There are two forms of progress, as everybody knows. There is normal progress, where you develop a good idea. And there is paradigm-shifting progress, where you find a better idea, and start again from scratch. Thomas Kuhn explained all this in the context of progress in science, and differentiated between normal science and paradigm-shifting science. Now there is a law of inertia here: the bigger you are, the more inertia you have, and the more difficult it is to shift the paradigm. Science has become bigger and bigger and fatter and fatter, and is now completely incapable of shifting a paradigm.
Individuals are at the other end of the scale, and can shift their paradigms as often as they like, subject only to their interactions with their environment. If they go with the mainstream, then they just go along with the flow, and share in the inertia of the mainstream. If they don’t, they can have a better idea every week, and change their paradigms completely, so fast that no-one else can keep up. Even if they wanted to.
It is fun to shift paradigms every so often, and see things from a different perspective. But strangely enough, a lot of independent thinkers, who don’t go with the mainstream, nevertheless have one idea and stick to it. I’ve never subscribed to this point of view. I’m with Richard Parker on this, that as soon as you realise your idea is wrong, you must abandon it and try something else. Dave Benson described this as “Parker’s Algorithm” and caricatured it thus:
Step 1: Try something.
Step 2: If it doesn’t work, go back to Step 1.
Don’t mock it until you’ve tried it. It works.