May 2021There's one kind of opinion I'd be very afraid to express publicly.If someone I knew to be both a domain expert and a reasonable personproposed an idea that sounded preposterous, I'd be very reluctantto say "That will never work."Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially thehistory of science, knows that's how big things start. Someoneproposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, thenit gradually takes over the world.Most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safelydismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domainexperts. If the person proposing the idea is reasonable, then theyknow how implausible it sounds. And yet they're proposing it anyway.That suggests they know something you don't. And if they have deepdomain expertise, that's probably the source of it.[1]Such ideas are not merely unsafe to dismiss, but disproportionatelylikely to be interesting. When the average person proposes animplausible-sounding idea, its implausibility is evidence of theirincompetence. But when a reasonable domain expert does it, thesituation is reversed. There's something like an efficient markethere: on average the ideas that seem craziest will, if correct,have the biggest effect. So if you can eliminate the theory thatthe person proposing an implausible-sounding idea is incompetent,its implausibility switches from evidence that it's boring toevidence that it's exciting.[2]Such ideas are not guaranteed to work. But they don't have to be.They just have to be sufficiently good bets — to have sufficientlyhigh expected value. And I think on average they do. I think if youbet on the entire set of implausible-sounding ideas proposed byreasonable domain experts, you'd end up net ahead.The reason is that everyone is too conservative. The word "paradigm"is overused, but this is a case where it's warranted. Everyone istoo much in the grip of the current paradigm. Even the people whohave the new ideas undervalue them initially. Which means thatbefore they reach the stage of proposing them publicly, they'vealready subjected them to an excessively strict filter.[3]The wise response to such an idea is not to make statements, butto ask questions, because there's a real mystery here. Why has thissmart and reasonable person proposed an idea that seems so wrong?Are they mistaken, or are you? One of you has to be. If you're theone who's mistaken, that would be good to know, because it meansthere's a hole in your model of the world. But even if they'remistaken, it should be interesting to learn why. A trap that anexpert falls into is one you have to worry about too.This all seems pretty obvious. And yet there are clearly a lot ofpeople who don't share my fear of dismissing new ideas. Why do theydo it? Why risk looking like a jerk now and a fool later, insteadof just reserving judgement?One reason they do it is envy. If you propose a radical new ideaand it succeeds, your reputation (and perhaps also your wealth)will increase proportionally. Some people would be envious if thathappened, and this potential envy propagates back into a convictionthat you must be wrong.Another reason people dismiss new ideas is that it's an easy wayto seem sophisticated. When a new idea first emerges, it usuallyseems pretty feeble. It's a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is afull-grown eagle by comparison. So it's easy to launch a devastatingattack on a new idea, and anyone who does will seem clever to thosewho don't understand this asymmetry.This phenomenon is exacerbated by the difference between how thoseworking on new ideas and those attacking them are rewarded. Therewards for working on new ideas are weighted by the value of theoutcome. So it's worth working on something that only has a 10%chance of succeeding if it would make things more than 10x better.Whereas the rewards for attacking new ideas are roughly constant;such attacks seem roughly equally clever regardless of the target.People will also attack new ideas when they have a vested interestin the old ones. It's not surprising, for example, that some ofDarwin's harshest critics were churchmen. People build whole careerson some ideas. When someone claims they're false or obsolete, theyfeel threatened.The lowest form of dismissal is mere factionalism: to automaticallydismiss any idea associated with the opposing faction. The lowestform of all is to dismiss an idea because of who proposed it.But the main thing that leads reasonable people to dismiss new ideasis the same thing that holds people back from proposing them: thesheer pervasiveness of the current paradigm. It doesn't just affectthe way we think; it is the Lego blocks we build thoughts out of.Popping out of the current paradigm is something only a few peoplecan do. And even they usually have to suppress their intuitions atfirst, like a pilot flying through cloud who has to trust hisinstruments over his sense of balance.[4]Paradigms don't just define our present thinking. They also vacuumup the trail of crumbs that led to them, making our standards fornew ideas impossibly high. The current paradigm seems so perfectto us, its offspring, that we imagine it must have been acceptedcompletely as soon as it was discovered — that whatever the church thoughtof the heliocentric model, astronomers must have been convinced assoon as Copernicus proposed it. Far, in fact, from it. Copernicuspublished the heliocentric model in 1532, but it wasn't till themid seventeenth century that the balance of scientific opinionshifted in its favor.[5]Few understand how feeble new ideas look when they first appear.So if you want to have new ideas yourself, one of the most valuablethings you can do is to learn what they look like when they're born.Read about how new ideas happened, and try to get yourself into theheads of people at the time. How did things look to them, when thenew idea was only half-finished, and even the person who had it wasonly half-convinced it was right?But you don't have to stop at history. You can observe big new ideasbeing born all around you right now. Just look for a reasonabledomain expert proposing something that sounds wrong.If you're nice, as well as wise, you won't merely resist attackingsuch people, but encourage them. Having new ideas is a lonelybusiness. Only those who've tried it know how lonely. These peopleneed your help. And if you help them, you'll probably learn somethingin the process.Notes[1]This domain expertise could be in another field. Indeed,such crossovers tend to be particularly promising.[2]I'm not claiming this principle extends much beyond math,engineering, and the hard sciences. In politics, for example,crazy-sounding ideas generally are as bad as they sound. Thougharguably this is not an exception, because the people who proposethem are not in fact domain experts; politicians are domain expertsin political tactics, like how to get elected and how to getlegislation passed, but not in the world that policy acts upon.Perhaps no one could be.[3]This sense of "paradigm" was defined by Thomas Kuhn in hisStructure of Scientific Revolutions, but I also recommend hisCopernican Revolution, where you can see him at work developing theidea.[4]This is one reason people with a touch of Asperger's may havean advantage in discovering new ideas. They're always flying oninstruments.[5]Hall, Rupert. From Galileo to Newton. Collins, 1963. Thisbook is particularly good at getting into contemporaries' heads.Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Suhail Doshi, DanielGackle, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
