For much of my life, the microscopic dance of electrons and logic gates inside computers remained invisible to me. It wasn't until I enrolled in a foundations of computing course at FractalU that I peeled back the layers. This ignorance is both a gift and a tragedy—it spares us the weight of understanding while obscuring the miraculous origins of our digital world.
The idea of the "adjacent possible" reminds me of what Richard Hamming said about experts being too embedded in the paradigms of their field and that pivotal insights often come from outsiders:
"He observed most of the time any particular science has an accepted set of assumptions, often not mentioned or discussed, whose results are taught to the students, and which the students in turn accept without being aware of how
extensive these assumptions are...
Occasionally, usually because of the contradictions most of the people in the field choose to ignore or simply forget, there will arise a sudden change in the paradigm, and as a result a new pattern of beliefs comes into dominance..."
"In discussing the expert let me introduce another aspect which has barely been mentioned so far. It
appears most of the great innovations come from outside the field, and not from the insiders..."
The idea of the "adjacent possible" reminds me of what Richard Hamming said about experts being too embedded in the paradigms of their field and that pivotal insights often come from outsiders:
"He observed most of the time any particular science has an accepted set of assumptions, often not mentioned or discussed, whose results are taught to the students, and which the students in turn accept without being aware of how
extensive these assumptions are...
Occasionally, usually because of the contradictions most of the people in the field choose to ignore or simply forget, there will arise a sudden change in the paradigm, and as a result a new pattern of beliefs comes into dominance..."
"In discussing the expert let me introduce another aspect which has barely been mentioned so far. It
appears most of the great innovations come from outside the field, and not from the insiders..."
yes! classic example of this is von Neumann contributing to many fields outside of mathematics.
!!