[shrimpx]

> Basically ideas are a dime a dozen.

There's a spectrum of ideas, from groundbreaking to "dime a dozen". In tech startups, and in almost all of computer science, most ideas are a dime a dozen, and the value is in the execution.

But clearly, some ideas are groundbreaking. Einstein rightfully gets the credit for an on-paper hypothesis that wasn't proved until decades later via a chain of critical discoveries and experimental innovations by other people. It's legit to call it Einstin's relativity, and not Mossbauer/Hay's relativity.

[throwaway81523]

Ideas are a dime a dozen in the sense that the same idea will often occur to dozens of people, on a dime's worth of effort. Relativity theory wasn't anything like that. Einstein made predictions that no one else was making. When one of them from GR was confirmed a few years ago, Lenny Susskind famously marveled at the foresight, saying "they didn't call him Einstein for nothing!".

[kelipso]

Problem then goes to how do I decide whether this particular idea is a dime a dozen or a unique idea... Everyone ends up going by feels when answering this question for any particular problem.