Yeah, there's nature-nurture stuff going on, but there is also a strange inability to grapple with context shifts. What is “conventional” is changing, and an id

Yeah, there's nature-nurture stuff going on, but there is also a strange inability to grapple with context shifts. What is “conventional” is changing, and an idea which seemed “independent” is no longer. This is why Alan Kay’s talks about the same are nicer. He is explicit about “you find yourself in a pink world surrounded by pink things and then you have a blue thought which could take you out of the plane of your existence... but you have been to school, to church, you have othe things to do today, and so you squash it—it becomes a ker-splat. But every once in a while you have an unguarded moment, maybe in a shower or waking up, where those things don’t kick in quite so fast and instead your idea gets to suddenly expand for a bit, it becomes a ker-pow. The scientific term for these is ho-lee-shiiit.” It’s not something that is unavailable to others, it is a common human experience. Then he defines something similar to pg’s idea, but more grounded in two preferences: are you more interested operationally in getting your tasks for today done, or are you more interested in an idea for its own sake even if it doesn't have pragmatic function? And are you intimidated by the reactions of your peers (to whom the blue thought seems insanity?) or do you not care what anyone thinks? Finally, our inability to invent the future is generally traced to our funding sources. These sources prize innovation, producing an amazing version of whatever is already out there and really perfecting it, rather than discovery or invention, heading out in a risky direction where you don't know what the tasks are, and you just have a vague dream but no idea what challenges you are going to face. He usually mentions NSF proposals, the ones that are successful say here is what I'm going to do and here is how I will do it.