"It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too"
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Adams is skewering the most complacent reflex in intellectual life: the smug downgrade of invention into inevitability. His target isn’t stupidity; it’s the ego-protecting move people make when confronted with a genuinely new idea that suddenly feels obvious. “I could have thought of that” is less a claim than a salve, a way to keep the self-image intact when someone else has done the hard, weird work of seeing what wasn’t there before.
The line works because Adams flips our usual understanding of “obvious.” Obviousness, he suggests, is often a special effect produced after the fact. A good insight doesn’t merely answer a question; it redraws the question so cleanly that we forget there was ever any fog. That’s why the phrase “hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious” lands: he’s capturing the magic trick of originality, where the audience mistakes astonishment for familiarity.
The subtext is a warning about hindsight as a liar. We’re wired to retrofit narratives of competence onto our past selves; Adams treats that as “misleading” not just socially but morally. If you didn’t think of it, that absence matters. It reveals the real scarcity in creativity: not intelligence in the abstract, but the willingness to wander into unmarked territory without guarantees.
Contextually, it’s classic Adams: a comic writer defending imagination against the pedantry of people who confuse recognition with authorship. He’s also quietly advocating for credit, not as vanity, but as an honest accounting of where ideas actually come from.
The line works because Adams flips our usual understanding of “obvious.” Obviousness, he suggests, is often a special effect produced after the fact. A good insight doesn’t merely answer a question; it redraws the question so cleanly that we forget there was ever any fog. That’s why the phrase “hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious” lands: he’s capturing the magic trick of originality, where the audience mistakes astonishment for familiarity.
The subtext is a warning about hindsight as a liar. We’re wired to retrofit narratives of competence onto our past selves; Adams treats that as “misleading” not just socially but morally. If you didn’t think of it, that absence matters. It reveals the real scarcity in creativity: not intelligence in the abstract, but the willingness to wander into unmarked territory without guarantees.
Contextually, it’s classic Adams: a comic writer defending imagination against the pedantry of people who confuse recognition with authorship. He’s also quietly advocating for credit, not as vanity, but as an honest accounting of where ideas actually come from.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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