

Stop Ridiculing Ideas - jamescun
http://www.jamescun.com/2011/10/stop-ridiculing-ideas/

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freejack
I've learned over the years that no amount of criticism, ridicule, feedback,
input, commentary or lauding should kill an idea. Its all positive if you take
it that way. Every statement made about your idea should be taken onboard and
evaluated and used as fuel for improving your notion. Some feedback is shit
and some ridicule is useful - if you love your idea, its up to you to figure
out which is which and how you can use it to propel your plan forward.

I love it when I run into someone who has nothing but negativity or ridicule
for my plan. At least it means I've come up with something worth reacting to.
The worst is when I hear nothing. Crickets hurt :-)

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jimmeh
It's my observation that industry in general and technology in particular is
dominated by a kind of group think that makes certain 'ideas' unassailable
once they've reach a certain level of critical mass from the crunchocracy,
irrespective of their objective merits.

Roughly: I think most organisations would be better served with a culture that
encourages less inhibition, less self censorship and more encouragement of
brainstorming ideas, and a much more rigorous critical, analytical
investigation of ideas before accepting them.

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icebraining
Yes and no. While mocking shouldn't be encouraged, there's value in
criticizing an idea; finding good answers to the problems raised by critics is
indispensable.

The important thing is that you should approach it with a constructive
mindset, picking it apart without disregarding it outright.

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wccrawford
He did say 'stop ridiculing' and not 'stop criticizing'.

It's impossible to have a discussion on perpetual motion or cold fusion
because people who don't even understand the basics will jump in and start
mocking everyone. These are extreme examples, but the same thing happens to
any idea that someone thinks is impossible, naive, or bad.

(I'm not saying I think they are possible. I'm saying it should be possible to
have a discussion about them... Because I'm also not saying they're
impossible.)

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TillE
Perpetual motion is physically impossible. It fully deserves ridicule. Cold
fusion will stop being ridiculed once there's a reproducible experiment.

Pseudoscience deserves absolutely no respect. Quite the opposite. The same
goes for any variety of bullshit.

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rauljara
Taking ideas seriously is the only way to test them. If scientists hadn't once
upon a time took the idea of perpetual motion machines and ESP, etc. very
seriously, we could not be so certain today that they are not true.

Instead of mocking someone who espouses one of these notions (which I have
never found to be an effective method of convincing them that the notion is
false), I wonder if encouraging them to take it more seriously (e.g., look up
experiments, actually run them, etc.) would be much better t convincing them
its wrong.

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burgerbrain
Perpetual motion doesn't need testing, and never did. It is a gross violation
of thermodynamics, all of the science that has gone into _that_ is sufficient.
The so called inventors of cold fusion machines should make perhaps even the
slightest attempt to not look like skuzzballs and actually _demonstrate_ their
work, then ask for reproductions.

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tobiasu
Ridiculing serves as an information overload protection, it shuts the inventor
up and prevents ones brain to explore the idea in more depth.

One has to respect that people don't want to be bombarded with information.
They have a life, too.

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jakeonthemove
It's not just a British cultural problem - everyone everywhere in the world
ridicules people and things they don't understand, don't want to admit _may_
be true, or just don't have time to think about.

If you would create something like the Silicon Valley in the UK and bring the
brightest minds and hard working people from all over the world, you'd also
get better odds at success for ideas that seem ridiculous.

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augustiner
I think the problem is more general and it's not the culture. It's just much
easier to find arguments for how the idea could fail rather than ones
supporting it or proving it might work.

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angusland
It reminds me of the awesome "failure" scene in Meet the Robinsons. We should
ask what experiments have been run on the idea, what has been proven or
disproven.

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verroq
Most people criticise out of envy. They don't want to think that somebody else
has a better idea than them, by pointing out flaws they assert their own ego.

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LiveTheDream
I don't think this is categorically true. Critical responses to ideas are also
a cultural thing (think: Americans tend to be over-the-top positive, Eastern
Europeans tend to be bluntly negative).

