If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. If it’s not worth doing, but you do it for some reason, it’s still worth doing well.
A good notion of taking an idea seriously is to develop it without bound, as opposed to dithering once it gets too advanced or absurd, lacking sufficient foundation. Like software. Confusing resolute engagement with belief is the source of trouble this could cause (either by making you believe crazy things, or by acting on crazy ideas). Without that confusion, there are only benefits from not making the error of doing things poorly just because the activity probably has no use/applicability.
This sense of taking ideas seriously asks to either completely avoid engaging the thing (at least for the time being), or to do it well, but to never dither. If something keeps coming up, do keep making real progress on it (a form of curiosity). It’s also useful to explicitly sandbox everything as hypothetical reasoning, or as separate frames, to avoid affecting actual real world decisions unless an idea grows up to become a justified belief.
Taking ideas too seriously = assuming that you cannot make a mistake in your reasoning.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. If it’s not worth doing, but you do it for some reason, it’s still worth doing well.
A good notion of taking an idea seriously is to develop it without bound, as opposed to dithering once it gets too advanced or absurd, lacking sufficient foundation. Like software. Confusing resolute engagement with belief is the source of trouble this could cause (either by making you believe crazy things, or by acting on crazy ideas). Without that confusion, there are only benefits from not making the error of doing things poorly just because the activity probably has no use/applicability.
This sense of taking ideas seriously asks to either completely avoid engaging the thing (at least for the time being), or to do it well, but to never dither. If something keeps coming up, do keep making real progress on it (a form of curiosity). It’s also useful to explicitly sandbox everything as hypothetical reasoning, or as separate frames, to avoid affecting actual real world decisions unless an idea grows up to become a justified belief.