Isaac Asimov: How Do People Get New Ideas? 150
HughPickens.com writes: Arthur Obermayer, a friend of the Isaac Asimov, writes that he recently rediscovered an unpublished essay by Asimov written in 1959 while cleaning out some old files. Obermayer says it is "as broadly relevant today as when he wrote it. It describes not only the creative process and the nature of creative people but also the kind of environment that promotes creativity." Here's an excerpt from Asimov's essay, which is well worth reading in its entirety:
"A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others. Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren't paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues."
A couple more quotes:
"A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others. Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren't paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues."
"My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display."
"Presumably, the process of creativity, whatever it is, is essentially the same in all its branches and varieties, so that the evolution of a new art form, a new gadget, a new scientific principle, all involve common factors. It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. What is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable. It seems the height of unreason to suppose the earth was round instead of flat, or that it moved instead of the sun, or that objects required a force to stop them when in motion, instead of a force to keep them moving, and so on."
Gosh! A friend of THE Isaac Asimov! (Score:3)
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El Senior Isaac Asimov. :-P
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Doh ... Senor, not senior.
Yo soy el stupido. :-P
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Doh ... Senor, not senior.
Yo soy el stupido. :-P
It's actually Señor.
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Nobody expects the grammar inquisition!
You haven't been on /. long if you didn't expect the grammar inquisition.
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Unfortunately, he can't lay claim to being the Bruce Dicksinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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I don't often Isaac Asimov.
But when I do, it's The Isaac Asimov.
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Mod parent up for being absolutely fabulous. Those Dos Equis ad references never get old.
I wouldn't say "never". I agree that they don't get old often.
But when they do...
Isaac Asimov never heard (Score:2)
of the the Dunning Kruger effect which coupled with the present "I wan't to be a genius" narcissism creates a greate many people who behave like geniuses, rather then actually being geniuses.
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And you exemplify it perfectly. Carry on.
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Who cares? He wasn't writing about genius (or mimicking it), but about creativity and the ability to see relationships or make connections where others haven't.
intelligence without creativity is a dead end, sterile.
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A failure to understand humanity. All things have their place in the social cooperative effort that is humanity. Intelligence, common sense and creativity. Creativity comes from people willing to do nothing more than spending a great deal of time sitting and thinking, why because due to genetics their brains directly reward them with desirably brain chemicals for sitting and thinking. However those creative people do need the support of the rest of human society to spend so much time sitting and thinking b
Re:Isaac Asimov never heard (Score:5, Insightful)
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One can't do without the other.
Common sense is the ability to deal with the necessities of reality that don't interrest you.
Brilliant artists still usually to go to the toilet; they're not being creative about everything all the time.
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Indeed, if anything the remarkable thing about common sense is how remarkably uncommon it is.
Furthermore, since this is obvious from spending only a small amount of time with just about anyone you meet, this observation is common sense to me.
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Great point!
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Common Sense is the opposite of creativity
Destruction of art and/or the suppression of ideas is the opposite of creativity. The creative people bring new ideas out of the dark and share them. They use those ideas to create new things. Destructive people suppress new ideas and destroy things.
Common sense is a tool that "grounds" the creatives and helps keep them from acting on all the wrong ideas (I won't drink the green paint today). It's not the opposite of creativity. It's a help-mate.
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A failure to understand humanity. All things have their place in the social cooperative effort that is humanity. Intelligence, common sense and creativity. Creativity comes from people willing to do nothing more than spending a great deal of time sitting and thinking, why because due to genetics their brains directly reward them with desirably brain chemicals for sitting and thinking.
Creativity is the primary problem-solving skill. It's a prerequisite for civilization, not a result of it. The default means of solving problems is to bash it with a rock. Even bash it with a stick required creativity, the first time anyway. After that, good old imitation would do.
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So how creative was the witch doctor shaman, creative enough to encompass the psychology of placebo treatments to promote recovery in conjunction with herbal remedies. Now how early did that occur in the social evolution of humanity?
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I read the essay yesterday and the first thought I had was, "sounds like that one book of his." God I miss his storytelling...
Or according to another authority... (Score:2)
"Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss."
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Bell Labs (Score:4, Interesting)
The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren't paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.
I'd really feel better if he had some actual data here, instead of speculation. The legacy of Bell Labs kind of runs contrary to this idea, because they were not only paid to come up with ideas, but also told to come up with ideas that would be profitable. Then there were the guys in the Advanced Institute who got paid to do nothing else but come up with great ideas.
The only thing I would even dare venture to guess is that the great ideas of the ages have come from people who were looking for things, even if they found something other than what they were looking for (like Penicillin).
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Yes, and further we know that only NASA and space are the true motivators of innovation. People in general never had interest in technology before about 1957.
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The only thing I would even dare venture to guess is that the great ideas of the ages have come from people who were looking for things, even if they found something other than what they were looking for (like Penicillin).
Or LSD. Or cortexiphan.
Re:Bell Labs (Score:4, Informative)
And yet C and Unix came about because someone wanted to play games [harvard.edu].
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Wow, such a bad case of feature creep.
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And yet C and Unix came about because someone wanted to play games [harvard.edu].
So what is the excuse for the existence of emacs? Surely it wasn't editing text.
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On the side of the status quo, researchers are only valuable if they are coming up with work that can have some usefulness.
This might be a statement of status
Yeah a likely suspect (Score:1)
Why is it patent clerks are so good at inventing things? I mean yeah ok their timing is suspiciously close with submissions but who's to say who invented what first.
Disapproval of creativity as expressed in copyrigh (Score:4, Interesting)
We can see evidence of this in how copyright treats derivative works. All works build on other works, as Asimov wrote when he described connecting A to B to C, yet some forms of such building are forbidden by law.
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All works build on other works, as Asimov wrote when he described connecting A to B to C, yet some forms of such building are forbidden by law.
So maybe you need to be more creative to find a way that doesn't infringe the law :-)
If you succeed, then copyright law has succeeded in its' stated goal, to encourage creativity (though perhaps not quite in the way intended).
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So maybe you need to be more creative to find a way that doesn't infringe the law :-)
But how can a layman know where the line is for a particular use? The uncertainty itself has a chilling effect on creativity.
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So maybe you need to be more creative to find a way that doesn't infringe the law :-)
But how can a layman know where the line is for a particular use? The uncertainty itself has a chilling effect on creativity.
For most laypersons, it's not a problem because they'll never be in a position to produce copyright works. So only those who are actually exercising their creativity in a fashion that is governed by copyright need worry.
From this subset, someone who's producing music, art, or literary works has probably had it drilled into them in school that plagiarism is wrong. So, if they're lifting someone else's work and calling it their own, they're not being creative and deserve what they get. They're just tryi
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For most laypersons, it's not a problem because they'll never be in a position to produce copyright works.
What? Everything you create is covered by copyright.
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For most laypersons, it's not a problem because they'll never be in a position to produce copyright works.
What? Everything you create is covered by copyright.
Au contraire, not everything that someone creates is covered by copyright. To be eligible for copyright, it has to be original, non-trivial, and not a compilation of facts such as a list of names and addresses. And then there's the stuff that people "create" that someone else already did - hence the expression "great minds think alike."
It also has to be fixed in some medium. [copyright.gov]
A work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time; where a work is prepared over a period of time, the portion of it that has been fixed at any particular time constitutes the work as of that time, and where the work has been prepared in different versions, each version constitutes a separate work.
A work is “fixed” in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is “fixed” for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission.
Only to the extent that artwork contains non-utilitarian aspects is it protected. The rest isn't. So if the artwork is strictly u
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You may want to read up on the US joining the Berne Convention
The US Copyright Office disagrees with you:
(c) Effect of Berne Convention.—No right or interest in a work eligible for protection under this title may be claimed by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Any rights in a work eligible for protection under this title that derive from this title, other Federal or State statutes, or the common law, shall not be expanded or reduced by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto.
Fair use is a provision of copyright law. It does not negate it.
Again, read what I actually wrote:
Nor is stuff protected by copyright if it is subject to fair use provisions.
You can't rely on copyright protection to prevent others from using stuff that is subject to fair use. Sure, you hold the copyright - but if it's subject to fair use, good luck protecting it.
My Sweet Lord (Score:2)
someone who's producing music, art, or literary works has probably had it drilled into them in school that plagiarism is wrong
So what can a composer of music do to determine whether or not he is accidentally infringing or plagiarizing? George Harrison got bit by this (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, the "My Sweet Lord" case).
If, on the other hand, their story, music, or artwork is original
Let me rephrase the question: How can someone starting out in the business determine what is original?
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To answer your question
Let me rephrase the question: How can someone starting out in the business determine what is original?
You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before. How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea ..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
Obviously you can't do this [nytimes.com].
And then there's the whole question of timing. Sometimes, an idea's time has come, and multiple people will exp
How can newcomer avoid being blindsided? (Score:2)
You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before.
So what should a newcomer to a creative field do to avoid being blindsided and bankrupted by incumbent owners of exclusive rights? If there are no good steps that a newcomer can take, then this impossibility has a chilling effect on people even trying to become a newcomer to a creative field.
How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea ..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
What kind of search?
Obviously you can't do this [an alternate-point-of-view adaptation of a culturally significant work]
This is a form of creativity of which society currently disapproves through its elected representatives. How does it benefit society for society to disapprove of this?
you pays your money (or in this case, sweat equity) and you takes your chances.
Why the subject-verb disagreemen
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You can never be sure, especially if you're a newcomer to the field, that someone hasn't plowed that field before.
So what should a newcomer to a creative field do to avoid being blindsided and bankrupted by incumbent owners of exclusive rights? If there are no good steps that a newcomer can take, then this impossibility has a chilling effect on people even trying to become a newcomer to a creative field.
Get to know the field. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Also, don't worry about it. If your book or film or artwork is truly original, it should stand on its' own.
The field of software is about the only real minefield - if you're stupid enough to strip files of copyright and then claim ownership of the complete work, you deserve a kick in the head. We all learned in school that plagiarism is wrong.
How many times have you heard someone who isn't in tech come up to you and say "I've got this great idea ..." and they haven't even bothered to do the most cursory search, which would have revealed that it's not original at all?
What kind of search?
Oh for the good old days of justf***inggoogleforit.
Obviously you can't do this [an alternate-point-of-view adaptation of a culturally significant work]
This is a form of creativity of which society currently disapproves through its elected representatives. How does it benefit society for society to disapprove of this?
The work lacked creativity - o
Google doesn't support this (Score:2)
If your book or film or artwork is truly original, it should stand on its' own.
You skipped music.
What kind of search?
Oh for the good old days of justf***inggoogleforit.
I have Google Play Sound Search installed on my Nexus 7 tablet. But it supports only known commercial recordings, not my own singing or piano playing. Shazam has the same limit.
So what should Harrison have done
Not published it.
That'd be fine if the accidental ripoff had been pointed out before All Things Must Pass went gold. Otherwise it would have involved an expensive recall, withdrawing copies that had already been shipped to stores.
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We can see evidence of this in how copyright treats derivative works. All works build on other works, as Asimov wrote when he described connecting A to B to C,
Copyright rewards creativity, originality.
The geek's imagination doesn't to stretch much farther than fan fiction. The golden triangle of Star Trek, Star Wars and Dr. Who.
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To be fair, copyright originally was for 14 years (plus a one time 14 year extension). So if you took 28 year old A and added 29 year old B plus 14 year old (and not renewed) C, you could come up with something new. It might have been a delay, but it wasn't a horrendous one. Now, though, you'd need to wait for A, B, and C to be 120 years old before you could use them. (When Asimov wrote this article, copyright terms were 28 years with a one-time 67 year extension. Arguably, still too long.)
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Oh dear! (Score:1)
Words from a beloved authority figure come down revealing, (without even intending it to be a direct nudge), that many of his adoring flock lead lives dominated by of anti-creative thought patterns.
The bitter and begrudged ruffle of feathers in some of the posts here is telling.
He wasn't attacking you. Settle down. If you recognize yourself, then that calls for introspection, not defensiveness.
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I'm presuming you recognize yourself in his description of the creative mind.
Well worth reading? (Score:5, Interesting)
> Asimov's essay, which is well worth reading in its entirety:
No, it isn't. John Cleese's thoughts on the matter are much more thoughtful and thought provoking. He's had a lifetime to consider it. Although he didn't make much progress, it was more than Asimov.
http://petapixel.com/2014/10/2... [petapixel.com]
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Just wanted to thank you for posting that link. Cleese's delivery is as entertaining as ever but the content is so much more than that. Not only does it come across as well thought-out and thoroughly researched (if nothing else by linking together research done by experts in their field), it is, as you put it, thought provoking.
Thank you again, it's been a while since I've come across a comment on Slashdot that was, at one and the same time, on-topic, insightful, interesting and useful. Are you new here? ;)
Re:Well worth reading? (Score:4, Interesting)
Both are good. Interestingly, Asimov's contrived sinecure/forum resembles the BBC comedy writing teams decades ago: a paycheck, a roomful of brilliance, a target (funny but broadcastable) and free reign to be as ludicrous as is needed. Doug Adams, Monty Python, Laurie & Fry, The Young Ones -- all describe their BBC time very warmly. Ditto friends from
Oh, and you most remind me of someone who says '... and I *have* a sense of humor.'
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> Asimov's essay, which is well worth reading in its entirety:
No, it isn't. John Cleese's thoughts on the matter are much more thoughtful and thought provoking.
Even if Cleese's work is more insightful than Asimov's, it doesn't make Asimov's uninteresting or not worth reading.
Yeah, that comment brings to mind folks that insist they are arbiters of funny, and that they *have* a sense of humor.
Except this time people are trying to nail something inchoate down and they're back behind everyone's shoulder saying 'no, you're all wrong.'
I've come up with lots of good ideas (Score:1)
My theory for coming up with good ideas is simple. Look at new technologies, and try and apply them to the world. Look at a lot of the first electrical devices, they're
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I remember a story my dad told about when he got to play with one of the first microprocessors: a (relatively) big, fragile and expensive piece of kit. The question most people would ask about this new technology is: "What can we use this for?". And most of them would try and answer that in terms of the situation they are presented with: i.e. they come up with applications for that processor that take its properties (big, fragile and
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Where is this "box" everyone's always talking about, and what does it look like?
If you look around yourself carefully, you should be able to make out the inside surfaces of the box.
Sinecures. (Score:3)
The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren't paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all.
There is a long tradition of finding secure but undemanding jobs for creative talents who, for political or ideological reasons, could not be subsidized openly.
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News? (Score:2)
The good doctor passed away in 1992
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Yes, but this essay was just found and published now - 22 years after his death.
Better reading: ad agency processes (Score:2)
If you want a process for fostering creativity, read something like this:
http://smile.amazon.com/Young-... [amazon.com]
Ad agencies have to come up with ideas all the time, and their processes for doing so have worked for over a century. Each agency is different, but all of them have to be creative on demand.
Solution right under your nose (Score:1)
I get new ideas by cleaning out old files.
Edward de Bono (Score:3)
The "Great Man" theory of how progress is made (Score:2)
Asimov's advice for how to run effective bull sessions for creative geniuses is based on the assumption that progress is made by a few "great men" who can see and imagine things that all others miss. This theory is not exactly politically correct these days, to say the least. Modern history books are full of attempts to find and highlight what I might call the "Forgotten Man" of history, the story of ordinary people who represent an entire class of people who collectively brought about change.
Personally, I
Asimov and Social Media (Score:2)
I wonder how Isaac Asimov would have regarded social media. His essay had the statement "For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display." In social media, people will post hundreds of statements of varying quality. Most will be ignored (or read and instantly forgotten in the flood of content). A few will rise to the top (being retweeted, reposted, shared, etc). I know using social media (and the Internet in general) has made
Relationship to Agile Methodology (Score:2)
I think that Asimov's observations on the inhibitory effect of visibility and accountability are applicable to the smaller forms of creativity and risk taking like trying new tools and technologies.
I've seen this occur with SCRUM. We had dev team build a new product, burning down backlog through multiple sprints, with an overall results that were pedestrian. By which I mean functional, pretty interface; nothing to complain about really, code was reviewed, tests passed, etc. But you were left wondering the
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Thanks for the comments. All fair points, particularly your remarks about 20-20 hindsight/grass is greener.
I like Neil Gaiman's answer. (Score:2)
http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Co... [neilgaiman.com]
Creativity vs Common Sense (Score:1)
What is Creativity?
Is it like that haiku comment
"To be creative - you must resist common sense .... "
at the TFA at the TR page ?
The dude who invented the round wheel didn't invent the wheel by "resist common sense", or did he?
Does one really have to resist common sense in order to "get out of the box"?
Re:Creativity vs Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
How I Get New Ideas
By Isaac Asimov
It worked for him.
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I agree with you. Also, he lived through an era where to get to the forefront of any science wasn't as time consuming as it is now. Although it was time consuming to the average Joe and hence most of the new ideas were technological, not scientific. These days, you'll be spending the first third of your life getting to the forefront of a very narrow field and then be required to constantly upgrade your scientific background. New physics theories might get scratched out on the back of a napkin, but that beli
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While most of his writing is good stuff he wasn't exactly Joseph Conrad so there's not so much focus on the people in the stories.
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Of course it would make far more sense to compare Conrad's two spy novels and Tom Clancy, but that would be cruel.
Re:He, Him, His (Score:4, Informative)
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I was told this change occurred in 1968. After that, he/she or she and he was then acceptable.
I still love using them, but apparently that's wrong. wrong I say!
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I'm old enough to remember when he/his/him was ok to use in a sentence,
And it still is. But now it is also acceptable to use she/hers/her in a sentence as well, when the gender is unknown.
Back in the day men did everything, so naturally he/his/him would be used with verbs.
Unless something was women's work.
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As non-white males became empowered, it no longer made sense to imply only men were doing things.
Are non-white males not men? That's pretty racist. As is bringing up skin colour for no reason.
Seriously though that has nothing at all to do with the reason. They/them/their has been used as a third person singular gender-neutral pronoun since before modern English was modern English so it's nothing about "back in the day". At some point some prescriptivist decided we shouldn't be using a plural pronoun as a singular (although took no umbrage to "you") and made a grammar rule to use "he". It was a woman I
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Are non-white males not men? That's pretty racist. As is bringing up skin colour for no reason.
It wasn't for no reason. It was an attempted demonstration that not too long ago, white men thought they were the only people that counted. Just like how women were treated like second class humans, so were ethnic minorities. If it sounds racist, it's because those times were racist. That was exactly the point I was trying to make.
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The dude who invented the round wheel didn't invent the wheel by "resist common sense", or did he?
If everyone else is rolling heavy loads on logs, and someone else figures out that it's better to just use two sections of logs and another smaller one as an axle, well, that's going against common sense. Until you figure out how to use two or more of these supporting a platform and throwing a bit of bear fat on the "axles" as lube and actually show them your new cart ...
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If everyone else is rolling heavy loads on logs, and someone else figures out that it's better to just use two sections of logs and another smaller one as an axle, well, that's going against common sense.
Odds are, it actually still involved elements of common sense. Probably someone figured out that an hourglass-shaped log was easier to maneuver, and accomplishing the same thing with less materials is the obvious next step. Actually making it happen probably required the results of several other inventions. Pegging the axle, for example, could have come from some kind of tool (hammer, mace) made from the same principle.
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so you're skeptic of the skeptics? skeptics of what?
or what the fuck? maybe light too travelled distance per year in Noahs time? that kind of thing?
the problem with saying that people who go against common logic and science are creative geniuses is that.. the more time goes on and the better the established science goes, the more of the people who are skeptical of science are just morons - not creative geniuses. and there's a lot of morons with too high self confidence and self esteem filling up the youtu
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There is no such thing as "established science". Or, if there is, then it is about as established as a Lego castle made of blocks of science.
The GP example of red shift problem is but one of the assumption that could be fundamentally wrong, derailing everything else built on top of that assumption. Was expansion the only possible interpretation of red shifted light of distant stellar objects? Really?
You need to understand that the Lego castle can be built countless different ways and it still resembles a ca
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Bullshit. Your argument is that science cannot progress.
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There is no such thing as "established science". Or, if there is, then it is about as established as a Lego castle made of blocks of science.
That's not a bad analogy, really. It is established science. But it is not permanent. Thing is, nothing is permanent but change itself. I think I learned that from a prog rock song.
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It's amazing that it then took so long for the invention of the triple axel, however.
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A wheel without an axle is just a circle.
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it's really simple why this wouldn't have been published.
the author thought for a moment more, deduced that in the future there would be a streaming video service full of geniuses willing to fly against reason, common sense and logic to present all kinds of sca... "inventions".
I guess he then understood that all the good inventions needed common sense and buried the paper. now more than ever because we know so much already that you can just call people trying to build another "magnetic generator" bullshit
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I've heard that Asimov used to sit at a desk surrounded by three typewriters. He would begin typing one story on one, Swivel to the second and work on a second item, and then shift to the third and work on a third item. (This was obviously pre-computers and definitely before computers could easily multitask three documents.) By quickly going between the three typewriters, he could work on three projects at once.
It's no wonder he was so prolific.
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