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People have been saying "we might have invented everything" for hundreds of years. I like the "invention wavefront" analogy, but I unfortunately can't remember

People have been saying "we might have invented everything" for hundreds of years. I like the "invention wavefront" analogy, but I unfortunately can't remember where I learnt it. Imagine the high-dimensional space of all possible things that can be invented. In the "centre" of the space is a hypersphere containing everything that has been invented to date. Every new invention is invented by "poking outwards" in one small place on the boundary of this hypersphere (hyperglobule) so that the hyperglobule now contains something that it didn't contain before. All inventions that could possibly be invented right now exist on the surface of the hyperglobule. Think of this as the "invention wavefront". Notice that as the globule expands, the wavefront becomes larger, not smaller. What this means is that as more things get invented, more new inventions become possible (intuitively: you can't invent better brakes for a car until you've invented a car, and so on). "We might have invented everything" would imply that the space of all possible inventions is bounded, and we're running up against the edges of the box. But I don't see any reason it should be bounded.

placebo 9y ago
For all practical purposes, I agree with the analogy, but would like to point out that the box might not be infinite so there could be limits to invention. Take a chess game as an example. No one would say there weren't creative inventions regarding tactics and strategies to win, but the bottom line is that the number of possible chess games, no matter how staggeringly huge, is still finite. In the end, no matter how intelligent the players, there will be a point were nothing will be left to be invented, so perhaps life is also a solved game in that respect.
- iamgopal 9y ago
  Also area of that thought ball increase by square. It means every new invention have tons of application in related and unrelated fields, which may help finds another invention. I think we should be able to invent all that is shown in those Hollywood blockbusters by couple of millenium if not more.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  There is something on the order of 10^100 (~2^300) bits of storage available at the Universe. Is the box larger or smaller than that?
  - Shorel 9y ago
    There are some indications that the Universe itself is unbounded. In that case the issue is that some parts of the universe are out of reach from other parts, because of the light-speed limit.
Lambdanaut 9y ago
What if the box IS more-or-less bounded by the limiting cultural restrictions we place on the word "invention"? In our cultural spectrum, we constrict our inventions to optimize for "use", but perhaps "use" is too narrow. If you look at cultural events like Burning Man, you see all sorts of completely useless inventions. Fascinatingly useless inventions. I actually hope that one day when we do enter post-scarcity that we can stop obsessing so much on whether or not something has the subjective quality of "use", and allow the boundaries of our hyperdimentional invention-space to grow exponentially. I think "toy-space", or "art-space" if you will, is a logical expansion of "invention-space". A delightful example of an invention outside of our current culturally accepted bounds of invention-space: https://youtu.be/apVR5Htz0K4 https://youtu.be/apVR5Htz0K4
- sergiosgc 9y ago
  You are describing evolution without an utility function. That won't work. We may be able to come up with an alternative utility function but, given past history, I'm afraid we won't and will be aimlessly exploring the solution space. A good parallel can be draw to evolution in painting. Up until the invention of photography, painting evolved to be photo-realistic. It made amazing strides, with breathtaking results. Once photography made that evolution path obsolete, painting struggled to find a new utility function. Out of that struggle, we got amazing outcomes in conveying feelings, a new utility function. Work in the first half of the XX century, from the likes of Munch, Dali, Picasso, optimized this function up to its limits. From then on? Painting is somewhat lost in the solution space without an utility function.
  - darkerside 9y ago
    New utility function seems to be consensus-based monetary value as modern art becomes a store for value and/or an investment.
    - whatshisface 9y ago
      Utility keeps us honest, we really don't want to end up firing on all cylinders towards the perfect combination of drugs, VR and storytelling that will shut us down forever while explaining the Fermi paradox.
coldtea 9y ago
>People have been saying "we might have invented everything" for hundreds of years. No, they really haven't. In fact for a good chunk of centuries (from 16th century onwards), the optimism for the eventual future developments was endless. At some point there was a few scholars saying that during the end of 19th century, but still not some widespread belief. That said, discovery probably also follows an 80/20 rule, and we're somewhat at the tail end now. We haven't had any major new discoveries, of the kind that we had regularly until the 60s-70s, for decades now. Progressive refinement (like going from the workstation to mobile phones and watches) yes. But nothing like the advent of the computer, the internet, and so on. And even less earth-shattering stuff than the time before that (which got us from the steam engine and electricity, to nuclear energy, radio and tv, flight, space exploration, the digital computer, QM and relativity, the DNA, and so on). Stuff like that was coming decade after decade up until the 60s-70s. After that, not so much. >"We might have invented everything" would imply that the space of all possible inventions is bounded, and we're running up against the edges of the box. But I don't see any reason it should be bounded. While there's some quasi-religious optimism (like the universe owe us endless discoveries forever), there are real limits, and notions like "low hanging fruit" and "marginal returns" do come into play.
- CuriouslyC 9y ago
  Naive futurists always seem confused when I tell them that the lower part of a sigmoidal growth curve looks exponential.
- tfha 9y ago
  No major discoveries since the 70's? I think that's just hindsight speaking. It's easier to decide that something was a major discovery after you know how it changed history. Blockchains are one that I would present. I'm sure experts in other fields would have examples from their worlds as well. We just haven't had time yet to appreciate how dramatic some of the discoveries are going to be.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  I think that you (and probably many people) have a blind spot with respect to major inventions - they have been in biotechnology recently. I don't know why the popular imagination is captured by things like AI and blockchain instead.
tfha 9y ago
I think it's reasonable to assume though that this universe of things which are possible to invent is finite. Certainly we see that in some places. For example, cutlery. We hit the bounding box on inventing new useful cutlery a long time ago. Forks, knives, spoons, chopsticks. Then there wasn't much more to invent once we did all that. Or things like Moore's law slowing down. For most areas of innovation, we don't seem to be near the limits. Certainly it is a sphere where today we are seeing more opportunities than completed explorations, but that may cease to be true in 50 or 150 or 1500 years.
- abakker 9y ago
  But, we find new, better steels with some regularity. the challenge in all of this is cost/benefit. Cutlery could get a lot better, but there is no desire to improve it at current costs. Moving that invention boundary takes time and effort.

placebo 9y ago

For all practical purposes, I agree with the analogy, but would like to point out that the box might not be infinite so there could be limits to invention. Take a chess game as an example. No one would say there weren't creative inventions regarding tactics and strategies to win, but the bottom line is that the number of possible chess games, no matter how staggeringly huge, is still finite. In the end, no matter how intelligent the players, there will be a point were nothing will be left to be invented, so perhaps life is also a solved game in that respect.

iamgopal 9y ago
Also area of that thought ball increase by square. It means every new invention have tons of application in related and unrelated fields, which may help finds another invention. I think we should be able to invent all that is shown in those Hollywood blockbusters by couple of millenium if not more.
marcosdumay 9y ago
There is something on the order of 10^100 (~2^300) bits of storage available at the Universe. Is the box larger or smaller than that?
- Shorel 9y ago
  There are some indications that the Universe itself is unbounded. In that case the issue is that some parts of the universe are out of reach from other parts, because of the light-speed limit.

Lambdanaut 9y ago

What if the box IS more-or-less bounded by the limiting cultural restrictions we place on the word "invention"? In our cultural spectrum, we constrict our inventions to optimize for "use", but perhaps "use" is too narrow. If you look at cultural events like Burning Man, you see all sorts of completely useless inventions. Fascinatingly useless inventions. I actually hope that one day when we do enter post-scarcity that we can stop obsessing so much on whether or not something has the subjective quality of "use", and allow the boundaries of our hyperdimentional invention-space to grow exponentially. I think "toy-space", or "art-space" if you will, is a logical expansion of "invention-space". A delightful example of an invention outside of our current culturally accepted bounds of invention-space: https://youtu.be/apVR5Htz0K4 https://youtu.be/apVR5Htz0K4

sergiosgc 9y ago
You are describing evolution without an utility function. That won't work. We may be able to come up with an alternative utility function but, given past history, I'm afraid we won't and will be aimlessly exploring the solution space. A good parallel can be draw to evolution in painting. Up until the invention of photography, painting evolved to be photo-realistic. It made amazing strides, with breathtaking results. Once photography made that evolution path obsolete, painting struggled to find a new utility function. Out of that struggle, we got amazing outcomes in conveying feelings, a new utility function. Work in the first half of the XX century, from the likes of Munch, Dali, Picasso, optimized this function up to its limits. From then on? Painting is somewhat lost in the solution space without an utility function.
- darkerside 9y ago
  New utility function seems to be consensus-based monetary value as modern art becomes a store for value and/or an investment.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    Utility keeps us honest, we really don't want to end up firing on all cylinders towards the perfect combination of drugs, VR and storytelling that will shut us down forever while explaining the Fermi paradox.

coldtea 9y ago

>People have been saying "we might have invented everything" for hundreds of years. No, they really haven't. In fact for a good chunk of centuries (from 16th century onwards), the optimism for the eventual future developments was endless. At some point there was a few scholars saying that during the end of 19th century, but still not some widespread belief. That said, discovery probably also follows an 80/20 rule, and we're somewhat at the tail end now. We haven't had any major new discoveries, of the kind that we had regularly until the 60s-70s, for decades now. Progressive refinement (like going from the workstation to mobile phones and watches) yes. But nothing like the advent of the computer, the internet, and so on. And even less earth-shattering stuff than the time before that (which got us from the steam engine and electricity, to nuclear energy, radio and tv, flight, space exploration, the digital computer, QM and relativity, the DNA, and so on). Stuff like that was coming decade after decade up until the 60s-70s. After that, not so much. >"We might have invented everything" would imply that the space of all possible inventions is bounded, and we're running up against the edges of the box. But I don't see any reason it should be bounded. While there's some quasi-religious optimism (like the universe owe us endless discoveries forever), there are real limits, and notions like "low hanging fruit" and "marginal returns" do come into play.

CuriouslyC 9y ago
Naive futurists always seem confused when I tell them that the lower part of a sigmoidal growth curve looks exponential.
tfha 9y ago
No major discoveries since the 70's? I think that's just hindsight speaking. It's easier to decide that something was a major discovery after you know how it changed history. Blockchains are one that I would present. I'm sure experts in other fields would have examples from their worlds as well. We just haven't had time yet to appreciate how dramatic some of the discoveries are going to be.
perl4ever 9y ago
I think that you (and probably many people) have a blind spot with respect to major inventions - they have been in biotechnology recently. I don't know why the popular imagination is captured by things like AI and blockchain instead.

tfha 9y ago

I think it's reasonable to assume though that this universe of things which are possible to invent is finite. Certainly we see that in some places. For example, cutlery. We hit the bounding box on inventing new useful cutlery a long time ago. Forks, knives, spoons, chopsticks. Then there wasn't much more to invent once we did all that. Or things like Moore's law slowing down. For most areas of innovation, we don't seem to be near the limits. Certainly it is a sphere where today we are seeing more opportunities than completed explorations, but that may cease to be true in 50 or 150 or 1500 years.

abakker 9y ago
But, we find new, better steels with some regularity. the challenge in all of this is cost/benefit. Cutlery could get a lot better, but there is no desire to improve it at current costs. Moving that invention boundary takes time and effort.