Rules for Weird Ideas

I'm never really sure about anything, really, so there's a constant internal debate going on over various topics. While that's not necessarily good for making quick decisions, I do appreciate the mental flexibility that my uncertainty ends up giving me. Weird, controversial, silly, or obvious ideas can be useful also in order to connect with other viewpoints, practicing empathy in a way.

At my company, when faced with tough problems, we encourage absurd, weird and hilarious ideas. Why? Because at minimum it takes the edge off high stakes problem solving. At best, it frees up creative thinking and generates good workable ideas.

Rule 1: Working at the population level can be like the story of sheep going over a cliff. This is not necessarily a biologically protective trait for the individual. Expedient yes, but not necessarily advantageous.

Rule 2: Getting trusted information from other people requires that first one knows the provenance of the information. A cult is an example of “trusted information” within a group originating from one charismatic source. In this case the “weird idea” is actually normalized within the group.

Rule 6: If one is to consider a fraction of weird ideas, then one has the capacity to consider all weird ideas. In fact, there is something to be gained from considering everything and using the knowledge gained in other ways.

Rule X: if a weird idea looks like a horse, smells like a horse, and it whinnies like a horse, then it’s probably not a zebra.

https://eattheplanet.org/solanum-poisonous-relatives-of-toma...

Spaniards and Italians who imported the Mexico/Central American cultivar developed by native American cultivators had a different opinion, but the English weren't interest for several hundred years, say the historians:

http://www.vegetablefacts.net/vegetable-history/history-of-t...

Conclusion: what one culture views as weird, others might view as normal.

>"Skepticism of weird ideas is a kind of “immune system” to prevent us from believing in nonsense."

That's a useful way to frame things and I think we'd do well to go back to Dawkins original concept of 'memes'. Ideas don't spread by virtue of their truthfulness but by virtue of their fitness which is to say primarily their virality. (it's why hucksters with bad ideas love debates and attention, even if they're obviously wrong).

with all the talk about need for open-mindedness and criticism of filter bubbles, a good filter is the best thing you can have in the modern world because that's nothing else than an immune system to a lot of not merely wrong, but predatory ideas.

Social shaming is another problem...people can face serious irreparable social or workplace consequences for having bad ideas.

Life is not like a Ted talk, where you can keep failing until you succeed. Sometimes you need to get it right fast. Survivorship bias means you only hear about the people whose weird ideas turned out correct and were vindicated.

With no weirdness points, you duplicate others' work. With too many weirdness points, you're almost certainly wrong. The sweet spot for innovation is in between.

Most of the "big ticket" items have been found (don't drink molten lead, it's bad for you) so the marginal effects are going to be relatively low on all these things.

In that vein, the question is how many "weird" ideas can your portfolio of time and money afford at any point?

> But they feel like they aren’t “supposed” to reject it for those reasons, so they give a misleading impression that they reject the argument in detail.

> This creates an illusion of a false consensus that everyone thinks the argument is wrong, screwing up the social process that’s supposed to eventually lead to truth.

I feel this also describes how discourse usually plays out online for some reason. A lot of this is subconscious of course, we try to rationalise our instincts, but it's difficult to prevent instincts from becoming confirmation bias and undermine our reasoning.

I've certainly felt this way when it becomes blatantly obvious that I'm wrong, yet I argued with such reason... probably embarrassingly so if I search through enough of my HN comments.

Note: JSON column types in existing RDBMS treat JSON-derived columns as second-class citizens. In DR all columns are equal citizens.

Consider nuclear power. Until this year, it was roundly condemned as an unworkable solution to CO2 reduction and energy supply. The waste problem hadn't been solved and never was going to be. The effects of an accident, no matter how unlikely, were not worth the risk.

That largely came about because of Fukushima accident a decade earlier. Prior to that point nuclear power was tolerated, if not welcomed. After that accident, the idea became weird. Plants were decommissioned and plans to build new plants shelved.

Oddly enough nothing about nuclear power itself changed at those two inflection points. Same principles of operation. Same reactor designs (mostly). Same risks. Same potential.

What changed was people's minds - on a large scale.

I think if you have a weird idea X, you may need to teach the less weird prerequisites first. Then sell the idea once people are acquainted.

I wrote a blog post about it here (https://soundmind.co/blog/is-your-product-too-weird)

People need a frame of reference to start from, and something that they can build a foundation of understanding on.

This throw-away metaphor was so stomach turning I found it hard to continue. But I did, and I found the article mostly harmless. But also pointless. In fact, I think the OP's greatest contribution is to provide yet another piece of evidence that people are obsessed with ideas, strange or otherwise. In fact, this obsession is so prevalent (especially on HN) that we don't even question it. That, in my opinion, is the more interesting topic. Why are ideas valued in some cultures more than others? (For example, they may not be valued as much in Japan; see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFER3QCAboc)

Disgusting goblin

> but ultrasonic humidifiers might not be

Enlightened patrician