Crazy New Ideas

Great observation! It feels to me kind of like the 'blub' problem [0], in that these are both cases where technical folks misjudge the utility of something new (to them) because it merely makes it easy to do something, instead of making it possible to do something. And maybe that 'something' they either don't know they want, or don't realize how often they would use it if it were available, or don't appreciate that others want.

Edit: It might also be an example of the curse of knowledge: what seems trivial to an expert may be a showstopper for a layperson. An expert suffering the curse would implicitly assume that everyone else has the same knowledge sufficient to make convoluted method seem trivial.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/avg.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

Newton's law of universal gravitation is quite useful even if not fully accurate. Psychologically and sociologically people especially children need to be informed and inherit a tradition which is done through story telling. Campbell points out that humans haven't changed physiologically in the last 10,000 years, what has changed are the traditions passed down by story telling. Contained in myths is more than how to tell a captivating and compelling story but also how to use symbolism, perhaps a more direct language than words. He says the myths, which people carry in their memory and thoughts as they go about their lives, serve four main functions. The first is dealing with the mystery of the universe and the human condition. Then it has a cosmological function to describe the universe and phenomena such as thunder and lightning which we now do with science. It has a sociological function informing people how to behave and act in their society and culture. And, lastly, a pedagogical function. Perhaps one day we can explain the mind and consciousness with neurology but like Newton's law, spirituality, symbolism, and mythology is very useful today.

In the context of Disney's use of mythological symbolism in their story telling, it has everything to do with tech/science. When children repeatedly watch movies like Marvel's Black Panther and pretend to be the character by dressing up, the characters become that child's identity. When they are faced with new situations like going to a new school or having to deal with bullying, they are informed how to deal with the situation by the memory of the story. In the Black Panther there is a fictional highly technologically advanced nation called Wakanda. This isn't just about telling a compelling story, it is deliberate informing girls especially girls of African decent of what their relation to the society they are born into is. The character Shuri is Head of the Science and Information Exchange. Someone at Disney decided to put a black woman in charge and this is the sociological function of the myth watched by hundreds of millions of children all around the Earth. That is a crazy new idea.

One thing these girls who grew up to become scientists will have to face is after investing 4 years in college and another 4 in graduate school they likely will be discriminated against because of the color of their skin or being female. The hero's journey is one of several mythological plots and it is the one these girls will need to be informed with at that point in order to prevent complete psychological breakdown when they face that challenge. Anyone with a crazy new idea whether it is in engineering, science, making movies based on comic books, music, or literature will have a similar journey.

There are many things making things worse, and one does not rule out another, so that question is a bit of a distraction. I'd like to know what you think you gain by being so mean. Surely that's not the kind of person you want to be?

The idea that this community "idolizes" PG is trivially disproven by glancing through any recent thread on his writings, including this one.

  A new idea is a beautiful and fragile thing. Attack people, not ideas.

Explains those attacking pg instead of his ideas. I guess.

Reasonable domain experts sometimes keep proposing the same idea, because it would be so cool. e.g. onlive, gaikai, stadia. Investors overlook the latency problem (BTW starlink might solve this) because of its compelling business advantages. Aka wishful thinking.

Analogous to Chesterton's fence (reforms should not be made until reasons for the current system are understood), paradigm-breakers could say upfront what new insight makes their idea plausible. This also makes for compelling and exciting marketing.

I really like the section on paradigms, particularly how they "vacuum up the trail of crumbs that led to them".

On the one hand, becoming proficient in the current paradigm makes it harder to see other ways (in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few), not least of all because of its cognitive load. On the other hand, without that proficiency, you can't stand on the shoulders of giants.

>I think "attacking" Crazy New Ideas is how we develop them, iron out the kinks and test our understanding. Criticism is an essential part of the journey from crazy new idea to accepted wisdom.

It depends upon the level of attack. Outright dismissal without consideration compared to critique. Is the intent to destroy the idea so it goes away or to test it for flaws? That's done by the suggestion given to ask questions. Instead of saying "this is stupid", figure out why your think it is stupid and turn it into a question. Such a question is a soft attack, one that may be met with an explanation without needing for direct conflict, or which may be met with a 'I haven't considered that, let me think on it' or a 'That's one of the flaws I'm still working on'.

>However, the main problem I have with with this article is that it divides people into domain experts and the rest.

While the presentation did present this as an overly binary classification, I don't think the intention (that I perceived) is wrong. Some people have more experience in certain things, and given we are all mortals with limited time, we need to have some way to decide how much attention we give ideas and using relative expertise in domains seems a decent filter. This does not have to be perfect, because the result is not accepting the idea but instead not outright rejecting the idea. In cases where the idea still is mistaken it will still be revealed under critique. It is a test to determine what should be given the chance to be critiqued given limited time and resources.

It would lead to experts overlooking ideas from sources who don't have expertise, but I think that is acceptable for two reasons. First, there are already a flood of ideas so applying a filter that lets more through will still lead to ideas not being considered, but this time due to a lack of time and resources. Second, this is all relative so a good idea from a non-expert would still pass the filter for someone who is slightly more of an expert. If they find it passes their critique it now is able to pass filters of people who are more of experts in their fields. Good ideas can still bubble up (we just need to take care that they are correctly attributed).