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Sometimes something is a "solved" problem. There hasn't been a lot of innovation in say, firearms, because we pretty much figured out the best way to make a gun

Sometimes something is a "solved" problem. There hasn't been a lot of innovation in say, firearms, because we pretty much figured out the best way to make a gun ~100 years ago and there isn't much to improve. Not everything needs innovation, and trying to innovate anyway just creates a solution in search of a problem.

garciasn 2y ago
They said the same thing about hash tables. Innovation from a single individual blew away (no pun intended) all prior expectations and opened an entirely new baseline understanding of this. Just because we THINK we’ve solved the problem doesn’t mean coming at it from an entirely different angle and redefining the entire paradigm won’t pay dividends.
- ARandumGuy 2y ago
  That's true enough. We don't know what we don't know, and there's always the potential for some groundbreaking idea to shake things up. That's why it's important to fund research, even if that research doesn't have obvious practical applications. But this sort of innovation comes from having an actual solution that makes tangible improvements. It does not come from someone saying "this technology hasn't changed in years, we need to find some way to innovate!" That sort of thinking is how you get stuff like Hyperloop or other boondoggles that suck up a lot of investments without solving any problems.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  What's the history here?
  - garciasn 2y ago
    https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-yea...
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Thanks! I hadn't realised it was something so recent.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Sure, and no one is saying that people should stop experimenting and testing out alternative approaches. But we wouldn't expect to see experimental approaches displacing established conventions in mature use cases unless they actually are major breakthroughs that unambiguously improve the status quo. And in those situations, we'd expect the new innovations to propagate rapidly and quickly integrate into the generally accepted conventions. But there's obviously going to be something analogous to declining marginal utility when trying to innovate in mature problem spaces. The remaining uncaptured value in the problem space will shrink incrementally with each successive innovation that does solve more of the problem. So the rate at which new innovations propagate into the mainstream will naturally tend to slow, at least until some fundamental change suddenly comes along and modifies the constraints or attainable utility in the context, and the process starts over again.

garciasn 2y ago

They said the same thing about hash tables. Innovation from a single individual blew away (no pun intended) all prior expectations and opened an entirely new baseline understanding of this. Just because we THINK we’ve solved the problem doesn’t mean coming at it from an entirely different angle and redefining the entire paradigm won’t pay dividends.

ARandumGuy 2y ago
That's true enough. We don't know what we don't know, and there's always the potential for some groundbreaking idea to shake things up. That's why it's important to fund research, even if that research doesn't have obvious practical applications. But this sort of innovation comes from having an actual solution that makes tangible improvements. It does not come from someone saying "this technology hasn't changed in years, we need to find some way to innovate!" That sort of thinking is how you get stuff like Hyperloop or other boondoggles that suck up a lot of investments without solving any problems.
dredmorbius 2y ago
What's the history here?
- garciasn 2y ago
  https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-year-old-data-science-conjecture-20250210/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/undergraduate-upends-a-40-yea...
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Thanks! I hadn't realised it was something so recent.
Gormo 2y ago
Sure, and no one is saying that people should stop experimenting and testing out alternative approaches. But we wouldn't expect to see experimental approaches displacing established conventions in mature use cases unless they actually are major breakthroughs that unambiguously improve the status quo. And in those situations, we'd expect the new innovations to propagate rapidly and quickly integrate into the generally accepted conventions. But there's obviously going to be something analogous to declining marginal utility when trying to innovate in mature problem spaces. The remaining uncaptured value in the problem space will shrink incrementally with each successive innovation that does solve more of the problem. So the rate at which new innovations propagate into the mainstream will naturally tend to slow, at least until some fundamental change suddenly comes along and modifies the constraints or attainable utility in the context, and the process starts over again.