## Metadata - Author: [[Benn Stancil]] - Full Title:: How to Have Ideas - Category:: #🗞️Articles - URL:: https://benn.substack.com/p/how-to-have-ideas - Read date:: [[2026-08-29]] ## Highlights > But this—how *little* we know—seems to be exactly what makes us interesting. When we think about stuff, we *have* to connect it with other stuff that’s slightly strange and random, because, on the sparse shelves of our mental library, all we know are slightly strange and random things. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m1628nype4chg7xea2x1k38b)) > I’m surprised by the effectiveness of wandering through many things, and the futility of thinking about [just one](https://benn.substack.com/p/how-to-lose-your-mind). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m162amnfjd8hmzpv01w7gn33)) > what if the skills were more diffuse? What if agents were told to ingest a random Subreddit or email inbox, and then were told to do their work? What if prompt engineering is good for getting tasks done, but chaos prompting is better for having ideas? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m162hmpknnc1298czpamsted)) > I sometimes wonder why we’re [so bad](https://benn.substack.com/p/all-at-one-time#:~:text=And%20yet%2C%20bizarrely,about%20themselves.3) at taking advice. People live long and renowned lives; they give talks about their most profound truths; we nod along, and then immediately forget it. “I have been to the ends of the earth and back,” they tell us, “and I have learned many things. And as I dying wish, I beg of you to remember one thing from my one precious life: The stove is hot.” > “Yes, I believe you,” we say, “but yeah, no, I’m gonna go touch it.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m162q7rya1mwxe8g7jfnfnhx)) > [Ezra Klein explains why:](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/opinion/artificial-intelligence-thinking-minds-concentration.html) > > Our societywide obsession with speed and efficiency has given us a flawed model of human cognition that I’ve come to think of as the “Matrix” theory of knowledge. Many of us wish we could use the little jack from “The Matrix” to download the knowledge of a book (or, to use the movie’s example, a kung fu master) into our heads, and then we’d have it, instantly. But that misses much of what’s really happening when we spend nine hours reading a biography. It’s the time inside that book spent drawing connections to what we know and having thoughts we would not otherwise have had that matters.[12](https://benn.substack.com/p/how-to-have-ideas/#footnote-12) > That is perhaps both unsettling and reassuring: We can never be “given” an interesting idea, because the idea itself is not what’s interesting. What’s interesting is the connection between us and it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m162qhmfp9hsmbgtcmk5wg2p))