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Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

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Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#101

Post by Rury »

axegon_ wrote: post #76
Rury wrote: post #60

Perhaps. In my mind, it seems there's no such thing as an "original" idea, given that all ideas are made from or composed of other ideas (as that's how you describe them). Therefore originality, seems to be just a new combination of old ideas you've already been exposed to. As an example, can you ever imagine a color that's not composed of a combination of colors you've already seen before? A truly original color? Ot…

I see where you are coming from and I get that your argument is that new ideas are (?often) extension of existing ones but I think this is a bit of an oversimplification. It seems like everything can be described as an abstraction of something else on a larger/smaller scale. Which philosophically would mean that the universe as a whole has the same value as any atom or quarks within it. But even if we ignore the phil…

> I think this is a bit of an oversimplification. It seems like everything can be described as an abstraction of something else

Correct, any new ideas you abstract are composed of pre-existing ideas you have. Trace any of those ideas to their roots and you'll realize all ideas come from what you originally had to subject your senses to (i.e seeing it, hearing it), otherwise they're some abstracted combination thereof.

Although my prior post was an attempt at a logical proof of sorts, the only real caveat I find in it, is this part: if there's a limit to what we can sense and observe. This is not proven as far I can tell (which is why I prefaced it with an 'if').

Again, I think Ludwig Wittgenstein's work may say all of this better, but then again I find it hard to grasp everything it tries to convey.

EDIT: As for Duell's statement, perhaps it's taken too literally. I can see they had an equivalent to email (e.g. regular mail), atom bombs (regular bombs) and AI (basic schemes & algorithms) back in those days, just not literal equivalents. But his statement is not the argument I'm making in my prior post. Rather it's more "our ideas are limited by what we sense".

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#102

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

Don't ideas naturally breed more ideas? Perhaps it takes a certain type of mind, but from my perspective, ideas are synthesized from life experience. That life experience could be prehistoric or modern, but the flow of information in life is going to generate ideas. Ideas are needed to solve problems, solving problems ensures survival, so we naturally think in terms of ideas much of the time.

Illustration: A prehistoric person invents the basket: They gather apples from a tree that is a mile from their cave, but can only carry 6 apples and must make several trips. On one trip, they pass a tree with a nest, the nest has eggs and the idea happens: eggs:apples, nest:[basket]. They fabricate a basket out of a hide, and can then get all the apples they need in one trip.

In Moore's law, I'd argue that keeping apace in fact requires many more ideas to get to the next node than it took to get to the current node. The fabrication complexity is exponentially greater, not linearly greater, and more ideas are required to get there. Getting to node x+1 indicates much greater progress than was seen getting to node x, because exponentially more ideas were required to succeed. Moreover, you had to have all the ideas of x to build on in order to get to x+1.

I argue that we are not generating fewer ideas as 'harder to find' would imply. But rather, exponentially more, and, the resulting achievements are all the more spectacular.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#103

Post by dumbfoundded »

xiphias2 wrote: post #58
mrfox321 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money can be created from nothing. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

I was specifically talking about money defined by the Austrian theory of money (buying power / store of value). Just because monetary units (currency) are created, it doesn't increase buying power of the total amount of the total amount of monetary units. For example if people buy houses from additionally created currency (even if it's debt), the buying power of one unit of that currency goes down, which can be seen…

Money is made up in all cases. It's an abstraction of relative demand. Even if governments abandoned fiat money, they could still pull money from thin air.

Mostly because governments use violence to change the relative price of anything. If a government made owning a gold coin or a bitcoin a crime punishable by death, I think its buying power would go down. Similarly, by forcing citizens to pay taxes in a specified currency at the threat of jail time, a new currency is created.

It's made up all the way down.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#104

Post by lifeisstillgood »

petra wrote: post #89
leereeves wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New Ideas also come from new technologies. This may be why it seems like it's harder to find new ideas now. It was relatively easy during the waves of "do X on a computer", "do X on the Web", and "do X on a phone", but now we're waiting on the next transformative idea that will allow everything old to be reinvented again.

"do X using AI/ML", "do X using robotics" seem to be a pretty effective template.

I will throw out that AI/Ml is less platform-y than 'on a phone', 'on the web'. But I would also suggest the following likely to be platforms

Do X on Alexa (sorry voice enabled UI)

Do X on Augmented Reality

Do X on Unreal Engine (seriously read up on fortnite and the metaverse)

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#105

Post by dntbnmpls »

Daub wrote: post #38

The article says... "that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply". No surprise there. Nowadays, Universities have to become paper mills in order to get funding. Also... Risky research and cross disciplinary research is a sure fire way not to get tenure. As to the question, where new ideas come from... I teach creativity... the literature is in near agreement on this t…

> the literature is in near agreement on this topic. New ideas come mostly from recombining old ideas.

Absolutely. Not just in literature/arts but science as well. The ideas of atoms, physics, etc are a "rehash" of ancient greek ideas. Though obviously not the same, but there is no doubt that the study of pre-socratics influenced science.

> New Ideas also come from new technologies.

Even more true. Everything from the invention of letters, numbers to telescopes and microscopes led to new ideas, new arts and new sciences.

Also, another major component is wealth. Research, new ideas, etc require wealth so that you have the time and resources to pursue and expand on these ideas. Ancient greece was a wealthy slave owning society which allowed them the freedom to pursue noble ideas rather than slaving away to make ends meet. This is where we get the idea of "liberal" education. Liberal here doesn't mean the education is free, but rather education is for those who are free ( aka wealth slave owners ). Wealth frees you from life's mundane tasks. It's also why every major civilization or flourishing of knowledge/ideas always was preceded by immense wealth ( america, ancient greece, mesotopamia, ancient egypt, italian renaissance, the englightment, etc ). People mistakenly assume you get knowledge and then wealth, but historically, it's always been the other way around. You get wealthy first and then you pursue knowledge.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#106

Post by eli_gottlieb »

highfrequency wrote: post #97
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).

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

Einstein certainly was.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#107

Post by wolco »

pacala wrote: post #81
bobblywobbles wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new licensing model where it's prohibitive to make a profit off of this work.

The more restrictive the license, the more it drives potential users and collaborators away. That being said, do you have a concrete licensing model in mind?

The Unity licease works.

I think any licease that takes 50% of revenue would be fair to both parties with a minimum for the small user.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#108

Post by nicbou »

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…

This reminds me of an idea I fell in love with: an app can be a home-cooked meal.

https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

We can build software that can't scale and won't sell, solely for the enjoyment of those we love.

We're not running out of ideas. We're just limiting ourselves to the small subset of problems that are worth solving for money.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#109

Post by kd5bjo »

bobblywobbles wrote: post #79
pacala wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'?

A new licensing model where it's prohibitive to make a profit off of this work.

And without any intellectual property rights, what prevents someone from simply ignoring the license?

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#110

Post by eindiran »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #106
highfrequency wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> Is there reason to think that people in the past were more selfless and less economically motivated? Einstein certainly was.

I don't think your parent comment meant "is is not the case that there exists at least one person in the past who was more selfless and less economically motivated".
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