11 ms·

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 availabl

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 wealthy enough to dedicate the time or get patronage from a wealthy source). 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 (or flat out impossible). Innovation in areas like AI or medicine or battery tech — that stuff is all being actively worked on and requires massive funding of teams of advanced specialists. We're not going to see some person just invent something around these things the way multiple people independently invented forms of rope in prehistory.

PeterStuer 9y ago
Wish we could be happy, and not destroy the planet and the future crawling over each other in an ever increasing red queen race on the slippery side of a cliff of despair. We have only allowed a very narrow band of 'solutions' to be explored: those that involve 'doing-making-selling-competing. We have had very minor controls on this process, and even the little we have on that side is constantly besieged or selectively weaponized as there is no barrier between 'the game' and 'the meta-game'. For example, any solution to a problem that involves abstinence, for instance for very real problems such as climate change or the obesity crisis, is impossible due to the way we have structured 'reward'. And I don't know about battery tech or medicine, but most certainly in AI breakthroughs are very much the work of individuals and do not need massive teams or funding. It is again our 'market-economy', with inane 'IP wars' that seem to stifle these works from being brought to fruition
- sametmax 9y ago
  > For example, any solution to a problem that involves abstinence There is a famous french comedian who said "when you think about it, the only thing needed for this not to be sold... is that nobody buys it". That pretty much sums up the solution to most problems of the human race. You know that killing thing ? What if we stopped doing it ? You know that unhealthy habit ? That immoral product ? Etc. Disciplining yourself to not eat too much chocolate is hard enough. So collectively asking all humans to agree on one particular point of discipline....
  - PeterStuer 9y ago
    The problem is that individual rational optimization can and does lead to collective deterioration. In the abstract: If a given adoption has an individual utility of +1, and a collective detriment of -0.01, then for each rational individual actor in non small populations the decision to adopt is a net improvement even though the resulting utility for all is far below 0. This is why the old excuse of 'vote with your wallet' is nonsense. You indicate rightly that this is a 'hard problem'. Especially because it goes against the new 'geocentrism' of 'market' dogma. But it being 'hard' should not be a ticket to just giving up.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      > If a given adoption has an individual utility of +1, and a collective detriment of -0.01, OK but imagine if everyone in the world did the "bad thing". The world would gain 8 billion utility and lose 800 million, so it's still winning. I think you mean something like an individual utility of +1 and a collective detriment of -1.01?
      - razorunreal 9y ago
        No, I to think he's saying that -0.01 applies to everyone. Each individual choice is actually causing a loss of 80 million in utility (vs a gain of 1), but that loss is mostly borne by other people, so they are individually better off making that choice.
        jstanley 9y ago
        Got it. -0.01 per person, not -0.01 in total.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
simonbarker87 9y ago
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 simple mundane items that make daily life slightly easier. I founded a company based on the latter that is ticking over nicely. By saying that it is harder to invent things now shows you have fallen into one of the traps that the author highlights: > If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some. You have never seen the thing you need to invent so it takes either a leap of inspiration or a concerted effort to sit down and think of something new to solve a problem you have, chances are you will get their iteratively over a long time and not really see what you have made as "an invention". Ideation isn't some spark that hits you, ideas need to be thought about and created with effort.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >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 also wrong now. And there is such a thing as "low hanging fruit". 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".
  - Swizec 9y ago
    > 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 possibilities to invent something. http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
kalonis 9y ago
I can image a lot of obvious things that still could be invented like beaming, real hoverboards, holodecks and so on. Trying to invent any of this may seem preposterous to us as they are seemingly impossible. But these are only as impossible to us now as driving without horses or sailing the seas without sails have seem impossible three hundred years ago. And neither cars nor steamboats have been invented by single individual. The "reasonably easy to invent things that are actually valuable" mostly have a very complicated history of trials and errors, tinkering and thinking and imagination from many groups and individuals. Try to create your own lightbuld or try to isolate a mile long cable for the underground transport of electricity. Try to sell any of these to someone who has never heart of them and lacks the infrastracture for using them. In the hindsight these may seem "reasonable easy to invent things that are actually valuable". But seriously, nothing really new has ever been easy.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >But these are only as impossible to us now as driving without horses or sailing the seas without sails have seem impossible three hundred years ago. That's not necessarily the case. Some things can be legitimately, laws of physics-style, impossible.
  - interfixus 9y ago
    Yes. But as long as we do not actually know the complete laws of physics, we can only make educated guesses about what constitutes 'impossible'.
- sametmax 9y ago
  The point of OP is that as an individual, you can carve a wheel or make a rope alone, with your bare hands. It requires much more resources to invent a revolutionary battery
  - kalonis 9y ago
    Good luck with making your own wheel or rope from scratch (i.e. alone and naked in the woods)!
tkoski-hs 9y ago
IMHO this is the point 4. the author is pointing out: "Posing the question is a large part of the work. If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some." Sorry @quadrangle, I would go towards an opposite opinion than yours :) I have never in my life been in such a time when inventing would be as easy as now: It's so easy to communicate through internet to find people and skills to fill the ones I'm missing. From crazy idea to proof of concept is pretty straight forward. For example if you have invented something including electronics: You have no knowledge of it? PCB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board) knowledge -> buy some from freelance.net. Basic component drawing with pen and paper is OK to ask a quota for. And when you want to build the PCBs -> alibaba. And proof of concepts can be built even with more simple parts, such as Arduino, piece of metal can, etc. (Edited some typos and bad English.)
- sametmax 9y ago
  That's not inventing. That's innovating. It's very, very different.
  - fastball 9y ago
    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.
    - haZard_OS 9y ago
      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?
      - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
narag 9y ago
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.
- ci5er 9y ago
  > 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. This is a bit baffling to me -- the phenomena to which you refer. And it seems to be more general than the pattern you outline. It appears to have something to do with both pre-suppositions and different orderings of personal values [0]. But I'm not sure. Do you think it is possible to generalize the structure of the process via which reasonably educated and smart people can be presented with the same facts and come to different conclusions -- that they will defend against each other in pretty feisty debates? [0] By this I mean, for example, that some people might put individual freedom higher than equality across large populations and vice-versa.
  - narag 9y ago
    I believe it's called projection: you "project" that other persons' minds work the same as yours. If you've tried to solve some computer problem over the phone, you have experienced it. People thinks that you can magically view their screens. In this case, very smart people is unable to figure out how does an average user thinks. I do believe that there's something about mindset. Some people lives under the delusion that things work the way they work because that's the way they should work. Actually there are a lot of randomness in the way things work, specially in areas where new territories are being unconvered all the time.
cf 9y ago
Inventions are motivated by problems, and we still have lots of them. We sorely need cheap sustainable energy, cheap drugs, artificial organs, more efficient transportation, denser batteries, and that's just stuff off the top of my head. Some of that stuff will entail using existing technology, buy much of it will require new inventions. Many ideas that seem easy to invent only seem so in retrospect. The article repeatedly points out that inventing rope isn't obvious.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Inventing rope isn't obvious, but it's something a single individual can do. You don't need a team of people that each has studied some field for twenty years and a brilliant idea, you just need a brilliant idea. Inventing a device to cheaply store energy at grid scale is not something a single person can do, ever.
  - cf 9y ago
    Inventing a better battery is something a single person can do in the lab. I worry that you are conflating inventing things and the engineering of scaling them out. Scaling things almost never was doable by one person, but the initial seed was and usually is.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      A lot of money has been poured into battery technology over the last decade or two. We don't have much to show for it. That makes me believe that inventing a better battery is not as simple as it might seem. Coming up with a terrific chemistry is one thing, finding something that is can be manufactured at a good price is something very different. You can make your own graphene with some charcoal and sticky tape. Graphene is an amazing material, but making it industrially useful is extremely hard.
- MrFantastic 9y ago
  Bicycles are 97% efficient. Society could be organized around the bicycle. Many of the health issues would be corrected if our environment required people to exercise to get around. People are just really lazy.
matte_black 9y ago
A breakthrough in battery tech that results in small but very long lasting batteries will result in the invention of a bunch of obvious things that are currently impossible or impractical given current tech.
- Amygaz 9y ago
  I am not sure if those would strictly qualify as inventions or innovations/improvements. We already have a list of designs to build and power once we have significantly better batteries, or significantly better ways of harnessing other energy source (e.g. nanorobots powered by body heat). I do think that those "significantly better" batteries, will need to be completely new ways of thinking about the battery, which would be the disruptive part. But once we have one, the rest is "let's put that to good use, and into every house" kind of thing.
snarf21 9y ago
I agree that things that "seem" easy have been invented but I doubt the transistors we put in everything today would have been seen as easy in 1900. I think CRISPR alone has near infinite possibility and that is just one invention. Quantum computers, carbon fiber, battery technology, etc. are all just in their infancy and will spawn whole new industries.

PeterStuer 9y ago

Wish we could be happy, and not destroy the planet and the future crawling over each other in an ever increasing red queen race on the slippery side of a cliff of despair. We have only allowed a very narrow band of 'solutions' to be explored: those that involve 'doing-making-selling-competing. We have had very minor controls on this process, and even the little we have on that side is constantly besieged or selectively weaponized as there is no barrier between 'the game' and 'the meta-game'. For example, any solution to a problem that involves abstinence, for instance for very real problems such as climate change or the obesity crisis, is impossible due to the way we have structured 'reward'. And I don't know about battery tech or medicine, but most certainly in AI breakthroughs are very much the work of individuals and do not need massive teams or funding. It is again our 'market-economy', with inane 'IP wars' that seem to stifle these works from being brought to fruition

sametmax 9y ago
> For example, any solution to a problem that involves abstinence There is a famous french comedian who said "when you think about it, the only thing needed for this not to be sold... is that nobody buys it". That pretty much sums up the solution to most problems of the human race. You know that killing thing ? What if we stopped doing it ? You know that unhealthy habit ? That immoral product ? Etc. Disciplining yourself to not eat too much chocolate is hard enough. So collectively asking all humans to agree on one particular point of discipline....
- PeterStuer 9y ago
  The problem is that individual rational optimization can and does lead to collective deterioration. In the abstract: If a given adoption has an individual utility of +1, and a collective detriment of -0.01, then for each rational individual actor in non small populations the decision to adopt is a net improvement even though the resulting utility for all is far below 0. This is why the old excuse of 'vote with your wallet' is nonsense. You indicate rightly that this is a 'hard problem'. Especially because it goes against the new 'geocentrism' of 'market' dogma. But it being 'hard' should not be a ticket to just giving up.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    > If a given adoption has an individual utility of +1, and a collective detriment of -0.01, OK but imagine if everyone in the world did the "bad thing". The world would gain 8 billion utility and lose 800 million, so it's still winning. I think you mean something like an individual utility of +1 and a collective detriment of -1.01?
    - razorunreal 9y ago
      No, I to think he's saying that -0.01 applies to everyone. Each individual choice is actually causing a loss of 80 million in utility (vs a gain of 1), but that loss is mostly borne by other people, so they are individually better off making that choice.
      - jstanley 9y ago
        Got it. -0.01 per person, not -0.01 in total.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

simonbarker87 9y ago

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 simple mundane items that make daily life slightly easier. I founded a company based on the latter that is ticking over nicely. By saying that it is harder to invent things now shows you have fallen into one of the traps that the author highlights: > If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some. You have never seen the thing you need to invent so it takes either a leap of inspiration or a concerted effort to sit down and think of something new to solve a problem you have, chances are you will get their iteratively over a long time and not really see what you have made as "an invention". Ideation isn't some spark that hits you, ideas need to be thought about and created with effort.

coldtea 9y ago
>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 also wrong now. And there is such a thing as "low hanging fruit". 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".
- Swizec 9y ago
  > 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 possibilities to invent something. http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

kalonis 9y ago

I can image a lot of obvious things that still could be invented like beaming, real hoverboards, holodecks and so on. Trying to invent any of this may seem preposterous to us as they are seemingly impossible. But these are only as impossible to us now as driving without horses or sailing the seas without sails have seem impossible three hundred years ago. And neither cars nor steamboats have been invented by single individual. The "reasonably easy to invent things that are actually valuable" mostly have a very complicated history of trials and errors, tinkering and thinking and imagination from many groups and individuals. Try to create your own lightbuld or try to isolate a mile long cable for the underground transport of electricity. Try to sell any of these to someone who has never heart of them and lacks the infrastracture for using them. In the hindsight these may seem "reasonable easy to invent things that are actually valuable". But seriously, nothing really new has ever been easy.

coldtea 9y ago
>But these are only as impossible to us now as driving without horses or sailing the seas without sails have seem impossible three hundred years ago. That's not necessarily the case. Some things can be legitimately, laws of physics-style, impossible.
- interfixus 9y ago
  Yes. But as long as we do not actually know the complete laws of physics, we can only make educated guesses about what constitutes 'impossible'.
sametmax 9y ago
The point of OP is that as an individual, you can carve a wheel or make a rope alone, with your bare hands. It requires much more resources to invent a revolutionary battery
- kalonis 9y ago
  Good luck with making your own wheel or rope from scratch (i.e. alone and naked in the woods)!

tkoski-hs 9y ago

IMHO this is the point 4. the author is pointing out: "Posing the question is a large part of the work. If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some." Sorry @quadrangle, I would go towards an opposite opinion than yours :) I have never in my life been in such a time when inventing would be as easy as now: It's so easy to communicate through internet to find people and skills to fill the ones I'm missing. From crazy idea to proof of concept is pretty straight forward. For example if you have invented something including electronics: You have no knowledge of it? PCB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board) knowledge -> buy some from freelance.net. Basic component drawing with pen and paper is OK to ask a quota for. And when you want to build the PCBs -> alibaba. And proof of concepts can be built even with more simple parts, such as Arduino, piece of metal can, etc. (Edited some typos and bad English.)

sametmax 9y ago
That's not inventing. That's innovating. It's very, very different.
- fastball 9y ago
  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.
  - haZard_OS 9y ago
    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?
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago

narag 9y ago

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.

ci5er 9y ago
> 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. This is a bit baffling to me -- the phenomena to which you refer. And it seems to be more general than the pattern you outline. It appears to have something to do with both pre-suppositions and different orderings of personal values [0]. But I'm not sure. Do you think it is possible to generalize the structure of the process via which reasonably educated and smart people can be presented with the same facts and come to different conclusions -- that they will defend against each other in pretty feisty debates? [0] By this I mean, for example, that some people might put individual freedom higher than equality across large populations and vice-versa.
- narag 9y ago
  I believe it's called projection: you "project" that other persons' minds work the same as yours. If you've tried to solve some computer problem over the phone, you have experienced it. People thinks that you can magically view their screens. In this case, very smart people is unable to figure out how does an average user thinks. I do believe that there's something about mindset. Some people lives under the delusion that things work the way they work because that's the way they should work. Actually there are a lot of randomness in the way things work, specially in areas where new territories are being unconvered all the time.

cf 9y ago

Inventions are motivated by problems, and we still have lots of them. We sorely need cheap sustainable energy, cheap drugs, artificial organs, more efficient transportation, denser batteries, and that's just stuff off the top of my head. Some of that stuff will entail using existing technology, buy much of it will require new inventions. Many ideas that seem easy to invent only seem so in retrospect. The article repeatedly points out that inventing rope isn't obvious.

adrianN 9y ago
Inventing rope isn't obvious, but it's something a single individual can do. You don't need a team of people that each has studied some field for twenty years and a brilliant idea, you just need a brilliant idea. Inventing a device to cheaply store energy at grid scale is not something a single person can do, ever.
- cf 9y ago
  Inventing a better battery is something a single person can do in the lab. I worry that you are conflating inventing things and the engineering of scaling them out. Scaling things almost never was doable by one person, but the initial seed was and usually is.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    A lot of money has been poured into battery technology over the last decade or two. We don't have much to show for it. That makes me believe that inventing a better battery is not as simple as it might seem. Coming up with a terrific chemistry is one thing, finding something that is can be manufactured at a good price is something very different. You can make your own graphene with some charcoal and sticky tape. Graphene is an amazing material, but making it industrially useful is extremely hard.
MrFantastic 9y ago
Bicycles are 97% efficient. Society could be organized around the bicycle. Many of the health issues would be corrected if our environment required people to exercise to get around. People are just really lazy.

matte_black 9y ago

A breakthrough in battery tech that results in small but very long lasting batteries will result in the invention of a bunch of obvious things that are currently impossible or impractical given current tech.

Amygaz 9y ago
I am not sure if those would strictly qualify as inventions or innovations/improvements. We already have a list of designs to build and power once we have significantly better batteries, or significantly better ways of harnessing other energy source (e.g. nanorobots powered by body heat). I do think that those "significantly better" batteries, will need to be completely new ways of thinking about the battery, which would be the disruptive part. But once we have one, the rest is "let's put that to good use, and into every house" kind of thing.

snarf21 9y ago

I agree that things that "seem" easy have been invented but I doubt the transistors we put in everything today would have been seen as easy in 1900. I think CRISPR alone has near infinite possibility and that is just one invention. Quantum computers, carbon fiber, battery technology, etc. are all just in their infancy and will spawn whole new industries.