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A comment on Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas?. Parent comment

Re:Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? by F-Lexx on Thursday September 12, 2024 @12:42PM (#41522766)
> Can you give a historic example of a human creating "truly novel ideas" that is not the product of mixing and matching existing ideas?

The invention of PCR comes to mind:

> During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis

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Re:Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? by regularfry on Thursday September 12, 2024 @12:54PM (#41522904)
https://www.iflscience.com/lsd-dna-pcr-the-strange-origins-o... would argue that it was exactly mixing and matching at play here, but that the component parts wouldn't necessarily have been called to mind without the hallucination.
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Re:Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? by PaulHoule on Thursday September 12, 2024 @01:08PM (#41523072)
You don't even need drugs...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9#Kekul%C3%A9...

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