"This article written by Paul Graham in 2019 asserts that the journey of discovering something new is often hidden under the shadow of the misleading assumptions we hold, which is why we are frequently accused of 'heresy'. Graham points out that there is a 'dead zone' of undiscovered ideas around each misleading assumption, and that this zone is actually a mine of new ideas. He emphasizes that the discovery of ideas requires overcoming misleading assumptions and standing up to criticism.

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# Novelty & Heresy (Exploring New Ideas Beyond Misconceptions: A Journey from Novelty to Heresy)

November 2019

If you discover something new, there's a significant chance you'll be accused of some form of heresy.

To discover new things, you have to work on ideas that are good but non-obvious; if an idea is obviously good, other people are probably already working on it. One common way for a good idea to be non-obvious is for it to be hidden in the shadow of some mistaken assumption that people are very attached to. But anything you discover from working on such an idea will tend to contradict the mistaken assumption that was concealing it. And you will thus get a lot of heat from people attached to the mistaken assumption. Galileo and Darwin are famous examples of this phenomenon, but it's probably always an ingredient in the resistance to new ideas.

So it's particularly dangerous for an organization or society to have a culture of pouncing on heresy. When you suppress heresies, you don't just prevent people from contradicting the mistaken assumption you're trying to protect. You also suppress any idea that implies indirectly that it's false.

Every cherished mistaken assumption has a dead zone of unexplored ideas around it. And the more preposterous the assumption, the bigger the dead zone it creates.

There is a positive side to this phenomenon though. If you're looking for new ideas, one way to find them is by looking for heresies. When you look at the question this way, the depressingly large dead zones around mistaken assumptions become excitingly large mines of new ideas.

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Relevant Keywords: discovering new ideas, concept of heresy in innovation, resistance to new ideas, Galileo and Darwin controversy, suppressing heresies, mistaken assumptions and innovation, exploring unexplored ideas, finding new ideas in heresies, impact of heresy on society and organizations."