> I'm beginning to think that the best way to approach a problem is by either not being aware of or disregarding most of the similar efforts that came before.
Extrapolating a "best way" from a couple of examples of success is bad reasoning. There are definitely ways in which it can be necessary to ignore the standing wisdom to make progress. There are also definitely ways in which being ignorant of the knowledge gained by past attempts can greatly impede progress.
I would point out, that it is also possible to question and challenge the assumptions that prior approaches have made, without being ignorant of what those approaches tried.
Figuring which is which, is indeed hard. Generally, it seems like it works well to have a majority of people expanding/refining prior work and a minority people going in and starting from scratch to figure out which of the current assumptions or beliefs can be productively challenge/dropped. The precises balance point is vague, but it seems pretty clear that going to far either direction harms the rate of progress.
Extrapolating a "best way" from a couple of examples of success is bad reasoning. There are definitely ways in which it can be necessary to ignore the standing wisdom to make progress. There are also definitely ways in which being ignorant of the knowledge gained by past attempts can greatly impede progress.
I would point out, that it is also possible to question and challenge the assumptions that prior approaches have made, without being ignorant of what those approaches tried.
Figuring which is which, is indeed hard. Generally, it seems like it works well to have a majority of people expanding/refining prior work and a minority people going in and starting from scratch to figure out which of the current assumptions or beliefs can be productively challenge/dropped. The precises balance point is vague, but it seems pretty clear that going to far either direction harms the rate of progress.