[Cd00d]

The most important thing I learned from my graduate advisor: anyone can have a worthwhile idea.

I watched him for years coming into weekly colloquia and seeming to tune out reading papers. But, occasionally there would be a speaker that was less than credible, and you could feel the entire hall close off. But, my advisor would hear a tidbit of a good idea (even amongst loads of bunk), and look up from his journals and ask a genuinely curious clarifying question. This would often lead to new lines of research in our labs.

In the end, many of these speakers were on the wrong overall track, but they definitely had insights that were incredibly valuable. Those who dismissed them entirely missed out, while my advisor had a knack for finding the signal in the noise and moving forward with that without missing it due to judgement.

[jiggawatts]

My hobby is to look for a physics theory of everything (ToE). I have virtually no chance at succeeding at this, but it's fun reading through random junk on ArXiV.

I noticed something similar: You can find papers by clearly crazy people that have nuggets of good ideas in them. Odd bits of mathematics they reference might be an interesting rabbithole to go down, even if it ultimately leads nowhere.

The whole thing reminds me of the passtime of the hyper-intelligent Minds in the Culture series. They play in Infinite Fun Space, which is vaguely like coming up with new rules of physics and "seeing what happens". The rules don't have to be realistic, just fun.

I've found that practising physicists seem allergic to any such notion, too quick to dismiss unorthodox approaches. So what if they're wrong? They're fun, and maybe not that wrong in some rare cases.

[sitkack]

If you want a good idea killed, have it presented by the wrong person. We attach an outsized amount of meaning between the two, sometimes so much that we kill the person delivering it.

[comfypotato]

I got a good laugh from your comment here. Imagine it from my perspective. Someone (you) is suggesting they search for a ToE in their spare time, and they’re labeling someone else as clearly crazy.

;)

All in good fun. I greatly enjoy the sentiment of your comment and it’s parent that great ideas can come from anywhere. At the risk of creating a segue into controversial topics, I think this plays a huge part of why it’s important that a team of programmers be made up of folks with different backgrounds. I am so often caught completely off guard by how different a valid idea is than mine. “I totally never would have thought of that.”

[guskel]

Have you taken a look at Wolframs ToE? I found it pretty intriguing.

[agumonkey]

I somehow converged around a similar idea, fun and exploration