ideas

In June 1983, Alexander Grothendieck sits down to write the preface to a mathematical manuscript called Pursuing Stacks . He is concerned by what he sees as a tacit disdain for the more “feminine side” of mathematics (which is related to what I’m calling the solitary creative state) in favor of the “hammer and chisel” of the finished theorem. By el

... See more

The opposite of communion is also useful to me. When I am with others, when I read books, when I look at Twitter—I feel like a dam filling with water, with potential energy. But it is usually not until I spend a long time alone in my head that it turns into kinetic energy.

The more effectively we can share ideas, and treat them as composable pieces that are meant to be built upon, and iterated, the faster we'll progress in our ideas.

Few understand the degree of rule-breaking required, because new ideas seem much more conservative once they succeed. They seem perfectly reasonable once you're using the new model of the world they brought with them. But they didn't at the time

Even if you know what it feels like to be completely open to where your curiosity wants you to go, like Grothendieck, it is a fragile state. It often takes considerable work to keep the creative state from collapsing, especially as your work becomes successful and the social expectations mount. When I listen to interviews with creative people or re

... See more

One does not get a jet engine by improving the propeller. One does not breed horses until they give birth to a car. Telephones did not come from research on mail. Where on earth did the inspiration for the transistor and these other "leaps" of innovation come from to begin with?

When you encounter a new idea, you change, and so the world changes. When you share an idea with another, they change. When you create a new idea, you restructure the ecological space of ideas itself. At each of these steps, the material world has changed, because ideas and people are part of the world. And when your ideas change so too does your e... See more

The classic “ideas are worthless, execution is everything” adage is flawed.

Six+ months into an intense software build, I can attest that the little execution details make all the difference. But the constraint on executing well is not operational. It’s more often about having good ideas about how to resolve challenges.

In other words, good execution... See more

SAM ALTMAN: Good ideas — actually, no, great ideas are fragile. Great ideas are easy to kill. An idea in its larval stage — all the best ideas when I first heard them sound bad. And all of us, myself included, are much more affected by what other people think of us and our ideas than we like to admit.

If you are just four people in your own door, an

... See more