Losing originality

[walfin]

This has been happening for a number of years now and has made me feel very miserable.

How do I know this is happening? More and more things I think of have already been done. It's not simply bad luck. I have felt my thought patterns change, for the worse.

This is a real problem because there is no simple way to get it back and perhaps no way at all. Once it's lost, there's nothing much that can be done to regain it. No practice, no work, no method - anything of that sort would simply make it worse.

For those of you who have suffered this some time in your life: What did you do?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Why even bother caring and in-turn trying to distinguish yourself or be original?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSpqObhK4Rw&feature=player_detailpage#t=77s

 

[pjoa09]

Practice it?

Maybe it didn't work for you but it did for me. I maintain it with sparing free time.

It likes to cloak itself in sobriety and decency as you get older.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Here is a better song for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6qdCmGlNww

 

[Architect]

It's always been very difficult to be original. Nowadays; more so. The population of the earth has increased to the degree that there are so many creative people wanting to express themselves and doing work it's quite difficult to find an idea that hasn't been thought of. It's even more difficult to think of something really worthwhile that hasn't been done. If that wasn't bad enough, there's a different issue which is the pace of technological development means that many ideas become obsolete by the time you get around to solving them.

I see it all the time. Ideas of mine that I either couldn't or didn't capitalize on, which somebody else does.

For an INTP it can be particularly difficult because we

• Generalize
• Analyze (extrapolate the future trends)

Generalizing makes it too easy to see all the ideas that are already taken, and then superficially analyzing that might lead us to believe it therefore is nearly impossible to come up with something original.

The best remedy is to realize that the best way to be original is not to try and come up with something truly new, but to improve and innovate on an existing idea. Take Apple for example. They don't really do anything that is new, if you think about it. But they are lauded as one of the most innovative companies out there. What they do very well is taking innovations from others in the computer industry and improving the design.

 

[intpz]

@Architect exactly my thoughts. I've been thinking about the possibility and chance of being original nowadays. I've a shitload of ideas, most of them are already incorporated, hence me thinking about this recently.

 

[Meer]

Isolate yourself completely. Emerge back into the real world a while later with originality, but you may be terrified.

 

[Architect]

There is a flip side to this; which is to have an idea, then sit back and wait for it to happen. An example, about 10 years ago I got the idea for farm robotics. No more pesticides; just have a mobile robot with arms that would weed for you. Solar powered too. Back then the idea of visual pattern recognition like that was crazy.

Replacing Herbicides with Robots

 

[PhoenixRising]

If you are having the experience that I have had before, where you come up with an idea, and within a couple of days you see your idea on TV, or in a magazine, or you hear people talking about it, then that's just part of your intuitive nature. There are a lot of times I'm talking to someone and I already know what they're going to say because I intuitively picked up on it. Sixth sense? Well maybe, but the way I see it intuition isn't mystical. If the human mind is a quantum computer, then entanglement is what networks us together. Perhaps intuition is just like having a wireless antenna, we can get internet without being physically plugged in. lol

 

[intpz]

There is a flip side to this; which is to have an idea, then sit back and wait for it to happen. An example, about 10 years ago I got the idea for farm robotics. No more pesticides; just have a mobile robot with arms that would weed for you. Solar powered too. Back then the idea of visual pattern recognition like that was crazy.

Replacing Herbicides with Robots

And that is why we need money. If I had money, I would've at least attempted to make a few ideas come to life. It must feel VERY frustrating.

 

[travelnjones]

Authenticity beats originality any day of the week

 

[intpz]

@travelnjones Originality - ideas. Authenticity - remaining yourself. Am I right here?

 

[Hawkeye]

Try using something in a way it wasn't originally intended.

For example: Using a spoon to spread jam on a sandwich.

It beats a knife on practically every level from scooping the jam out, to a nice surface coverage. The only thing it really falls short on is cutting the sandwich. However, this only really affects the "girlies" who can't tackle a whole sandwich.

 

[pjoa09]

Isolate yourself completely. Emerge back into the real world a while later with originality, but you may be terrified.

Well that would be as original as wearing 70s stuff in 90s given that you isolated yourself in the 1970s.

 

[Words]

I call bullshit on increased difficulty of being original due to world population and other people being creative. Ideas are simply infinite, Inexhaustible. It's as infinite as much as knowledge is infinite. No matter how big the population gets, no matter how many creatives pop out, there will always be an endless expanse of idea-land to embark on. Certainly, some infinites are bigger than others, but the difficulty is unaffected. The real issue is personal. It's about being too tied into your context and your environment; Limiting your ideas based on preconception and worldviews. Try a different perspective, try the radical.

Nways, I like the "inventive and wanting to create stuff" atmosphere of this thread.

 

[Architect]

I call bullshit on increased difficulty of being original due to world population and other people being creative. Ideas are simply infinite, Inexhaustible.

What you are missing is that a small subset of ideas is actually expressible in any given time period. Most inventions fail not because they are bad ideas, but because they are done at the wrong time. Da Vinci conceived of all sorts of inventions including flying ones, but he never could have succeeded because of the level of surrounding technology available at the time.

We all can conceive of all sorts of ideas like you say. Rocket boots, anti gravity, time travel, talking paper, molecular computing with a rock being a supercomputer. We just don't yet have the tools to make this all happen yet. Interestingly, the main ingredient is measurement technology. Once we can measure something, then we can innovate on it.

The population element comes in because there is a window of opportunity for inventions, that it is difficult to be fast enough to get yours out first during that windows. The recent gold rush for mobile apps is a recent example.

 

[travelnjones]

@travelnjones Originality - ideas. Authenticity - remaining yourself. Am I right here?

There are a lot of folks that present a very unique and original presentation of being a human. We call them Hipsters. They present loads of silly ideas for originality sake. Its the ideas that are felt through and through , down to the bones that are powerful.

If you are talking about ideas as in creative output that may be another story. I find two factors help there. Taking other work in and putting your own work out even if its bad. I have two gear myself to write daily to get anything good our quarterly.

 

[Words]

What you are missing is that a small subset of ideas is actually expressible in any given time period. Most inventions fail not because they are bad ideas, but because they are done at the wrong time. Da Vinci conceived of all sorts of inventions including flying ones, but he never could have succeeded because of the level of surrounding technology available at the time.

We all can conceive of all sorts of ideas like you say. Rocket boots, anti gravity, time travel, talking paper, molecular computing with a rock being a supercomputer. We just don't yet have the tools to make this all happen yet. Interestingly, the main ingredient is measurement technology. Once we can measure something, then we can innovate on it.

The population element comes in because there is a window of opportunity for inventions, that it is difficult to be fast enough to get yours out first during that windows. The recent gold rush for mobile apps is a recent example.

I was not necessarily talking about future-only things. I can sense almost the same nature of infinite possibilities even with our current technology. Though, I definitely wasn't thinking about markets and whether current-tech-limited ideas are any good in terms of satisfying economic values.

I just intuitively sense that you can do a lot of stuff right now. Ne? Not sure if that makes sense, but I do have a very long list of ideas and I think I can easily formulate one(quality not guaranteed) in just about any moment. And I attribute this largely to being able to see things differently(perhaps philosophy-related), especially the "utilitarian", "minimalist", and "efficiency-minded" perspective. If you look at RL from these three perspectives, you can get very irritated easily.

 

[Architect]

I was not necessarily talking about future-only things. I can sense almost the same nature of infinite possibilities even with our current technology. Though, I definitely wasn't thinking about markets and whether current-tech-limited ideas are any good in terms of satisfying economic values.

I just intuitively sense that you can do a lot of stuff right now. Ne? Not sure if that makes sense, but I do have a very long list of ideas and I think I can easily formulate one(quality not guaranteed) in just about any moment. And I attribute this largely to being able to see things differently(perhaps philosophy-related), especially the "utilitarian", "minimalist", and "efficiency-minded" perspective. If you look at RL from these three perspectives, you can get very irritated easily.

Okay, I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, probably because I don't see the infinite possibilities that you are seeing. For example, I see that there are infinite possibilities in terms of creative expression – I can draw any painting that I choose. However the problem that I see is that that is too limiting, because I'm working within a genre. The range of creativity is limited, I would like to be developing true green fields, such as a new form of expression in art. Maybe it's just a matter of semantics.

 

[intpz]

Okay, I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, probably because I don't see the infinite possibilities that you are seeing. For example, I see that there are infinite possibilities in terms of creative expression – I can draw any painting that I choose. However the problem that I see is that that is too limiting, because I'm working within a genre. The range of creativity is limited, I would like to be developing true green fields, such as a new form of expression in art. Maybe it's just a matter of semantics.

Didn't read his post, but here's a thought: infinite creativity within defined boundaries. You get requirements and you can think infinite ways to comply to them.

May be off, as I don't know what you two are talking about and am too lazy to read it, as it's a long post.

 

[Words]

For example, I see that there are infinite possibilities in terms of creative expression – I can draw any painting that I choose. However the problem that I see is that that is too limiting, because I'm working within a genre.

There are genres within genres that are within genres etc. There are many painting styles and within those styles, there are many other styles.

The range of creativity is limited, I would like to be developing true green fields, such as a new form of expression in art.

Ok, the range is more limited, but it is still veeeerryyy open, is it not?

Maybe it's just a matter of semantics.

perhaps.