Finding Original Ideas
Sometimes, a piece of writing is so good that it actually pisses me off a little. The structure is tightly coherent, the ideas are…
Sometimes, a piece of writing is so good that it actually pisses me off a little. The structure is tightly coherent, the ideas are incredibly insightful, and the prose is admirably eloquent. Moreover, the writer created something uniquely valuable and delivered it to the world.
I think to myself, “Wow! I would’ve never thought of something like that in a million years” and an overwhelming desire to jump headfirst into the nearest brick wall consumes me.
In a management class I took last semester, we learned about the common information effect. The common information effect is a phenomenon that occurs when we disproportionately focus on information that everyone already knows, when in fact, it’s the unique insights that drive the most progress and deliver the most insight.
I’m trying to practice thinking of those unique nuggets and ideas that go beyond what everyone already knows. The question at hand: How can I be more original?
What is originality?
Originality is defined as “the ability to think independently and creatively” (according to Google). What an unoriginal definition! This is actually rather hypocritical given the spirit of the paper. Let’s try my own instead.
In this universe, 117 billion humans have born on Earth ever, which is enough to cover at least one football field.
Uniqueness is a byproduct of nature and nurture. We are all born at a different time to different parents in different places living different lives, and hold a genetic combination that never existed prior to our birth. The chances that two people, even identical twins, turn out the exact same way is 0%.
Thus, despite this vast number of humans who have ever existed, every single one of these 117 billion people is objectively unique.
To be original is to leverage our individuality of thought to produce something new or uncommon in the world. It encourages us to explore our novel thoughts and manifest their output in some way, creating value for others or the world.
The value part is necessary — originality doesn’t have much utility if it creates no progress. Example: “North Dakota Ping Pong Biden Rizz”. You’ve never seen this string of words together. It’s original, yet it didn’t move you. Instead, you thought to yourself, “What?” and “Why am I reading this nonsense by this loser?”
Is true originality attainable?
Yes, true originality is attainable, but it’s difficult. I believe ideas follow a nested model. On an individual level, words are the fundamental building blocks of an idea. The grouping of these words collectively creates one idea. Then the ideas are grouped into sub-subjects. Finally, these sub-subjects are categorized by subject (ex: business, philosophy, psychology).
Words → Idea → Sub-Subject → Subject
Example of the Idea Hierarchy:
Words: “Physical” +“touch” + “is” + “social” +“glue” + “because” + “it” “binds” + “people” + “together” +“in” + “a” + “more” + “visceral” + “way” + “than” + “other” + “forms” + “of” + “expression” — as you can see, each one of these words contributes to the idea and alters it slightly.
Idea: “Physical touch is social glue because it binds people together in a more visceral way than other forms of expression.” The idea is a commentary on how physical touch can connect people on a deeper level than other mediums (such as speech).
Sub-subject(s): Touch, Socialization, Human Connection
Subject: Psychology
Originality becomes increasingly difficult the higher we move up this hierarchy. It’s easy to put a unique set of words together, but almost impossible to find an idea that hasn’t ever been thought before. Unless…
Finding Originality
To find original ideas, we should understand the idea hierarchy from a top-down approach. It’s easy to put a unique string of words together, harder to find a unique idea, difficult to find a new sub-subject, and extremely hard to find a unique subject.
However, difficulty is often correlated with some kind of upside. Thus, finding these new sub-subjects and subjects will likely yield the most fruit because they open up a vast domain to find ideas in.
To be more original, we should begin following a two-step process.
Finding new subjects
New subjects are truly hard to visualize. There’s no way people in the 1600s would be able to conceptualize the world we live in today. How do people come up with new subjects? How do you find something novel? It seems like you have to dream big or have some sort of visionary characteristic. My best idea is to ask “What if ____?” questions. I’ll revisit this later.
As a consolation for my inability to think, I think these are good principles to follow for developing originality for existing subjects.
Explore a variety of subjects to understand what genuinely interests you. Consume as much high-fidelity information as possible.
Dive deep into the things that genuinely interest you.
When going deep, try to find niche sub-topics. The more niche something is, the less other people have thought about it.
Reach frontiers of knowledge — this is an idea popularized by Paul Graham. His theory is that knowledge of subjects often look smooth from a distance, but up close, it’s often full of gaps. If if you find a gap of knowledge, you’ll expand into a whole new field. To reach these frontiers, Paul says to work your butt off in a field that genuinely interests you.
Finding the right ideas
Attempt to make connections across a breadth of subjects (cross-pollination of knowledge)
Be weird. Our brain often shuts down ideas that we think are stupid or impractical or ridiculous. Thinking about these “stupid ideas” for a minute longer might bring you to an exciting place.
Ask questions to push your questioning. Whenever you ask a question about something, you open up the possibility to dive into rabbit hole and ask even more questions. Sooner or later, you might ask a key question that changes the way you or other people view things.
Example Questions: Is this true? What’s wrong with this? How can this be improved? What’s another way to do this? Why is this the way it is?
Genuinely think about the subject matter. It’s easy to consume knowledge through reading or “find” knowledge through Google or ChatGPT. It’s harder to be patient, sit, and think through nuances instead of instinctually searching for it and calling it a day.
Talk to smart people. Conversations are one of the best avenues to learn and exercise your brain if utilized correctly.
Develop expertise through work. If you work in a subject for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 15 years, your understanding is obviously going to extremely strong. When you have more understanding, you have more ideas, which makes both synthesis and distillation significantly easier.
In summation,
Justin is trying to practice originality.
We are all unique and should leverage our original ideas to produce valuable output.
In the idea hierarchy, originality becomes more difficult the farther we go up.
To be more original, we should try to find great subjects, then great ideas in those subjects.
Thanks. Bye.
Justin