http://paulgraham.com/getideas.html

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           How to Get New Ideas

           January 2023

           (Someone fed my essays into GPT to make something that could
           answer questions based on them, then asked it where good ideas
           come from. The answer was ok, but not what I would have said.
           So I asked: What would I have said?)

           The way to get new ideas is to notice anomalies: what seems
           strange, or missing, or broken? You can see anomalies in
           everyday life (much of standup comedy is based on this), but
           the best place to look for them is at the frontiers of
           knowledge. Knowledge grows fractally. From a distance its
           edges look smooth, but when you learn enough to get close to
           one, you'll notice it's full of gaps. These gaps will seem
           obvious; it will seem inexplicable that no one has tried x or
           wondered about y. In the best case, exploring such gaps yields
           whole new fractal buds.



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