patient enough to wait, will eventually show up on internet as a video(s) way before the random monkeys typing away at a type writer get to it [1]

[1] : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Re: How to get new ideas

#110

Post by hristov »

rileymat2 wrote: post #96
hristov wrote: post #65

HN should have a [chat GPT] tag for stuff generated by chat GPT. So that I can ignore it. I do not mind reading what paul graham said about how to get new ideas. I do not care what chat GPT said. What chat GPT said may or may not be a good summary of paul grahams thoughts, it may be wrong in an important aspect, etc. If Paul Graham wants to say something, he should say it directly and not hide behind a chat gpt layer…

That is an interesting concept in itself, if the idea is sound, why does the originator matter?

Usually if one wants to take advice, one should consider the reliability of the source of advice as a factor.
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