Science converges on truths, so similar (and even the same) ideas form in many minds, often at the same time. And fundamental ideas like these are often -- in h

Science converges on truths, so similar (and even the same) ideas form in many minds, often at the same time. And fundamental ideas like these are often -- in hindsight -- revealed to be pretty old; you can trace their lineage and formation across papers, talks, and books. Many people in the field, with a good measure of "conceptual agility", will get this quickly and be able to discuss at length. Not to detract any credit from individual discoverers: they are absolutely critical for the quantized improvement of ideas; often a single person will move science forward in ways the rest of the world could not. And sometimes it is many people that do. A constructive memetic environment is good for both. (it is unfortunate that Credit is THE scientific currency today; it interferes negatively...) No doubt colah's excellent blog post dives much deeper than this essay, but please note that this was wrtten for Edge.org's http://edge.org/annual-questions http://edge.org/annual-questions book, for a general audience, with very high level perspective, with very little space, and without the ability to get technical. Don't pit them against each other! They complement! By the way, for one interesting example of the "conceptual agility" of scientists at the very edge, check out this interesting story about Feynman -- from a David Deutsch interview (with Sam Harris) -- in which Feynman derives months of Deutsch's work in a few minutes (listen for ~5 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J21QuHrIqXg&t=6524 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J21QuHrIqXg&t=6524 (1:48:44 - 1:52:40) Scientists' minds are well primed to understand, derive, and formulate ideas -- they are super fertile memetic environments. And what's more-- they have the epistemic filters to annihilate untruths and converge on scientific knowledge (the best explanation not yet falsified). In math (inc. computer science), it's even better because we study and manipulate the objects themselves, not data from measurements of the things. The formulation, derivation, convergence, remixing, (and so on) of ideas is much, much faster. Knowing both colah and davidad, I confidently assert they are both among the most brilliant young scientists alive. Humanity stands to gain much from the constructive interference of their minds. As readers and commenters, let's foster that.