The Shape of an Idea

Procedurally generating inspiration

Jun 14, 2023

For new ideas to take root in our mind, we have to rearrange and rearchitect our knowledge structures to accomodate them. Any idea must be the right shape if it is to fit into our existing mental models.

Except from my last post, The Structure of Wisdom

Sometimes, the shape of an idea makes us realise our current model is incomplete or incorrect. This can trigger a moment of insight, often arising serendipitously from a seemingly innocent prompt. Ideas accrete organically while we go about our daily lives, connecting to the surface of our model whenever we roll over the “right shape” of idea.

My brain is a big ball of ideas, (Katamari Damacy)

As these ideas are layered on top of one another the connections and patterns between them percolate in our subconscious mind1. Eventually, one idea tips us over a threshold of realisation and we see it all snap into focus. A new, higher-order way of understanding the world.

I believe this happens mostly automatically, so when I want to understand something, I focus on feeding this process. For a given topic, I always start by going broad. I’ll read dozens of “intro” articles, first chapters of books and hop between YouTube channels. There are two benefits of this approach:

I could stumble on the perfect explanation that fits with my existing mental model
I may eventually realise that nothing is making sense, because my existing mental model is wrong

I believe that the most intuitive conceptual framing to for a topic is unique to each student2, but I also believe that plurality of perspective is essential to deep understanding.

The future of education, and thinking itself, is highly personalised but I think we must take care to avoid creating our own personal, impenetrable echo-chamber in the process. We can already see efforts to imagine an idealised AI tutor, presenting generative lessons in XR3, perfectly wording everything for our intuition. Any future that involves “perfect intuition” of what humans want always looks, to me, like a superposition of the most utopic and dystopic outcomes. TikTok’s algorithm may be the best example we've seen of this in the wild. Surprise, delayed gratification, cognitive dissonance and frustration are critically important parts of my thought process. Often I am looking for reasons not to keep thinking the same way, forcing me to rearrange my mental model.

So, what if we can use technology to help us find more disconfirming evidence, faster? Can we accelerate the buildup to that next threshold of insight? What if we could rapidly cycle through slightly different shapes of the same idea?

It’s like a kind of “smart shuffle” for ideas. Maybe a simple rewording or well-articulated question is all it takes for a breakthrough? Conversation is such a potent tool for thought because we necessarily articulate our thoughts and hear them reflected back, through both our own words and the responses of other people. Articulation can surprise you. Sometimes the words come out slightly "wrong" but hearing them back unlocks a more subtle understanding.

This is how I think about what we’re building at Subconscious: a tool to augment your imagination and accelerate creative thought. How? By connecting your thoughts with others' and synthesising relevant-yet-surprising provocations for each user who wants them.

But like, actually how? Short answer: emergence. In the game Dwarf Fortress, you oversee a community of dwarves, each with their own personality, interests and memories. They form relationships with one another, ruminate on their feelings and generate surprisingly compelling and intricate narratives in the process. Dwarf Fortress is built out of simple systems, stacked up to create hilariously complex behaviour.

Dwarf became depressed, checked the things they were mad about, all of them were things I've solved for like years now : r/dwarffortress — The inner experience of just one of hundreds of dwarves, there’s never been a better time to dive into DF.

Imagine your collection of interlinked notes as a fortress and each dwarf as a programmatic agent residing there. In Subconscious terminology, we call these dwarves geists. They read your public notes and your friends’ public notes, they write down their findings and then they even read one another’s notes. They trade phrases and perspectives4 evolving as one complex, entangled feedback loop to uncover the adjacent-possible.

Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (*1931*)

My lofty dream is that this will function as a fantastic contraption for inspiration. Humans and machines working together to generate an endless stream of provocations to help you join the dots on your thought-quest. Of course, the actual words that are generated are key to this all working. Personally, I believe the most powerful phrases evoke impressions rather than explicitly stating an idea, like poetry or song lyrics. Similarly, geists should inspire thought without imposing a predetermined logical structure. Through this ambiguity5 we are free to apply final adjustments to an idea, carving it to exactly the right shape for our personal understanding.

I am not interested in outsourcing the most interesting aspect of thinking to a computer. Rather, I want to use software to invite users into a ludic state, lowering the activation energy for thought and encouraging a more fluid, creative environment that can be tailored to your preferences.

As I see it, geists should not supply prepackaged solutions. Instead, they act as guides pointing us in the direction to stir our imagination. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Ultimately anyone will be able to write their own geists that work however they see fit. After all, only you know what shape of idea will fit.

Until next time,

✌️ Ben