I would add that shallow understanding of this essay is also toxic.
Two weeks ago on some forum for developers I have seen a guy that was basically refusing to learn what other people did because he was convinced that he should be "inventing new unseen algorithms".
That was an IT undergrad that was bored with learning about things other people already invented. He just could not understand that in order to invent something new and groundbreaking you have to learn quite a lot of what already was there. Otherwise you will invent something that someone in 1820 came up with and think that you are genius.
So I agree with PG that there is a lot of value in independent thinking, but one has to be smart enough to realize where to stop. Essay is also not saying "non novel thinking is useless", because it is really useful.
Two weeks ago on some forum for developers I have seen a guy that was basically refusing to learn what other people did because he was convinced that he should be "inventing new unseen algorithms".
That was an IT undergrad that was bored with learning about things other people already invented. He just could not understand that in order to invent something new and groundbreaking you have to learn quite a lot of what already was there. Otherwise you will invent something that someone in 1820 came up with and think that you are genius.
So I agree with PG that there is a lot of value in independent thinking, but one has to be smart enough to realize where to stop. Essay is also not saying "non novel thinking is useless", because it is really useful.