My takeaways

Joining up existing ideas is cooler than making totalising new ones. I’m suddenly very philosophically content I made my reading list app in PHP and HTML that would have worked ~15 years ago (I think). Okay I’d have to change a few things but the main part would still work.

Something something unix philosophy huehuehue

Joining up existing ideas is the main component of academic research (by volume, if not weight). Most papers contain not many ideas, nor do they need to, nor are they really expected to. (At least in my field of applied physics).

This is related to that problem solver/original thinker distinction mathematicians talk about.

Jonas thinks that having “ideas” (by the by, I think they both mean grand ideas, not just common-or-garden ideas like “ooh soy sauce and ginger powder and chilli make cabbage taste nice”) is a good way to learn about what makes some ideas better than others. He says its a way to develop your taste. I think taste is important too, but I think grand ideas are also unnecessery.

My perspective on this is strongly informed by being an applied physicist who is aware of the history of their field and how cumulative progress works.

Concludes that teams of people are important.

Questions

• Why did todepond say “utopian thought” was fascist and cringe?
• Why does everyone care about technology so much? It is because Luke/Jonas are programmers? I guess it’s because technology has an outsize impact in our lives.
• Wait isn’t this just the discussion scientists have been having about cumulative vs. individual ideas of progress for years?