21–30 of 45 posts
I was about six years old when I remember thinking to myself: I have a lot of great ideas. All I need is an 8 or 10-year old to help me make them cause I'm too young. I'm sure the ideas weren't that great, but the critical thinking is more important.
Actually, the ideas themselves would be declarative, if there were details involved. Now I'm confused. Would like to read about.
Could you point out some examples of this research? I guess it has something to do with events and routines being episodic memories, whereas abstract ideas is more of a metacognitive/executive task? Actually, the ideas themselves would be declarative, if there were details involved. Now I'm confused. Would like to read about.
If you are interested in infantile amnesia though, this paper is kind of interesting and gives a decent overview of the different theories:
Harley, K. & Reese, E. (1999). Origins of autobiographical memory. Developmental Psychology, 35, 5, 1338-1348.
When I was 8 or 9 I came up with a basic design for a perpetual motion machine (it involved little dynamos on a track, and a ball running back and forth over them). No, I didn't use the term "perpetual motion machine". Anyway, I explained it to my mother who said it wasn't possible. Well, if I have a kid, I'm going to buy him some dynamos and tell him to build that sucker.
In fact, I'm quite sure that this would happen. As jwz says, the universe tends toward maximum irony.
You can have an interesting idea any time. Problem is you may not even realize that you just had an interesting idea when you had it. The journal is an excellent idea. I write everything down. When I look it over later, I'm usually embarrassed that I could have thought of anything so lame. But every once in a while, there are a few gems in there. I always have pencil and a small notebook next to the bed. The best tim…
I always have a bunch of paper in my back pocket for writing stuff down on the spur of the moment and then I develop the idea as a mind-map, sleep on it, and then develop it some more.
When I was 8 or 9 I came up with a basic design for a perpetual motion machine (it involved little dynamos on a track, and a ball running back and forth over them). No, I didn't use the term "perpetual motion machine". Anyway, I explained it to my mother who said it wasn't possible. Well, if I have a kid, I'm going to buy him some dynamos and tell him to build that sucker.
I realized this when I built an apparatus to test it: a crude Van de Graff generator on a scale. I ran it for a while but despite building up a small charge (it ran on a 9V battery), the weight remained unchanged. I was disappointed.
Over time, my ideas have become more practical. Still, I occasionally have urges to create a bipedal robot or a better coffee machine :)
Could you point out some examples of this research? I guess it has something to do with events and routines being episodic memories, whereas abstract ideas is more of a metacognitive/executive task? Actually, the ideas themselves would be declarative, if there were details involved. Now I'm confused. Would like to read about.
I'm not really sure what area of research this would fall under. The closest I can think of is "infantile amnesia," although that would be a stretch. As far as I know there is no established way to classify ideas, so that would make this a question not very well-suited for academic research. Actually, one of the reasons why I asked is because I'm interested in looking for patterns in what people consider to be intere…
However, I didn't pay all that much attention in developmental psych, my textbook isn't handy, and the Wikipedia article is not all that helpful. :)
I've always found a lot of my ideas interesting; it's just that for most of them I eventually proved them to be bad ideas. Also, interesting ideas are rarely individual insights but usually come from merging two or more different ideas in a new way to create something genuinely cool.
There you have it. It's hard to think of interesting ideas we had in the past because we tend to think of ideas as atomic, but those kinds of insights are pretty common and thus not so interesting, it's usually when you have a complex set of inter-related ideas that something really significant and interesting can emerge.