Yeah, but I think your philosophy prof was suggesting that useless distinctions are the stock in trade of tiny minds. For instance, a web client that allows yo

Yeah, but I think your philosophy prof was suggesting that useless distinctions are the stock in trade of tiny minds. For instance, a web client that allows you to use IRC protocol is generally Just-The-Same-As-IRC. Putting it on the web doesn't do anything really different, except maybe that one doesn't have the inconvenience of installing IRC software. But let's say that you had a really good help channel for your website, but that users of your website didn't typically find their way to IRC. Putting an IRC client right in the web page itself, configured to go straight to this help channel, is suddenly more of an innovation. I don't know how to phrase this right, but there is a knack of noticing material distinctions, rather than useless ones. Maybe it's in noticing when certain limitations have been removed or added. Maybe the real problem is that we're often unaware of how limited our world is, and what is doing the limiting. Perhaps the only way to notice when limitations have been removed is by sheer luck or that mysterious force called "creativity". You couldn't have a mind that was constantly probing every tool for every limitation. Could you?