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Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

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Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#161

Post by xiphias2 »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #103
xiphias2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Sure, money is a man made belief, Yuval Noah Harari's books are great at explaining this :)

Generally gold confiscation doesn't mean the purchasing power going down, just transfering it to the governments. It's still quite scary though, as I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again :(

The scariest thing is if all the countries in the world try to ban gold and Bitcoin at the same time to preserve the fiat system.

I'm hopeful that as Schnorr signatures will make coinjoins more practical, it will be easier to use as well, thereby making ownership of Bitcoins less visible to governments. Wasabi wallet is great at doing coinjoins, but when I tried it, it was just too slow.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#163

Post by fludlight »

riantogo wrote: post #155
nicbou wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While we are at it, I created an app for my 3rd grader. Just her. It has 1 user.

What does it do?

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#164

Post by Nevermark »

md_ wrote: post #23
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…

Ironically, as technology and business become better and better at monetizing new ideas, this makes things more expensive for individuals to bring ideas to market.

First, large competitors (whether businesses or investors) fastest way to wealth is to jump into markets validated by someone small, with overwhelming advantages in terms of customer relationships, being able to fill out solutions spaces, funds for deep optimization, etc.

Second, even if the small inventors expected mean return has gone up, so has the standard deviation, so risk has gone up.

Anything that discourages or inhibits individuals and small teams from following through on new ideas will have a big impact. Because most good ideas are by individuals and small teams, and few of us have the ear of CEO's or other efficient fund decision makers.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#165

Post by flukus »

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?

They were certainly less consumerist and didn't have the constant onslaught of advertising telling them to buy shiny new things. They were far more self reliant and able to repair things for themselves, which tends to constantly breeds it's own innovations. Lots of little tricks and custom devices tend to crop up (over engineering isn't just for programmers) yet very few will get commercialize, at best they'll be passed along to future generations but many will get lost.

> 'd wager that throughout history, most great ideas and optimizations came from people who were either seeking profit or other kinds of status

I'd wager most were out of necessity and/or laziness and most died out or were replaced by newer technology. Swords, scythes and shoes didn't have single inventors, they had generations of hackers tweaking them.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#167

Post by carapace »

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?

Some secrets keep themselves.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#168

Post by TaylorAlexander »

wolco wrote: post #107
pacala wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

50% of revenue might make sense for Unity, where Unity provides clear value. But it absolutely would not make sense for some small library that gets used for a few operations. It also would not make sense for high profit work. Personally I’m seeking an end where everyone shares basically everything they do and no one extracts anything out of the duplication and re use of information.

Re: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

#170

Post by sdffdsfdsfsddsf »

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…

What new technologies would you propose to look at?
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