The Second Heuristic Is Novelty

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I feel much more pleased if I do something next that isn't what you would have expected me to do. Novelty is a very large component of interestingness. What's novel changes over time and so does the way we think about it. And so like running away, like novelty means running away from where you've been in the past. It takes a lot of energy to actually intentionally deviate.

Artificial intelligence researcher and author Kenneth Stanley has argued that “as soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it.” So what should you consider when thinking about your objectives, and what will set you up for success? On this episode Stanley discusses how to set the right objectives for your life, why we’re too tied to accomplishments, what role accountability plays in our education system, the value of peer review, why transformative innovations are always counter intuitive, and so much more. Stanley is the co–author of Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, as well as the former Head of Core AI Research at Uber AI and the Open-Endedness Team Leader at OpenAI. He has also served as the Charles Millican Professor in Computer Science at University of Central Florida.

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