ideas

Good ideas or on the edge of new knowledge, seems to be “bad ideas” for most people, else someone would have already explored it, hence publicly accepted.

Paul Graham puts it well:

Indeed, if you think about it, a good new idea has to seem bad to most people, or someone would have already explored it. So what you’re looking for is ideas that seem crazy, but the right kind of crazy. How do you recognize these? You can’t with certainty. Often ideas that seem bad are bad. But ideas that are the right kind of crazy tend to be exciting; they’re rich in implications; whereas ideas that are merely bad tend to be depressing.

To mind comes: Ludwig Boltzmann

One of the greatest minds of the last couple of centuries!, while strongly advocating for all matter being formed by this tiny round particles, that no one could see, or give any proof of their existence, called atoms; He received a lot of resistance and even ridiculed from the prominent scientist of the era.

The argument ?

‘How can we believe in things no one can see nor have ever been seen ?”

That on its own is a very telling statement about the way of thinking, their ontology is based on the immediate, reduced just to the mere senses

Bad Ideas are a Beacon

Parting from that, we now know, that some bad ideas have on themselves embedded probably one of the most profound and revolutionary knowledge that we can imagine.

The same dynamic shows up in investing.

Stocks that are loved or hated by the herd usually reflect consensus.
But the real opportunities often lie where sentiment is mispriced — where going against the crowd feels wrong.

Sometimes, the ideas that seem the worst are hiding the most revolutionary truths.

I leave you with this beautiful quote, that leaves me in awe every time.