That's not really a problem.
In one hand, it shows the idea is really useful on its own.
And on the other hand, it shows that currently forgotten ideas have a chance to being rediscovered in the future.
In one hand, it shows the idea is really useful on its own.
And on the other hand, it shows that currently forgotten ideas have a chance to being rediscovered in the future.
For real world everyday problems normally it is an application of already solved theory or it isn't worth working on at all. We still need researchers to look at and expand our theory which in turn allows us to solve more problems in the real world. And there are real world problems that we pour enormous amounts of effort into solving despite lacking theory, but these areas move much slower than the much more common application of already solved theory and so are vastly vastly more expensive. (this is how we get smaller chip architectures, but it is a planet scale problem to solve)
If I want some novel ideas from a group of people, I'm going to give them the framework of the problem, split them into groups so that they don't bias each other, and say: go figure it out.
It’s a powerful skill to be able to try to solve things from first principles. And it’s a muscle you can strengthen.
It would be a bit silly to never look anything up, but it isn’t so black and white.
Only reading the existing literature is not good enough.
The capacity to create ideas is also something that needs to be practiced.