Stepping stones in possibility space An Article by Gordon Brander subconscious.substack.com If we try to cross this lake by following only the stepping stones that lead toward our objective, we’ll soon get stuck. But what if we let go of our objectives? What if we focused on trying to find new stepping stones instead? This is novelty search. Instead of looking for something specific, you look for something new. Novelty search isn’t just random, it’s chance plus memory. Together, these ingredients do something interesting. ...Stepping stones are also combinatorial. Each new stepping stone we discover expands our potential to find even more stepping stones. Collecting stepping stones is a luck maximization algorithm. By collecting and combining stepping stones, we might arrive at our destination by accident, or somewhere more interesting! chanceknowledgeprogressnoveltyevolutioninvention
Ban PowerPoints One of the first things Jobs did during the product review process was ban PowerPoints. "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs later recalled. "People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint." Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs The Cognitive Style of PowerPointA Conference Without SlidesDocuments vs. decks