[IAmGraydon]

> Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for.

I absolutely agree. Actually, I think that truly original thought is something that the majority of the population never experiences in their lifetime. Most thoughts that seem original are just recombinations or reinterpretations of existing ideas.

Want to test just how hard original thought is? Try to visualize exactly what it would be like to be a 4-dimensional being. Or how about a 2-dimensional being. You might be able to form an abstract idea based on examples (like the “flat lander” concept), but you will find it pretty much impossible to hold in your mind a visualization of what it would really be like. Why? Because due to the physical laws that govern our universe, it is impossible for you to have ever experienced this or anything even close to it. Therefore, it is left purely to your mind to create the visualization from nothing. This is like a neural net that has been trained with little or no data. There’s just nothing to go on, so extrapolations cannot be made.

Now visualize an elephant standing on a chair on top of the Empire State Building. Easy, right? But surely you’ve never seen that with your own eyes. Why can you imagine it so easily? Because you’ve seen enough parts of the visualization that you can recombine them in your mind to create whatever reality you wish.

Whether we’re artists or engineers, we’re all just thieves in the end. Most of us, that is. The few who are truly original create the fuel that pushes our civilization forward.

[friendlybus]

I don't know how you expect people to challenge this, because any original thought has to be built on a structure to be valuable. I could shuffle a deck of cards and get a permutation that has never existed before and which I could not have pre-visualized, but is not that valuable. The inability to visualize a perspective is not a good test.

The idea of a 4d space grew out of STEM through transforming symbols. Taking the leap of faith from one action to the next until you have something transformed or created is original and valuable.