> Another reason ignoring the literature can be helpful is that sometimes a bunch of work tries to solve some problem, and so everyone assumes it must be hard---just because no one has solved it yet, even though no one has really tried a fundamentally different approach
How does one approach collaborators in this situation? Like, hey, I have this idea that solves the problem you have been trying to solve in a fundamentally different way that invalidates all the legacy approaches you have invested in, BTW. My emails that follow this spirit tend to get ghosted.
Sometimes you don't need a collaborator if you have the idea. If the other party is not at all working on the angle that you're interested in, it's probably not the correct collaboration to ask to.
Also, a collaborator is usually not a stranger over the internet, it's often someone who you know and you already worked with, so it is not that ackward to expose a new idea and propose to work together.
It takes time and social skills to make long lasting collaborations, the two parties must trust each other in order to collaborate. In this context, exchanging ideas is not really an issue.