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Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

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Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#121

Post by dasil003 »

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).

Probably hard to quantify economic motivation over long periods of time with very different cultural environments. Economic motivation seems a strange label for what would have been basic survival for early agricultural societies. I think what feels strange now is that we've had these massive increases in productivity over 150 years, but it hasn't translated to more leisure or less stress.

I also think there's a difference between an inventor coming up with an idea in hopes of selling it, versus the modern VC-funded apparatus of blitzing social media, adtech, and blackhat SEO to generate. In the past there were gate-keepers to distribution which have in many cases been disintermediated, and for a while there was a golden age where small independent producers could get internet distribution because the old giants (Apple, Microsoft) were too big and slow to capture it. But once Google and Facebook came of age, and VCs figured out the playbook, independents are once again at a disadvantage.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#122

Post by jadbox »

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…

There's a lot of interesting stuff happening in crypto community that is like what you're talking about, especially DAOs which are being used to democratically power everything from decentralized finance to non-profit fundraising platforms.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#123

Post by jlawson »

dasil003 wrote: post #121
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).

Probably hard to quantify economic motivation over long periods of time with very different cultural environments. Economic motivation seems a strange label for what would have been basic survival for early agricultural societies. I think what feels strange now is that we've had these massive increases in productivity over 150 years, but it hasn't translated to more leisure or less stress. I also think there's a diff…

The last 150 years have absolutely seen huge increases in leisure time. Notice that in the Bible, there is only one day of Sabbath, the rest of the week is work. A 6.5 day work week was standard for millennia. This idea of a relaxed bucolic existence like a Monet painting was always a myth.

"Less stress" isn't defined enough to discuss, but I for one will say I don't stress about finding food over winter. My ancestors did at that time though.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#124

Post by friedman23 »

mrbgty wrote: post #57
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…

"New ideas come mostly from recombining old ideas." Does this suggest that new ideas would become easier to find over time because there are more combinations of old ideas?

Yes. How many novels nowadays riff off of history and paint it as fiction?

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#125

Post by valachio »

conorliv1 wrote: post #82

I wonder if this is partially a function of decreased attention spans. It takes more discipline than ever to turn off distractions and focus on innovative solutions to hard problems. EDIT: This quote seems relevant[1]: > It is fair to say that, in general, no problems have been exhausted; instead, men have been exhausted by the problems. [1] https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-most-important-scient...

I seriously wonder this as well.

I managed to build a profitable small business and mostly automate it. But now that I'm back in the search for another more ambitious idea to work on, it is way too easy to be distracted by all the electronics around me than to be able to ponder deeply about ideas.

I tried reading a novel the other day, I couldn't make it through 3 pages without reading some random BS on the interwebs.

Damn capitalism for incentivizing companies to make everything as addictive as possible...

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#126

Post by vinceguidry »

Note that the article is talking about research ideas for researchers to research. Not for business ideas for entrepreneurs to develop. I clicked expecting the latter. It doesn't surprise me that academic research fields dry up over time.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#127

Post by haihaibye »

szczepano wrote: post #87

The funny thing about inventions is that nobody needs them until they have it. So throwing more and more researchers at one topic won't change anything as long as there won't be adaptation of this research. In my opinion there are too many inventions and not much products around them that people want to use. Adaptation is often correlated with business need. So adaptation is the biggest problem right now cause as soo…

Countepoint: Covid-19 vaccine

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#128

Post by haihaibye »

m463 wrote: post #11
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.

I read a book recently that said with computers and search something has changed in the recent few years. Answers used to be expensive, but now it is pretty much free to get answers. It may be that questions will become more valuable than answers.

Q. Where can I get a Covid-19 vaccine?

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#129

Post by [deleted] »

Hypx wrote: post #117
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…

> 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. An idea I've been having lately, and one that might be unpopular on this site, is that we've found all the low-hanging in electronics, networking, and software. So the main reason why it seems like there are no new ideas is because we're only looking at place…

[deleted]

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#130

Post by [deleted] »

nicbou wrote: post #108
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.

[deleted]
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