The magic of generating new ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#31

Post by friendlybus » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

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…

You can't escape judgement.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#32

Post by gitgud » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

pugworthy wrote: post #29

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?"

It can be frustrating if the idea person is constantly talking about them, but doesn't act on any.

It's easy to have ideas... validating/building them, that's the hard part

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#33

Post by friendlybus » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #16

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…

> Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. I absolutely agree. Actually, I think that truly original thought is something that the majority of the population never experiences in their lifetime. Most thoughts that seem original are just recombinations or reinterpretations of existing ideas. Want to test just how hard original thought is? Try to visualize exactly what it…

I don't know how you expect people to challenge this, because any original thought has to be built on a structure to be valuable. I could shuffle a deck of cards and get a permutation that has never existed before and which I could not have pre-visualized, but is not that valuable. The inability to visualize a perspective is not a good test.

The idea of a 4d space grew out of STEM through transforming symbols. Taking the leap of faith from one action to the next until you have something transformed or created is original and valuable.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#34

Post by andrewstuart » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

As DeBono says "Good ideas are obvious in hindsight".

I have no shortage of ideas, most pretty ordinary, some very small number good.

It's a very long journey though from good idea to release of a successful software product. Takes time, money, motivation, technical skill, not making big mistakes and that absolutely required ingredient, luck.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#35

Post by thrav » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

lucretian wrote: post #30

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…

> “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.

Didn’t necessarily mean the sentiment itself. Just expected a bit of hate for bringing it up period. Forgot this isn’t reddit.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#36

Post by thrav » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

Hoasi wrote: post #27

tim333 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I agree. I think judgement is a learned behavior, as most parents constantly judge their behaviors.

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched my one niece judge her little sister for a behavior that she herself had been admonished for a few minutes before. She just learned that bad girls do that, so now she’s informing her little sister that she’s a bad girl.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#37

Post by rladd » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

hacker_9 wrote: post #8

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…

> 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. It seems new ideas truly are difficult to inject..

Because the sun is not the center of the universe in any sense other than that everything can always be considered the "center".

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#38

Post by blueboo » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

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…

New ideas are cheap.

Choosing which ones to act on, and acting on them effectively is what's hard.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#39

Post by kart23 » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

I can relate to that feeling. When you just figure it out, not even thinking about your problem, just doing something mundane and unrelated. But that stage of concentration and struggle is crucial. You need to care about the problem, have some investment in it.

And it's so satisfying seeing the solution work, especially if you don't know the correctness 100%.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#40

Post by dwd » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

James Altucher, who's posts used to appear frequently on HN maybe 6 or so years ago and had a few good ones about how he would write down every idea (10-20 a day) and his methods for validating them. I haven't read anything of his for a while, but he still seems to write a lot about ideas.

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becomi...