I agree with everyone else that this isn’t really “arbitrage”. On the other hand, this sort of cross-fertilization is certainly useful.
Your “cartesian product of ideas and domains” thing reminds me of something I think I read about Richard Feynman explicitly doing: carry around in your head a list of important problems, and every time you encounter a new technique go through the list of problems and consider whether the new technique can be applied to it.
I agree with everyone else that this isn’t really “arbitrage”. On the other hand, this sort of cross-fertilization is certainly useful.
Your “cartesian product of ideas and domains” thing reminds me of something I think I read about Richard Feynman explicitly doing: carry around in your head a list of important problems, and every time you encounter a new technique go through the list of problems and consider whether the new technique can be applied to it.