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There's a weird comformity effect where one tends to think in the same terms as those around you, so you see the same issues, consider the same alternatives alo

There's a weird comformity effect where one tends to think in the same terms as those around you, so you see the same issues, consider the same alternatives along the same dimensions. This can happen without you noticing it, your direct perception sublimating like a dream on waking. There is gold, just one or two steps off the beaten track, but we can't see it, because we are on rails, only thinking in terms the track affords. But it's not so easy to go off the rails: you can easily get disoriented and overwhelmed, and once you have found something, it's difficult to verify... and even harder to convince anyone else.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Note, too, that there’s more garbage than gold off the rails. Simply going off the rails isn’t enough. Thoughtful exploration, on the other hand, can be tremendously rewarding.
- Lambdanaut 9y ago
  Note, three, that all garbage is gold under the light of a sufficiently child-like mind devoid of expectations, ideals, creeds, beliefs, biases, and stigmas. The insane man is only insane when in a world of sane men.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    Ehh. Some things are just not as useful as other things. This follows directly from the laws of nature. All elements lighter than iron _release_ energy when they fuse together, while iron and anything heavier must _consume_ energy to fuse together. Carbon is one of the most important elements for life due to its unique chemical properties and immense number of useful molecular arrangements. The molecule we call water is essential to life as well, as it is incredibly effective, compared to the alternatives, at transporting materials to and from different parts of an organism (among other things [1]). And so on... [1] http://www.ivyroses.com/Biology/Why-is-water-important-to-life.php http://www.ivyroses.com/Biology/Why-is-water-important-to-li...
  - maxlamb 9y ago
    I think since we are talking within the context of entrepreneurship, we can assign an objective definition as gold=financial/societal value, garbage=no financial value. So in for example, MySpace=garbage, Kickstarter=gold. I think it would be hard to argue otherwise.
mbrock 9y ago
That whole phenomenon strikes me as a fundamental dimension of reality and perception (sorry for the bombast). We basically see the world as a texture of possibilities, and there are different poles in the way that works. Some people are rigidly conforming or conservative, and they perceive the "possibility vectors" as mostly low in magnitude and pointing in the normal way. Some people are "lateral thinkers" compared to the status quo and see weird opportunities all around them. If they play the piano they'll always be looking to jazz it up in more and more crazy ways. Some people would have a lateral perception but a conservative morality; like, they would have some deep gut level understanding of queerness but react in conservative ways out of fear or repulsion. I suppose that real innovation probably isn't that much due to lateral imaginative personality, but more due to having immersive knowledge enough that you just see way ahead, plus confidence and close-knit support from conspirators. Steve Jobs still has the best quote on this that I know. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really DO it, they just SAW something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
dwaltrip 9y ago
Also, the longer the rails have existed, the more likely that many other smart people have tried and failed. It doesn't mean it can't be done, just that it is likely very difficult, or some other tangential breakthrough must happen first. Fortunately, some rails are far less well-defined than others, and there are often nuggets of gold found in the foggy ambiguity surrounding such rails.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Note, too, that there’s more garbage than gold off the rails. Simply going off the rails isn’t enough. Thoughtful exploration, on the other hand, can be tremendously rewarding.

Lambdanaut 9y ago
Note, three, that all garbage is gold under the light of a sufficiently child-like mind devoid of expectations, ideals, creeds, beliefs, biases, and stigmas. The insane man is only insane when in a world of sane men.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Ehh. Some things are just not as useful as other things. This follows directly from the laws of nature. All elements lighter than iron _release_ energy when they fuse together, while iron and anything heavier must _consume_ energy to fuse together. Carbon is one of the most important elements for life due to its unique chemical properties and immense number of useful molecular arrangements. The molecule we call water is essential to life as well, as it is incredibly effective, compared to the alternatives, at transporting materials to and from different parts of an organism (among other things [1]). And so on... [1] http://www.ivyroses.com/Biology/Why-is-water-important-to-life.php http://www.ivyroses.com/Biology/Why-is-water-important-to-li...
- maxlamb 9y ago
  I think since we are talking within the context of entrepreneurship, we can assign an objective definition as gold=financial/societal value, garbage=no financial value. So in for example, MySpace=garbage, Kickstarter=gold. I think it would be hard to argue otherwise.

mbrock 9y ago

That whole phenomenon strikes me as a fundamental dimension of reality and perception (sorry for the bombast). We basically see the world as a texture of possibilities, and there are different poles in the way that works. Some people are rigidly conforming or conservative, and they perceive the "possibility vectors" as mostly low in magnitude and pointing in the normal way. Some people are "lateral thinkers" compared to the status quo and see weird opportunities all around them. If they play the piano they'll always be looking to jazz it up in more and more crazy ways. Some people would have a lateral perception but a conservative morality; like, they would have some deep gut level understanding of queerness but react in conservative ways out of fear or repulsion. I suppose that real innovation probably isn't that much due to lateral imaginative personality, but more due to having immersive knowledge enough that you just see way ahead, plus confidence and close-knit support from conspirators. Steve Jobs still has the best quote on this that I know. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really DO it, they just SAW something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

dwaltrip 9y ago

Also, the longer the rails have existed, the more likely that many other smart people have tried and failed. It doesn't mean it can't be done, just that it is likely very difficult, or some other tangential breakthrough must happen first. Fortunately, some rails are far less well-defined than others, and there are often nuggets of gold found in the foggy ambiguity surrounding such rails.