David -
I was told that I should present a strong opinion about a topic in philosophy or physics. I thought I’d express a view about certain inherently underappreciated ideas and the role they play in progress.
When people try to explain why an idea or achievement represents progress (or has value) there are only so many different stories one can tell. The two most common ones I see are:
You can say that the achievement represents the completion of a long-standing desirable goal (or a stepping stone towards it). Perhaps a long-standing open problem has been solved. A famous conjecture proved. The airplane finally flew. At last, we built an outpost on the Moon.
Or perhaps one can tell a story about how something that was done was an improvement according to some standard we or others have set. Maybe that algorithm is an exponential speedup over the existing one. A flaw in the argument was removed. We can now make twice as much Coca Cola as we could before.
And it is indeed possible to tell such stories about some of the ideas as they appear and for many more – perhaps all - in retrospect.
But there is also a different kind of ideas. When they appear no such story can be told. There is no goal they obviously advance. They don’t perform exceptionally on the standards we or others set. Maybe they perform abysmally. Maybe other people don’t understand them or resonate with them. Maybe the algorithm is not exponentially faster but is in fact slower than the classical one.
But there is something about them. They make us look at things in a different way. Ask questions we’ve never asked before. See flaws with existing ideas we never saw before. Take us places that we never knew existed. Give rise to ten more intriguing ideas we never considered before. They don’t advance our goals or meet our standards. Through the exhilaration and curiosity they provoke, they make us forget about them.
I believe that it is these kinds of ideas that matter to progress most. It is not possible to narrativize the encounter and contemplation of them as they are happening. While they might be changing us more than achieving any goal ever does, we can’t hope to understand or explain that change in the moment. To try to do so would often be to sabotage the process. It is only experienced in the moment as curiosity, intrigue and fun.
When the swirl of it all finally settles down, we find ourselves in a new place. It is not the place where we intended to go – our goals. It is often a place we never really imagined before. Maybe from that new perspective the old goals and standards look artificial and arbitrary. But despite that it is clear that we now find ourselves in a place that is in fact – better.
With that I wish you a very happy 70th birthday and for many more such ideas going forward.
Matjaz
I was told that I should present a strong opinion about a topic in philosophy or physics. I thought I’d express a view about certain inherently underappreciated ideas and the role they play in progress.
When people try to explain why an idea or achievement represents progress (or has value) there are only so many different stories one can tell. The two most common ones I see are:
You can say that the achievement represents the completion of a long-standing desirable goal (or a stepping stone towards it). Perhaps a long-standing open problem has been solved. A famous conjecture proved. The airplane finally flew. At last, we built an outpost on the Moon.
Or perhaps one can tell a story about how something that was done was an improvement according to some standard we or others have set. Maybe that algorithm is an exponential speedup over the existing one. A flaw in the argument was removed. We can now make twice as much Coca Cola as we could before.
And it is indeed possible to tell such stories about some of the ideas as they appear and for many more – perhaps all - in retrospect.
But there is also a different kind of ideas. When they appear no such story can be told. There is no goal they obviously advance. They don’t perform exceptionally on the standards we or others set. Maybe they perform abysmally. Maybe other people don’t understand them or resonate with them. Maybe the algorithm is not exponentially faster but is in fact slower than the classical one.
But there is something about them. They make us look at things in a different way. Ask questions we’ve never asked before. See flaws with existing ideas we never saw before. Take us places that we never knew existed. Give rise to ten more intriguing ideas we never considered before. They don’t advance our goals or meet our standards. Through the exhilaration and curiosity they provoke, they make us forget about them.
I believe that it is these kinds of ideas that matter to progress most. It is not possible to narrativize the encounter and contemplation of them as they are happening. While they might be changing us more than achieving any goal ever does, we can’t hope to understand or explain that change in the moment. To try to do so would often be to sabotage the process. It is only experienced in the moment as curiosity, intrigue and fun.
When the swirl of it all finally settles down, we find ourselves in a new place. It is not the place where we intended to go – our goals. It is often a place we never really imagined before. Maybe from that new perspective the old goals and standards look artificial and arbitrary. But despite that it is clear that we now find ourselves in a place that is in fact – better.
With that I wish you a very happy 70th birthday and for many more such ideas going forward.
Matjaz