Ideas Aren't Getting Harder to Find, and Anyone Who Says Otherwise Is a Coward
Ideas aren't getting harder to find, anyone who tells you otherwise is a coward
In this essay, Adam Mastroianni pushes back on the popular notion that all the easy discoveries have been made and that innovation is inevitably slowing. He argues that this pessimism is fueled by hindsight bias and the inherent difficulty of thinking up new ideas, and that every discovery opens up more discoveries. Drawing on historical examples of experts who wrongly declared their fields complete, he contends that the chaos and replication crisis in modern science actually create opportunities for young researchers to become the new giants.
When we’re standing on the shoulders of giants and they start buckling underneath us, that’s our shot to become the giants.
- zkmon
You can't turn a blind eye to the natural saturation of need vs solutions, and derive unlimited optimism from the fact how the people were wrong when they said "everything is already done".
You can't see ideas as some isolated objects that can come into existence on their own. The overall ecosystem breeds the ideas. The forces of demand create the supply chain. Human need funds the solutions. Peace times, plenty of food give the time and effort needed for inventions. If Europe has all the science going on in the 17-19th centuries, it is not because only Europe has best minds. Europe has the people with free time, food and riches to afford the science work.
You can't ignore the overall context of the world around you. You can't keep selling infinite ideas. You can't feed infinite amount of sugar to a person. The so-called solutions can turn toxic, dangerous, and unwanted things. Some ideas might be just be a package of problem and solution packed together. When you buy the solution, you receive the problem as well, which didn't exist earlier.
- yalogin
It’s not that ideas are exhausted but there is a lot of development and we are building layers on top of layers. So one needs to be familiar with them and fully familiar with the outer most layer to generate new ideas, because new ideas utilize and extend this outer most layer.
- fasterik
I was surprised when I heard Tristan Buckmaster, an expert on fluid dynamics, say that we still don't understand basic things from first principles like how airplanes generate lift.
https://youtu.be/PQYFRuZ5phs?si=wy8-ksarC1pVgQuT&t=5235
I suspect we're always going to be in this state because every breakthrough raises new fundamental questions.
- jgeada
Ideas are a dime a dozen, they've never been the interesting or limiting part of creating a real product.
Knowing what is the right problem to solve, what the right idea (of many) to apply to it, and then being able to execute, delivering to the right audience, refining as necessary are the actual things that separate success from failure.
- NetOpWibby
We’ve tricked sand into thinking, eradicated most diseases, and you’ll still see people claim with every fiber in their being, that something is impossible and someone on the other side of the world will instantaneously respond from their toilet.
If you’re tired of thinking, just say that. Don’t project your middling imagination onto others.