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How to get new ideas

paulgraham.com

221–222 of 222 posts

Re: How to get new ideas

#221
post #42

Most things are strange, missing, broken for mundane reasons that you can't do much about. The space of new ideas is huge, but almost all new ideas are bad. One strategy I really like is to think of technologies you couldn't build 5 years ago but are just barely possible today. That's where yesterday's bad ideas become today's good ideas. For example, laptops and phones produced 20 years of incremental improvements i…

'almost all ideas are bad'

This is not the way to look at it.

'Ideas' are too early to be judged as good or bad.

Ideas are fodder, they are there to be moulded into things that are good or bad.

Often ideas are just foils to help you think.

They are so contextual as well: 'full screen smartphone' was maybe only possible by Jobs, with that much direct and coercive power over engineers. Motorola CEO was not going to pull it off. But Apple did work with motorola to make a 'music phone' as an experiment.

I think your note about 'yesterday's ideas' is bang on.

Re: How to get new ideas

#222
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already achieve that by taking VC funding, no?

No, my ideas are not compatible with VC funding, unfortunately, because my ideas only help humanity overcome our energy crisis rather than enrich some select few.

Use ChatGPT to create online courses... editorialize them and make them online then. Get sufficient income to dedicate to your personal goals
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