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How to get new ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to get new ideas

#131

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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?

Yes, but is the idea sound? ChatGPT can produce fine-sounding nonsense at least as well as a human can. The difference is that I have a lot more experience calibrating my BS meter with humans than I do with ChatGPT.

Re: How to get new ideas

#132

Post by david927 »

olalonde wrote: post #124

I think that's why a lot of innovation comes from "outsiders" rather than industry veterans. You are more likely to notice the anomalies with fresh eyes and stop noticing them through time.

I agree. Things fall into existing grooves. Your band comes up with a new sound and people say, "That's kind of like Mazzy Star," and now you point it more that way. It falls into that nearby groove instead of continuing on its own. A lot of great sounds came out of the 1960s because there were so few grooves. No one knew what the rules were.

Plus, a lot of low hanging fruit stays there because no one looks at it. Everyone is looking at x, y, and z, and there are a thousand variations of those, and they ignore a, b, and c because no one brought it up.

Re: How to get new ideas

#133

Post by sargstuff »

cableshaft wrote: post #32
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #24

My problem isn't a lack of ideas. It's having the bandwidth to do them all. What I really need is the ability to clone myself.

Yep. Or somehow focus more, that would help knock a few more ideas out as well. My backlog of games/puzzles/stories I'd eventually like to get out there might be >100 at this point. Focusing mostly on a bit more of an ambitious game right now, and it's probably still 6 months before I get it into Steam early access (coding in my spare time and energy, which is sparse lately), so everything else is just waiting at thi…

> ...proto type with index card, pen, paper ....

go e-ink & vr and save the $$ not spent on consumable resources for venture capital.

Re: How to get new ideas

#134

Post by arcturus17 »

olalonde wrote: post #124

I think that's why a lot of innovation comes from "outsiders" rather than industry veterans. You are more likely to notice the anomalies with fresh eyes and stop noticing them through time.

Conversely, I have seen that some of the most boring startups that you never hear of, but are killing it, are built by domain experts who know the task they're trying to solve inside and out. Two examples from my own country, Spain:

- A man who built a SaaS for local administrations and has about a ~50% share of the market. He spent 30 years working for the Spanish IRS in different positions. I don't know the insider story, but looking at the website he just made a SaaS solution with good UX in a space where UX tends to be atrocious.

- RatedPower's CTO. RatedPower makes a software that automates the design of renewable power plants. This guy had been drawing the plans by hand as a renewables engineer, realized a computer would be perfectly equipped to do it, and the competition in the space had grown complacent and barely innovated in years, so he did it.

The older I grow the more I get excited by boring ideas. People pitch ideas to me frequently and most of the time I literally end up thinking "not boring enough"!

Re: How to get new ideas

#135

Post by zachthewf »

userabchn wrote: post #103
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…

The example from University is not a good one. There are bright and not-so-bright young people too, but older people typically have fewer misgivings about asking "dumb" questions that may have obvious answers.

Re: How to get new ideas

#136

Post by sargstuff »

appleaday1 wrote: post #128
cableshaft wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Or somehow focus more, that would help knock a few more ideas out as well. My backlog of games/puzzles/stories I'd eventually like to get out there might be >100 at this point. Focusing mostly on a bit more of an ambitious game right now, and it's probably still 6 months before I get it into Steam early access (coding in my spare time and energy, which is sparse lately), so everything else is just waiting at thi…

I am interested in that? Maybe we can use ChatGPT or related tech to change Dungeon Crawler games or related procedural generated games? I think DCSS would benefit from this, imagine designing entire levels so that they fit your character well. A common frustration between people that play Felid, draconians or Octopodes according to the dungeon crawl subreddit is that, a lot of armor that generate that they can't use…

alway dinkstra's maps[1] but a reverse hascii [2] might be more future proof

[1] : http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php/Dijkstra_Maps_Visualized

[2]: https://github.com/jaromil/hasciicam

Re: How to get new ideas

#137

Post by bob1029 »

cjwebb wrote: post #126
bob1029 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One strategy I really like is to think of technologies you couldn't build 5 years ago but are just barely possible today. Streaming gaming is something I am still laser-focused on. Our networks are only getting faster. I feel there is a gigantic opportunity here that is being passed up by efforts like Stadia. To do this thing correctly, the game engine itself needs to be developed with these concerns in mind. Expec…

What kinds of things do you think has to change with game engines? Sharding would have to happen to handle geographic distance between people, wouldn't it? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

You can still do things like client-side prediction with streaming, but imagine if you controlled all of the clients and could always trust them. You could have the actual simulation running in a big bunker in Ohio somewhere on entirely synchronous terms (The game concept itself can be engineered around vertical scale constraints. For instance, imagine flight routes in WoW. If the cost to take a flight was modulated by the system load in the desired target region, you could create a much more seamless way to make this work. Think about real-world flight routes and system demand... The determinism goes down a lot for the technology owner, but the effect is much more compelling to the end customer.

Re: How to get new ideas

#140

Post by sargstuff »

seydor wrote: post #51

"ChatGPT, gimme 10 startup ideas" TBH, at this point, if there is a problem that hasn't been solved, its because some people tried and failed and found that the problem is not solvable currently. It may be more fruitful to start with something promisingly popular, and improve upon it (e.g. tiktok)

> ... problem not solvable currently ...

pre or post order traversal of copyright/trademark?

perhaps switch heap stacks?

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