Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The magic of generating new ideas

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#21

Post by edjrage »

jeffnappi wrote: post #12
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 .

Let me try this with even less snark: No one who replied actually knew if paideic meant it.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#23

Post by armitron »

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…

From Fabian Tassano: "Regarding the version of “genius” that is currently in retreat but still occasionally used: many people seem to have a simplistic idea of what it takes to be one. According to one popular model, all that is required is an increase in the magnitude of certain qualities which everyone already possesses in some measure. Make the particular qualities pronounced enough, and you get to genius. But a better way to understand the concept — assuming we’re applying the word to (say) Gauss or Picasso, rather than John Cleese or Wayne Rooney — may be that a genius has a particular capacity, which on a certain level can seem obvious or unremarkable, but which no one else has. A genius, on this understanding, is a person uniquely capable of making a leap ‘off the path’. With hindsight the leap may seem simple or obvious, but at the time no one else was, apparently, capable of making it. A potential leap of this kind is made possible by preceding leaps. Nevertheless its actual occurrence may go on not happening for decades. During that time there may be clear pointers towards it. Yet it is not until a genius comes along that the leap actually happens."

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#24

Post by tim333 »

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…

> back to what they once knew. Unbridled love and trust in others. Non-judgement...

That's quite an optimistic assessment of little children.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#25

Post by Razengan »

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…

On the general topic of ideas, I think necessity really is the mother of invention.

Even if it's just the need to make a living, or a desire to see something that you think would be cool but doesn't exist.

As for coming up with "something truly new", sometimes it's just about re-arranging what already exists into a never-before tried configuration.

e.g. Some people would say the iPhone was nothing new, how it borrowed/stole something from everyone going back to the first caveman etc., while others remember how different the industry (I daresay, world even) was before and after it.

It would be nice if there was a public git repository of random ideas for everyone to add to and build upon. A crowdsourced brainstorming session over time.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#26

Post by notadoc »

fudged71 wrote: post #20
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.

For many, exercise works for that purpose

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#27

Post by Hoasi »

tim333 wrote: post #24
thrav wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> back to what they once knew. Unbridled love and trust in others. Non-judgement... That's quite an optimistic assessment of little children.

> That's quite an optimistic assessment of little children.

I'm not sure if it is. Little children lack preconceived ideas, and, often, inhibition. That combination is a good recipe for accepting the unknown and coming up with new ideas. That is not to say they can't be cruel at times.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#28

Post by Hoasi »

fudged71 wrote: post #20
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.

> I'd love to find another ritual that gets me in a similar mindspace.

Long walks, perhaps?

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#29

Post by pugworthy »

I'm curious if anyone has run into situation where being an "idea" person has been a negative at work. Sometimes there is the perception of ideation as a waste of time, or that the ideator (is that a word?) is one of those "whacky ideas" people. "Why are you going for walks, don't you have work to do?"

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#30

Post by lucretian »

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…

> “Unbridled love and trust in others. Non-judgement. Absolute acceptance, before we learn there’s such thing as a stranger.”

i don't know if this is what you meant by "playing well around here", but what you wrote is a sentiment to which many secular humanists would wholeheartedly subscribe.

Post reply on HN