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90% of the time, it's just some bully wanting you to acknowledge Their Thing™ as a precedent no matter how obvious it is ("There is a lot of published literature on 2+2=4, you can't just do the sum yourself, you should cite the original")
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Also the probability of discovering some cool new aspect/feature/tweak very early in the idea tree is non-trivial and potentially higher than the risk of missing some obvious danger (an oft-cited justification for provenance surveying)
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I have an unpopular opinion on this as well. Originality is not just trivially possible, but almost impossible to avoid. While there is friction/noise/entropy in the world, perfect *unoriginality* is in fact the hard thing to achieve.
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Replying to @vgr
I don't think artists have realized the extent to which "originality" is now completely impossible. Any remotely interesting idea, visual, or concept has been turned over thousands of times on the internet and the best are sucked into the insatiable maw of major content producers
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Not all originality is significant, but it's a kind of silly humility to go around pretending there is "nothing new under the sun." There is. All the time, all over the place. The particular combination of letters/words in this tweet is almost certainly a historical first for eg.
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People move the discussion from "significance" to "originality" because the latter seems objective, and the former forces you to defend your standards of "significance" cogently. Most people can't. Their idea of significance is usually very weak.
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I've decided the opposite. Wanting credit for original ideas is childish and painful. Better to give credit to someone else who can use it to pump their status boner. "If you want to be free, avoid the credit" --Naval
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That's a different issue. Truman: "anything is possible if you don't care who gets the credit" I'm talking about cognitive benefits/burdens, not status
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