This is something that has been troubling us for the past while: What to do with ideas that you are not paid to come up with? Can we work on them in our own time? What if the idea requires validation from data you do not have access to, or critical commentary from someone who pays you to think about something else?
Here is a suprisingly frank debate I came across.
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That's some extremely interesting issue, I guess it is also related to the "ideas vs. implementation" debate, or in what part is a great result due to its initial idea or due to what you figure out in the process of doing it. At a more meta-level how to measure intellectual contributions and why does it matter at all (besides the obvious paths of 'getting credit for work' -> funding -> advancement in career and the 'getting credit for work' -> immortality through name being associated with results :)
ReplyDeleteI tend to take sides with Paul Graham on this one in the sense that if ideas were worth so much than one could come up with them the whole day and make money selling them to others. Since there is no market for ideas, either they are almost worthless without the effort of implementing them or they are just too fluid to be contained (packaged and sold)...
And the most crucial point of course, what counts as an idea:
- "Let's make an artificial object that emits light"
and
- "Let's run current through a tungsten wire while keeping it in a glass body with vacuum inside"
would be too extremes on this map of ideas ordered by usefulness, but I suspect there is a continuum between these two and there is no catch-all solution.
I tend to take refuge in the quote of Howard Aiken:
“Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.”
As for the example story, once Eileen has presented the idea, it's out, and she's wrong to ask others not to pursue it. If she cannot pursue it alone and doesn't want to collaborate on it, she should put up a write-up to Arxiv of what she has at the moment and let others cite it if they continue.
ReplyDeleteAll very good points!
ReplyDeleteCombining Paul Graham's 'value of thinker vs. actor' concept and your excellent example of 'the continuum of ideas' we get a very useful framework to describe novelty from top-down vs bottom-up.
Top-down innovation typically identifies an UNATTEMPTED but worthwhile problem, and describes a set of actions to be taken to solve the problem. Once a vision like this is outlined, the key is implementation. This is the kind of innovation which will reward the actor more than the thinker. Bottom-up innovations often involve less of a grand vision, and more of a key insight, an 'aha' moment, that may or may not be grand-unifying, but at the same time cannot be arrived at merely by acting. These kind of innovations reward the thinker as well as teh actor.
I must point out (in all fairness) that I am speaking from the perspective of someone who have never been wronged. In order to add to the debate, it would be interesting to hear from someone whose idea was stolen and who did not receive any credit. (I know of such a person from high school, let me ask him to add to this).
P.S. Why is this blog private?
To make a meta-observation, this conversation itself is an example of an innovation wrt ethics/management of research within our local community. And I tend to side with Howard Aiken, that we need to ram this conversation down people's throats if we need to be heard :))
ReplyDeleteon why is blog private:
ReplyDeletein essence it could/should be public, but then I'd need a bit of time to filter through what I've posted before and what I'd post later. For ex. I was planning to add a few screenshots of best and worst infoviz assignments. I guess this is ok if I share it with 5 friends, not so ethical if it is for the whole world... Also we're back then on the issue of ideas. If we discuss here on meta-level about ideas, that's cool but if we discuss ideas and approaches that we might go and implement in a paper or in a startup company then it might not be for public consumption, etc. etc.
I do realize the apparent contradiction between saying that ideas alone are worthless and saying that we should be careful to keep them secret.
ReplyDeleteon the public/private issue: the blog was made as a visualization of our email correspondances, which were only made among us and not the whole world. so it made sense to keep it that way as a means of sharing info/ideas. should people curb their impulses or the things they want to say if we went public would be a negative side-effect and therefore not worth it. minusta!
ReplyDeletelong after the person who had the idea 'had it' it is the implementation and ongoing sustainability of execution that will prevail and ultimatley be credited with the idea itself!!!
ReplyDelete