What is a thought that you think you're the only person in the world that has had it?
Please don't play semantics. You know what I'm asking.
8 years ago by ColonBowel
with
35 comments
Please don't play semantics. You know what I'm asking.
Join the Discussion
Nothing any more, I've been in the Internet for enough time to know that now matter how rare a idea is there are at least several hundred thousands that also have it.
Huh, I've never thought of that before!
Now the interesting thing is not knowing if anyone else also has the idea A or B, what I think would be interesting is how many of your ideas you would have to combine for the set to be unique (because even if there are 1 million people with the idea A and another million with the idea B maybe you're the only one thinking in A and B).
I am now very happy when I coin a clever term and find that absolutely no one ever did before according to Google.
Best one is blokeface. This is play on blackface and the fact that bloke is a slur in Quebec (in French) for an anglophone. Blokeface is portraying an anglophone in a stereotypical way for the purpose of humiliation. It's pretty rare but I had some users doing it in a subreddit I mod (actually, all the accounts may be the same guy).
Still, I came with this neologism first.
I used to call people facehead as a little kid. Thought I was such a badass for thinking of that "diss"
Amusingly, I used to use that when I was a kid as well. Not sure where I got it from.
A while back I had a splendid idea of positional cryptography. basically, your computer system just needs to be hooked up to a GPS with disks encrypted to your location in 3-D space. Use your system at home with no problems. Bad guys come and steal your computers and hook them up and all they get is random encrypted noise.
The devices are now at their offices. The equipment has changed location so now the key to decrypt your systems have changed.
I thought it was a brilliant idea. Worked on a little code to read GPS positions from USB port, started looking up ways to pass that data off to Linux disk encryption scripts, etc.
Watched an episode of Agents of Shield and one of the characters was using my damned idea in the show. Even found a whitepaper from Microsoft Research detailing the particulars.
So, was sort of a kick to the junk. Mothballed the project and haven't went back to it. It's still a mighty awesome idea in some (limited) use cases. Also a perfect example of there being no new ideas.
quick edit: You guys are some amazing cheerleaders ;) That being said, if you have seen the contents of my 'abandoned programming projects' folder, you'd probably understand my blasé attitude toward the idea. I literally have hard drives crammed full of abandoned projects, hacks, and code stretching back a decade. If it found it's way in there, then it's probably unworkable for some reason or another. ideas are fun, cheap, and easy. implementations are the difficult bit.
It's a great idea! Don't be discouraged just because someone else thought of it as well. In a lot of these "product" type projects the only thing that REALLY matters is execution. Do you think the iPod was the first MP3 player? That Google was the first search engine? Think again. An academic prototype or a paper describing an idea is worth next to nothing. Getting it to work, and getting it to work well, and getting people to use it – that's what separates the winners from the also-rans. Go for it :-)
That really is a great idea. Of course it would only be really useful in some very specific situations but I think there would be a demand for it. I wouldn't have abandoned the project if I were you. I don't think there are any actual commercial applications that do this on the market right now. So what if other people already thought of it? You can be the first to do a commercial implementation.
It's an interesting idea, but I think the problem is going to be that it either becomes predictable, and/or problematic. If you know where the computer comes from or where it would be used, you know the key, and it's not hard to feed fake data in. You're also working with a relatively limited subset of the entropy space (I just made that I up) unless you get really granular on the coordinates, in which case you need a good, reliable signal to make sure the GPS coordinates are stable. You also have the issue of only being able to unencrypt the device at a specific location (i.e. I take my laptop to Starbucks to work and now can't get it to boot), or you have to know the GPS coordinates of where you're going and you have to be able to program in multiple keys.
However, it would be pretty awesome if you combined positional cryptography with traditional, in the sense that you could set a different password based on location. I.e. a 6 character password for at home, 10 for at work, 15 for at Starbucks and a 64 character password for anywhere else.
/u/idlethread, I think you have an idea here. Why would you feel discouraged because a show thought of it? In my opinion, that is perfect validation to why your idea will work!
Hmm I think the most recent one would have to do with Neural Networks and AI for content creation. Since I have began messing with them and setting it up with the AI, I swear that neural network has just become a huge buzzword in the past 2 weeks. That or mostly becuase I am actually working on it I am just noticing it more. /shrug
Automated content creation is a thing for a while. Read on about "markov chains" for instance. But I'm not sure if it has been done using a neural network.
That is kinda what I mean. Sure automatation of content for most things has been done. Diablo 3 for example uses it by pulling from a set of tiles to put together each dungeon/map. However, the only way that it will ever grow is if the developers or artists create more parameters or tilesets for the automation to take hold of. WIth the use of a neural network, after a a given amount of generations, that would no longer need to happen. Since the network itself is crossbreeding the tiles sets(including art assets, sound effets, the limits would be the paramaters really) that already existed in a way and create completly new content.
Granted most content would be kinda of wonkey at first since it is of course learning, but the public would not see that unless it was released. A good example of this is a network that is reading the database of hearthstone cards. The first few generations it had some really out of the way cards, but after so many generations a lot of the cards that had started popping up are solid cards that could be completly viable in the game today.
But as far as I am aware, I do not think that many developers are using neural networks for content creation. Most are done in more "simplistic" ways.
Link to the hearthstone story: http://www.reddit.com/comments/3cyi15/
When meditating, I had a breakthrough of sorts couple of times. I've seen hundreds of thoughts in my mind, all running simultaneously, each thought calling for all my personal associations for every word / concept participating in that thought, every association triggering body response AND many other thoughts, and it was going on and on and on.
For example, a simple thought like "I should buy milk" was triggering all kinds of associations and thoughts about my concept of "I", everything related to a feeling "should" and all the things I should do, everything related to buying, concept of money, all places and scenarios about how and where to buy milk, and all things that could be done with milk. For a start.
After this has happened a few times, I've come to understanding that our thoughts are amazingly complex processes, and they are as unique as our personal experiences. Which means, very unique. And we have a mighty system of filtering them down to a manageable level, otherwise we couldn't be able to function.
So, my answer, without semantics, is that every thought is unique, and it is impossible even for the same person to think the same thought twice. Probably not the answer you were looking for, though.
I should start meditating again. When I did I remember all kinds of random thoughts gloating to the surface, kind of like I was already thinking all those things already (subconsciously) and it floating to the surface would be me actually registering it as a conscious thought. I agree with the every thought is unique idea, just because of the complexity of the brain (what's the chance of two brains having identical synapse operations?).
Man wants to be able to fly like superman, ride a hoverboard, own a jetpack. I'm an aerodynamicist, and I know it can be done.
A Russian engineer and I independently developed optimum lift design algorithms for this load size. I've seen no sign of anyone else having similar design optimization tools, and the Russian hasn't used his to solve man flight.
I have, and I know how to make a man-portable device that you could fly for miles and hours.
It really depends what you mean by a unique thought I mean do you consider random characters such as sptgbshwlfwbwbibibjgwhwg and wbwohwobwgwebufvwefwfwg to be unique thoughts? If so then even the same basic idea when thought of by two people could be considered unique thoughts. If so then I think there are many unique thoughts. For example everyone has thought of a flying car, however this would mean each thought of the flying car would be unique due to the complexity of the brain no two thoughts will have the same synapses connecting (or however thinking works).
Good points! It's probably some type of paradox. If you add an air bag to your car, it's still a car. However, if you add 500 airbags, then it's group of airbags with possibly some locomotion. Doesn't that all stem from cognitive heuristics though. When I look at something and categorize it, that lumping together is a human feature. For example, my dog probably doesn't differentiate between cups and bowls. They may be differently sized water and food sources to her.
I think voice control for our gadgets is going to become the main input method. It's hard to imagine it now since voice control isn't exactly great yet. But really we're in our infancy with it, and only now starting to really get it usable. Imagine if you could talk to your phone just like talking to another person and it could understand you perfectly. A good example is in the movie Her. Everyone talks to their gadgets and it's normal.
I think that, someday, thought controlled devices will be even better. Imagine just thinking instructions, or wanting a device to do something, and then it happening.
What about privacy? You can hide your screen, but it's harder to keep someone nearby from hearing your voice.
It's so hard to choose. Dolphins or frogs?
[This comment was removed]
I think about the prevalence of dolphin rape... yeah I know... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/fris...lphin-tries-to-get-busy-divers_n_1862148.html
You should look into becoming a marine biologist. They can have fulfilling lives. Just look at George Costanza.
I used to think that all the boring car window games I used to play as a kid (water drop races, jumping on telephone poles, etc) was something only I did
The first Diablo game was the best one of the series. Followed by 3, then the 2nd. The 2nd sucked and I wouldn't recommend it.
If a girl is pregnent then anything she eats the baby eats by default. Babies are made out of sperm. So if a pregnant girl eats a load of sperm than isnt that baby a cannibal? Yes, cannibal baby. Do I win?
I had a really amazing idea..but I forgot it. That makes me sad, because it was actually a really damn good idea, and I am not sure if that idea is unique or not. I don't even know what it was about...shit..
[5]
?
General consensus in stoner community is to rate how high you are on ten, [10] being high as a goddamn satellite. Around [5] is where you get those ideas that seem really cool and all, but you either just never get to it, simply forget them or you realize they are simply dumb once you get down on earth.
Ah right I get it. I remember seeing those over in a stoner sub on Reddit. Thanks for clearing that up!