If you tell someone your idea for a company, and they don't think it's interesting, you need to realize that they may retain the idea in their subconscious, later conclude (subconsciously) that it's a good idea, and then think it was their own idea.
- Examples
  - I've read multiple accounts of people saying that Steve Jobs would do this all this time. Someone would propose something, he would say, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard", and then a week later he would propose it like it was his own idea. My guess is that he wasn't purposely trying to steal credit, but instead his unconscious was taking time to digest the idea, and he
  - You can see an example of me doing this in this video.
    - At 2:00 I read (out-loud) the plan used in the real raid: three teams are used; one captures the villa, another moves to secure the beach, and a third provides security against troops coming to the defense of the villa from a nearby town.
    - At 8:29 I accidentally place an ambush marker.
    - From 8:30 to 13:35 I research how to delete the ambush marker.
    - At 13:35 I conclude that there's no way to delete them.
    - At 13:55 I say "[the ambush markers are] giving me the idea of ambushing any troops that try to come to the defense of this facility. So I think what I'll do...I think what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put some guys here, I'm gonna put some guys here, so this will be a platoon [indicating a wooded area close to the nearby town further from the beach], this will be a platoon [indicating an area closer to the beach], and then I'll have a platoon ambush the [villa]." I basically proceeded to use exactly the plan that I read in the briefing, without remembering at all that I had read it in the briefing.

Felix Dennis says this
The Google guys did this:

- "Spurred by Page's obsession with Tesla, who unwittingly gave away his inventions by sharing them with others, Page and Brin zealously guarded the algorithms that created PageRank. ['Googled', p39]"
Bill Gates did this when people were copying his Basic

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