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Why things might have taken so long

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Re: Why things might have taken so long

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not inventing. That's innovating. It's very, very different.

Exactly. To illustrate your point: The invention of "rope" is the invention of a manmade object that can create a strong and flexible connection between two objects. Nylon rope is an innovation that progressed from grass rope. It should not be qualified as an "invention" in and of itself, as it is functionally the same as grass rope, it just does the job of rope better.

This distinction seems arbitrary. Couldn't I just say that rope itself wasn't an invention but simply a better kind of vine for climbing?

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#52
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with making your own wheel or rope from scratch (i.e. alone and naked in the woods)!

Making your own rope is easy with some trial and error. You just take a bunch of stringy things and twist them together to make a stronger stringy thing. The twisting bit takes some finesse, and obviously you won't be making nylon rope with your bare hands, but making a grass rope is child's play. Making a wheel, once you have the concept of a wheel, is pretty damn easy too. If you want a stone wheel, take a large st…

I think that this sort of perspective is (at best) a-historical. I have absolutely no clue how difficult it would be to actually conceptualize "rope" or "wheel" without any of my modern knowledge.

The saying that 'hindsight is 20/20' would seem to be particularly true at the scale of early human invention and civilization.

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#53

About not having invented anything: it's harder to invent something novel today simply because so much has already been invented and knowledge of it is available. Centuries ago, it was easier to think of things to invent (we should be able to fly, to stay under water longer, to copy books faster, to notate music… ). It still took a lot of work to actually realize the invention (which only could be done by people weal…

This is not the case, the famous (if apocryphal) quote of "everything that can be invented has been invented" made in 1900 by the head of the US patent office was clearly wrong and made either in jest or due to an enormous lack of imagination. The point is that there is always more to invent and the possibilities keep increasing. There are plenty of inventions yet to make, from complex AI enabled devices down to the…

Agreed.

La Bruyère in 1690 wrote a very famous phrase "Tout est dit, et l'on vient trop tard depuis plus de sept mille ans qu'il y a des hommes et qui pensent." (Everything has been said, and we're too late after 7000 years of human existence and thought.)

I can't find the quote right now but Aristotle complained once that the level of comfort attained in his era and city was so high nobody would ever conceivably want more.

It's fairly obvious that the breadth of human ingenuity is infinite and that there are orders of magnitude more inventions to make than have been made.

Not all inventions are useful; one could argue humanity would be much better without television, Facebook or nuclear bombs for example. But one just needs to look around to see how our world is inadequate and broken.

Take transportation: today we use huge metal cages (cars) or metal tubes (planes) to move a bunch of ape-like creatures from one place to another, at great expense and risk. Why can't we fly? We say we fly when we're in a plane, but we don't; we are flown. I want wings (or something) that let me take off and land using my body's energy, just like a bird.

I don't know if individual flying can be achieved using genetic engineering or by building a contraption that one can operate with his arms or legs, etc., but I do know that cars / planes / boats / etc. are a ridiculous and laughably overkill solution to the problem of personal transportation.

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#54
post #48
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not the case, the famous (if apocryphal) quote of "everything that can be invented has been invented" made in 1900 by the head of the US patent office was clearly wrong and made either in jest or due to an enormous lack of imagination. The point is that there is always more to invent and the possibilities keep increasing. Just because somebody said something that was wrong 100 years ago, doesn't mean it's a…

> We have absolutely no contract with the universe or nature that guarantees us that there's "always more to invent", even less so that "the possibilities keep increasing". Think of human knowledge as a circle. The edge of that circle is the edge of human knowledge. Inventing a thing makes a little bump in the circle that pushes the edge outwards. The bigger the circle, the bigger the circumference, the more possibil…

That's just a metaphor, and exactly of the type which GP argued against.

To illustrate GP's point metaphorically: Think of human knowledge as discovered areas on a map. The dark areas are what is still unknown to us. Inventing a thing makes a little spot on the map visible. The more you have discovered, the less you still have to discover.

(And to extend it a bit: Of course you can make the already discovered areas more detailed, even to levels unthought of when initially discovered. But as discoveries pile up, there probably won't be many 'woah, there's a whole continent here!' moments anymore.)

I don't have a strong opinion in this debate. I just wanted to provide a counter-point to your metaphor.

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. To illustrate your point: The invention of "rope" is the invention of a manmade object that can create a strong and flexible connection between two objects. Nylon rope is an innovation that progressed from grass rope. It should not be qualified as an "invention" in and of itself, as it is functionally the same as grass rope, it just does the job of rope better.

This distinction seems arbitrary. Couldn't I just say that rope itself wasn't an invention but simply a better kind of vine for climbing?

No, because that’s exactly what rope isn’t.

The crucial step is understanding that you can link objects with a bendable but strong connection.

Then you can start innovating applications, such as multiple people working together to move a single heavy object.

Eventually you end up with previously unimaginable applications like horse bridles and ship rigging.

The point of invention isn’t a new tool, it’s a completely new class of tools with an open-ended set of applications that aren’t immediately obvious.

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#56

About not having invented anything: it's harder to invent something novel today simply because so much has already been invented and knowledge of it is available. Centuries ago, it was easier to think of things to invent (we should be able to fly, to stay under water longer, to copy books faster, to notate music… ). It still took a lot of work to actually realize the invention (which only could be done by people weal…

Today, we've run low on the scope of reasonably easy to invent things that are actually valuable. All the obvious "wish we could X" things have been done or are nigh impossible for any one person or small team to figure out

I disagree. There are a lot of small inventions that are happening every day. I've had independently ideas that are now massive sites or products.

If you want to know why things have taken so long, have a look to usual flamewars here. There are many in which half of usually smart people can't simply understand what's the others' position about.

The pattern is that one side considers current practice tedious, steep learning curve for professionals only, while the other side finds it "good enough". If it's good enough for you, you'll never invent something easier and faster to understand.

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your own rope is easy with some trial and error. You just take a bunch of stringy things and twist them together to make a stronger stringy thing. The twisting bit takes some finesse, and obviously you won't be making nylon rope with your bare hands, but making a grass rope is child's play. Making a wheel, once you have the concept of a wheel, is pretty damn easy too. If you want a stone wheel, take a large st…

I think that this sort of perspective is (at best) a-historical. I have absolutely no clue how difficult it would be to actually conceptualize "rope" or "wheel" without any of my modern knowledge. The saying that 'hindsight is 20/20' would seem to be particularly true at the scale of early human invention and civilization.

Exactly. The invention isn’t the physical object, it’s the idea - the realisation that a certain class of objects/processes can be useful in unexpected and open-ended ways.

Wheels are almost useless in dense forests that have no roads, for obvious reasons. So why would anyone waste a day or two making one?

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case, the famous (if apocryphal) quote of "everything that can be invented has been invented" made in 1900 by the head of the US patent office was clearly wrong and made either in jest or due to an enormous lack of imagination. The point is that there is always more to invent and the possibilities keep increasing. There are plenty of inventions yet to make, from complex AI enabled devices down to the…

> I founded a company based on the latter that is ticking over nicely. I'm curious: How much does your company's product rely on materials that either didn't exist 20 years ago or were significantly more expensive to procure in small quantities 20 years ago? I ask because I have a hypothesis that a lot of things that seem like low-hanging-fruit that should have been invented earlier actually depend on the abundance o…

The product would not have been possible 20 years ago as the fans would have konked out due to the heat, and the plastic would have yellowed and gone brittle also due to the heat.

So we needed materials science improvements to make the product viable. I don't think I was advocating for low hanging fruit but instead progress in various fields allow other things to be invented, some of them I guess become low hanging fruit.

Re: Why things might have taken so long

#60

Nothing much (in percentage terms) got invented until the industrial revolution. The question is why the industrial revolution took so long. If you are interested in this topic I highly recommend A Farewell to Alms [0] - warning controversial hypothesis, but it raises lots of interesting topics to think about. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms

>warning controversial hypothesis

Prior to 1790, Clark asserts that man faced a Malthusian trap: new technology enabled greater productivity and more food, but was quickly gobbled up by higher populations.

In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy. In that way, according to Clark, less violent, more literate and more hard-working behaviour - middle-class values - were spread culturally and biologically throughout the population. This process of "downward social mobility" eventually enabled Britain to attain a rate of productivity that allowed it to break out of the Malthusian trap.

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