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Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

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Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#91

Post by carapace »

Two words: Rex Research

In the aftermath of WWII the so-called "Men in Black" were formed, not to police aliens (what a conceit!) but to sequester dangerous technology like free energy and anti-gravity.

With great responsibility comes great power.

There are all kinds of awesome technologies but each one is as dangerous as it is powerful, and we are fucking nuts, so it's kept a secret. Rex Research is one of the "holes" where the knowledge is allowed to leak out as a kind of pressure-release valve.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#92

Post by [deleted] »

pacala wrote: post #78
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve become extremely interested in this notion lately. When I have discussions about intellectual property with random people the dominant idea is that patent promote innovation. People get angry if I suggest that might not be true, as if they think I want all creative people to go bankrupt or something. But its increasingly questionable to me. Open source software has shown the great wealth of innovation that occur…

How do you solve for 'work for 5 years on open source project, get it to some degree of popularity, watch AWS making a service out of your code without paying you a dime'?

[deleted]

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#93

Post by [deleted] »

pacala wrote: post #78
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve become extremely interested in this notion lately. When I have discussions about intellectual property with random people the dominant idea is that patent promote innovation. People get angry if I suggest that might not be true, as if they think I want all creative people to go bankrupt or something. But its increasingly questionable to me. Open source software has shown the great wealth of innovation that occur…

How do you solve for 'work for 5 years on open source project, get it to some degree of popularity, watch AWS making a service out of your code without paying you a dime'?

[deleted]

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#95

Post by colinmorelli »

sdenton4 wrote: post #30
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 rep…

This. It's also worth remembering that the cost to bring products to market - particularly in the software/technology industry, continues to rise. As larger players continue to expand their portfolio of offerings with years of engineering effort behind them, it's significantly more difficult for a small startup to produce something compelling enough for customers to use it over the other options on the market.

In other words, the bar for quality and capability in all products we use on a daily basis continues to rise. That has the direct effect of raising the expectations that consumers and businesses have for new products they want to purchase, and thus the cost to build them. That translates to more time needed to deliver something meaningful to market, which is also likely correlated with higher amounts of VC funding concentrated in a smaller number of companies (pre-COVID)

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#96

Post by ozten »

carapace wrote: post #91

Two words: Rex Research In the aftermath of WWII the so-called "Men in Black" were formed, not to police aliens (what a conceit!) but to sequester dangerous technology like free energy and anti-gravity. With great responsibility comes great power. There are all kinds of awesome technologies but each one is as dangerous as it is powerful, and we are fucking nuts, so it's kept a secret. Rex Research is one of the "hole…

> Rex Research

Can you back this up with sources? This sounds like paranoid conspiracy theory.

Most inventions are "invented" in multiple places at nearly the same time. If free energy is possible, how was each and every discovery nation, by nation, squashed? How do you stop it from spreading once that cat is out of the bag?

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#97

Post by highfrequency »

moosey wrote: post #83

Ideas are easy to find, it's just that the bounds that we have been limited to work within, both economically and societally, have become tighter and tighter. Today, the leadership of the vast majority of private institutions have only the goal of increasing their own economic power, and similarly there is constant media production reminding people how important the almighty economy is, causing people to focus on any…

Is there reason to think that people in the past were more selfless and less economically motivated?

I'd wager that throughout history, most great ideas and optimizations came from people who were either seeking profit or other kinds of status (eg recognition from peers).

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#98

Post by dumbfoundded »

chrisco255 wrote: post #45
dumbfoundded wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We were on the gold standard until 1971, so most of the tech you just mentioned were developed while on a gold standard.

Well technically yes. It effectively died in the 1930s when England stopped using it and the US forced citizens to hand over all gold. Its peak in usage was ~1870 to ~1910.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/gold-standard.as...

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#99

Post by dumbfoundded »

8note wrote: post #54
dumbfoundded wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm perfectly ok with private mercenary groups not developing their own nukes.

Me too. I'd be ok with lots of governments not developing nukes either. Or those that already have to significantly reduce their nukes.

Nukes suck.

Atomic energy though is pretty awesome. We could already have 100% stable, constant CO2-free energy if an entire generation of Americans didn't grow up watching the Simpsons

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#100

Post by [deleted] »

ozten wrote: post #96
carapace wrote: post #91

Two words: Rex Research In the aftermath of WWII the so-called "Men in Black" were formed, not to police aliens (what a conceit!) but to sequester dangerous technology like free energy and anti-gravity. With great responsibility comes great power. There are all kinds of awesome technologies but each one is as dangerous as it is powerful, and we are fucking nuts, so it's kept a secret. Rex Research is one of the "hole…

> Rex Research Can you back this up with sources? This sounds like paranoid conspiracy theory. Most inventions are "invented" in multiple places at nearly the same time. If free energy is possible, how was each and every discovery nation, by nation, squashed? How do you stop it from spreading once that cat is out of the bag?

[deleted]
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