Strange Ideas

Nobody asked but …

The other day I posted that if you had one idea per day at the end of the year you will have had 365 ideas. Maybe one of those ideas will have been good. But there will likely be some very strange ideas among the mix as well.  You have to learn to let go of some or most of those strange ideas.  Have you ever encountered a person who could not let go of ideas that had minimal chance for success, or maximal chance for disaster?

Think of cluttering your brain with everything that attracts your senses.  One has to be able to forget nearly everything that distracts (I say “nearly,” because zero distraction would produce zero new ideas — a balance must be struck).  In a very similar process, some ideas need to be dispensed with to give better ideas traction.

Sometimes, idea-oriented people have no shutoff valve.  Politicians often have this affliction.  They never met an idea that they didn’t like, but cost, intervention, and Rube Goldberg-ishness turn idea-attractions into love affairs.  Their confirmation biases block any words to the wise.

— Kilgore Forelle

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