Interconnected consciousness
The concept of human brains being interlinked via some form of quantum shenanigans sounds absurd to me. And yet, I sometimes notice my ideas popping into existence in all sorts of places. People with completely different backgrounds from mine somehow find the same things interesting enough to implement them.
Because of that, I often scold myself for not acting on my ideas sooner. My severe depression denies me access to the energy I need to bring my projects to life. But I find some comfort in knowing that the world will eventually see my idea brought to life, even if I won't be part of its execution.
With more and more information thrown at us from every direction, it becomes way easier for two brains to think of the same idea. Information tends to concentrate in bubbles of interest, so there’s a lot of room for two hackernews lurkers to think of the same idea when looking at the same post. Especially if they’re interested in mostly the same things, like technology and better ways to build software. And only one of them has to act on it. So the deadlines are pretty strict.
This plays into the saying that “ideas are cheap”. But people interpret their ideas differently. And when you look at someone’s concrete realization of your idea, there’s a good chance that you will be disappointed by the execution. If that upsets you: you should realize how important first mover advantage really is! If you want your representation of the idea to be the ultimate version, you need to be able to execute demos effectively. There might not be a second chance.
And if your idea was already made by someone else: consider that almost all work is derivative! Some drawbacks are only visible when the abstract idea becomes a concrete implementation. You can poke around in the finished product to find mistakes and inaccuracies, things that the first-mover forgot to expand on. And then learn from those mistakes to create something even better.
I wish I wrote down my ideas, so that I could provide the list of things I missed due to my inaction. Some were youtube videos, some were blogposts, some were programming pet-projects. I’ve only done a couple of them, and they found some success. But it's not the kind of success that translates to anything, because of its one-hit wonder, mostly anonymous nature.
Even the idea of writing about this effect probably entered someone’s mind already. And maybe there’s already a blogpost covering this topic somewhere online. I know I’m not unique. But out of the respect for the idea, I’ll take some time to setup a blog.
And you should act on your ideas too. Perhaps your view through the prism will be less cloudy than the others.