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Taking this article at face value, the idea Graham is talking about, already has a name: jootsing (jumping out of the system) coined by Douglas Hofstadter. I’m
by aranchelk 5y ago
Taking this article at face value, the idea Graham is talking about, already has a name: jootsing (jumping out of the system) coined by Douglas Hofstadter. I’m familiar with it from Daniel Dennett’s excellent book Intuition Pumps.
A feature of ground breaking ideas is they contradict established wisdom, but that’s also a feature of most awful ones. The latter greatly outnumber the former. For every brilliant mind contradicting and redefining a discipline there are a multitude of clueless ones who lack basic knowledge of that discipline producing total crap. Think Einstein vs thousands of crackpots who don’t understand kinetic energy and momentum are not the same thing.
For this reason Dennett points out that the presence of jootsing is not a valuable metric to assess an idea. He goes on to say as it’s unhelpful advice to give to someone attempting to produce a valuable concept. He compares it to teaching someone how to invest by saying “buy low, sell high”. Yes this is a feature of a successful investor, but in and of itself, quite unhelpful.
Unfortunately, saying “my ideas jootses” isn’t saying much.