Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#21

Post by say_it_as_it_is » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #12

Gollapalli wrote: post #6

It may just be a change in the way that we work. This paper may just as well be titled "Are institutions getting less effective?" or "Are research institutions getting less effective?". Hell, it might even be that our smartest people aren't researching and the amount of brainpower we throw at research problems has actually decreased even though the effort/money we throw at research problems has increased.

It may just be a change in the way that we work. This paper may just as well be titled "Are institutions getting less effective?" or "Are research institutions getting less effective?". Lots of progress might be stymied by entrenched interests using laws, regulations, or some form of corporate bureaucracy/cronyism as a "moat" to ward off competition. The short shrift paid to EVs by auto makers and car dealers before…

Research is a privilege

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#22

Post by dumbfoundded » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

md_ wrote: post #14

xiphias2 wrote: post #8

Good ideas are easy to find in any niche, but the low central bank interest rates make price discovery extremely hard, so most of the time it's just not worth to implement those ideas, as people are not compensated well enough for executing on those ideas. I believe that right now any project that gets people closer to hard money is a good direction.

Forgive me, but I don't understand your point. Is it that it's so easy to borrow money that there's no need to sift good ideas from bad? And if so, that seems like it would result in more bad ideas being funded, not fewer good ideas. Yet the paper claims to present evidence to the contrary (sort of; they're talking about innovation gains, not "ideas")--that the cost of gains is increasing. I don't see how that would…

This is a libertarian talking point. The idea is that government control of money leads to less private innovation. We had the industrial revolution in the late 19th century while on the gold standard and now with government-controlled money, most of the long term innovation like renewable energy, nukes, the internet are all funded by the government.

It has almost nothing to do with this article.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#23

Post by md_ » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #7

NB: the title is misleading. this is not about pure ideas, this is about economic growth, which to be measurable (significant) needs to be exponential. no doubt, there are more ideas now than ever. technology is a great enabler. but finding economically impactful ideas ... that does seem to be getting harder, from my armchair view.

That's an interesting point. Yes, for economic growth to be measurable, the nominal gains (i.e. dollar-value gains) have to be exponential--but there are a few reasons to think that as the economy grows, innovations that lead to productivity improvements should become cheaper.

First, the productivity gain should scale with economic growth. A technology that leads to a 5% improvement in productivity of a farmer leads to 5% improvement in productivity of 1000 farmers.

Second, the fixed costs of innovation--capital costs and research costs--should in many cases increase sublinearly relative to the above (linearly increasing) returns on investment. Thus relative to available capital (which increases as the economy grows) these innovations should become cheaper.

Finally, some per-unit production costs may also decline as scale increases.

As a simple example, if a farmer makes $100/year using a donkey and $200/year using a tractor, a tractor costs $10, and a tractor factory costs $10000...well, you get the idea.

So I don't think this is explicable by economic growth, unless there's a facet of growth that hinders innovation (or its application).

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#24

Post by 14 » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #8

Good ideas are easy to find in any niche, but the low central bank interest rates make price discovery extremely hard, so most of the time it's just not worth to implement those ideas, as people are not compensated well enough for executing on those ideas. I believe that right now any project that gets people closer to hard money is a good direction.

I work in health care make okay money but definitely not a lot. Ideas are often easy to come up with, identify a problem and an idea of how to solve it. Over my career I have had several ideas I truly believe would greatly improve the health of the clients I see. However to try and make my idea come to life would cost a great deal of time and money so have never really chased after the ideas. I truly believe there are many many ideas left to discover it’s truly is just an economic factor holding them back. So I would say ideas are not getting harder to find just harder to make happen. If I made any sort of medical device I would have to have it certified in so many ways I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#25

Post by appleshore » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #17

md_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but I don't understand your point. Is it that it's so easy to borrow money that there's no need to sift good ideas from bad? And if so, that seems like it would result in more bad ideas being funded, not fewer good ideas. Yet the paper claims to present evidence to the contrary (sort of; they're talking about innovation gains, not "ideas")--that the cost of gains is increasing. I don't see how that would…

Money (in the form of buying power) can't be created from nothing, so whenever a bad idea/execution is funded, it takes away buying power from companies that have better execution, but less access to cheap loans. As an example I personally know a CEO who had a great idea, great exececution, but a new competitor startup was funded with millions of dollars of cash that threatened to sue him in the US. He didn't have mo…

Interesting concept. Perhaps we can name this the Swordfish Law: cheap money drives out good ideas.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#26

Post by md_ » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #17

md_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but I don't understand your point. Is it that it's so easy to borrow money that there's no need to sift good ideas from bad? And if so, that seems like it would result in more bad ideas being funded, not fewer good ideas. Yet the paper claims to present evidence to the contrary (sort of; they're talking about innovation gains, not "ideas")--that the cost of gains is increasing. I don't see how that would…

Money (in the form of buying power) can't be created from nothing, so whenever a bad idea/execution is funded, it takes away buying power from companies that have better execution, but less access to cheap loans. As an example I personally know a CEO who had a great idea, great exececution, but a new competitor startup was funded with millions of dollars of cash that threatened to sue him in the US. He didn't have mo…

"Money (in the form of buying power) can't be created from nothing..."

But you weren't talking about money creation. You were talking about interest rates.

Is it your point that capital has the same cost all the time, and variable interest rates are just a manifestation of money creation?

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#27

Post by CoderMoose » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#28

Post by appleshore » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

dumbfoundded wrote: post #22

md_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but I don't understand your point. Is it that it's so easy to borrow money that there's no need to sift good ideas from bad? And if so, that seems like it would result in more bad ideas being funded, not fewer good ideas. Yet the paper claims to present evidence to the contrary (sort of; they're talking about innovation gains, not "ideas")--that the cost of gains is increasing. I don't see how that would…

This is a libertarian talking point. The idea is that government control of money leads to less private innovation. We had the industrial revolution in the late 19th century while on the gold standard and now with government-controlled money, most of the long term innovation like renewable energy, nukes, the internet are all funded by the government. It has almost nothing to do with this article.

Low interest rates certainly lead to non-optimal housing development. I completely support massive government funding of energy, nuclear, technology and research.

But I don't support the NY Fed and the bank CEOs controlling the open markets, setting the interest rates and flooding dumb "elite" investors with cheap money so they can build bad systems. Having 1 of 12 FRBs dominate the monetary system is a flawed idea, especially when that 1 is Wall Street. Financial engineering is dangerous and antithetical to real research, development and progress.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#29

Post by GuB-42 » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

Just look what it takes to have a good idea now.

A good example is astrophysics. There are so many nice theories around, but they are all wrong. If you want to theorycraft the universe now, you need to deal with an incredible amount of very precise data, advanced maths and billion dollar machines. If you don't, the best you get is to have you theory proven wrong by an actual specialist, most of the times it is "not even wrong".

Researchers are now working on a subdomain of a subdomain, and they spend decades studying just to reach the level where they can start having good ideas.

Most of the easy good ideas are already taken. What remain are the hard ones, and those that require a lot of luck and/or hard work to materialize.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#30

Post by sdenton4 » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #7

NB: the title is misleading. this is not about pure ideas, this is about economic growth, which to be measurable (significant) needs to be exponential. no doubt, there are more ideas now than ever. technology is a great enabler. but finding economically impactful ideas ... that does seem to be getting harder, from my armchair view.

Value of ideas is massively overstated in biz school lit, imo... Ideas are fine, but it takes a lot of work to prove that one actually works, and then a lot more work to bring it to production.

All of the work involved needs financial and material support to happen. It's easy to have an armchair idea, but to put a hundred+ hours into the very first realization is extremely difficult if it's not your day job. (And repeat for the thousands(?) of hours necessary for bringing to market...)

In my most anti-elitist frame of mind, I expect there's a mismatch between who has good ideas and who has time to prove things out... Elite business schools are populated (on average) by walking Dunning-Krueger effects, powered by trust funds and lack of consequences: of course they have a shortage of good ideas... Meanwhile people with the actual experience and expertise to produce good ideas have day jobs to keep them from executing.