The problem with big innovations(indiehackers.com)
indiehackers.com
The problem with big innovations
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-problem-with-big-innovations-178e025ba8
25 comments
> As for the simultaneous rise of agriculture everywhere,
Not to mention that such a phenomenon is not exact (there's no sharp dividing line between "non-ag" and "ag"), "agriculture" embraces lots of disjoint activity (rice needing water to support it vs wheat in a dry field), and "simultaneously" covers centuries if not millennia.
Not to mention that such a phenomenon is not exact (there's no sharp dividing line between "non-ag" and "ag"), "agriculture" embraces lots of disjoint activity (rice needing water to support it vs wheat in a dry field), and "simultaneously" covers centuries if not millennia.
200 feet! Wikipedia sayeth: "The early Holocene sea level rise (EHSLR) was a significant jump in sea level by about 60 m (197 ft) during the early Holocene…"
Reminds me of Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance. Unlikely (to my way of thinking), but is an amusing alternative explanation of why breakthroughs happen at the same time (it's all those minds resonating through spooky action at a distance, not quite like the clocks on Huygen's shelf but loosely analogous).
There are a great many exceptions; too many to list - think just of the inventions that have been lost for centuries or millenia. Forceps were the trade secret of one family of doctors for many generations. The Chinese invented stainless steel, the Romans succumbed to armies equipped with it in the east but never discovered how to make it. Mendel. Etc, etc. Some discoveries, once overlooked, can be overlooked for a very long time. But this may reinforce the author's point - new fields don't stay new, everyone's attention moves on and the chance for easy discovery may be lost. We would be wise to invest heavily in trying to discover what we've overlooked.
This reminds me of how I was described self-driving cars at some point: yes, they are a great invention, but actually… they would not have been possible without many more other inventions happening earlier: GPS, digital maps, route mapping algorithms, computer vision, neural networks, etc.
We easily see the flashy invention that combines everything that came before but often fail to recognize those dependent inventions.
We easily see the flashy invention that combines everything that came before but often fail to recognize those dependent inventions.
I was just explaining how the invention of the automobile really wasn’t much of a leap at all. Carl Benz is credited with inventing an automobile, but who wouldn’t have thought of taking the steam engine off the rails? And if you look they’d been trying to do this for a long time. In fact, the idea predated steam locomotives even. It just took a while for tires and internal combustion engines to come to be.
I think the iPhone is a great example. Apple was very good at recognizing the time when all the pieces needed for a great phone were available or possible within a reasonable time frame.
True, iPhone was an avant garde invention when it was launched. Having said that, it's sad the glory days of iPhone seem to be fading away. Every innovation has its time and place, and it's about time new technologies are given their due, such as blockchain and crypto. We have to come out of our shadows thinking these are harmful for the mankind.
And even with all those inventions, self-driving cars are not available at a mass scale yet. I hope the tech won’t suffer the same fate as fission: Always just around the corner!
s/fission/fusion/g (fission is how we currently do nuclear power, fusion is "just round the corner...")
Yeah! Too late to edit :)
I have some good news for you about fission :P
The original inventor(s) often doesn't make much money, at least not proportional to the power of the idea. It's usually somebody who comes along and implements it better who gets rich. Truly innovative things often take tinkering to become practical.
Examples: TV, jets, VCR, desktop computer (existed in 60's), GUI, personal digital assistant ("smart phone"), neural nets.
Examples: TV, jets, VCR, desktop computer (existed in 60's), GUI, personal digital assistant ("smart phone"), neural nets.
It's very seldom that the original inventor makes a lot of money--instead it's the businessman/entrepreneur who pushes the inventor's invention.
It's like the technology tree in the game Civilization, each discovery depends on others that came before it
It's not a given that Leibniz invented calculus independently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_contro...
This reads like a summary of „Where good ideas come from“, a book that I‘d recommend if you want to dig deeper and potentially improve your own having-good-ideas game.
I've talked with someone about this recently and that was their take as well. That eventually, certain discoveries are inevitable. Because everything builds on everything else.
If it wasn't Newton/Leibniz, it would have been someone else. Galileo may have been the first/most prominent, but if it weren't him, it would have been someone else.
If it wasn't Newton/Leibniz, it would have been someone else. Galileo may have been the first/most prominent, but if it weren't him, it would have been someone else.
Galileo's accomplishments were extraordinary, and made at significant personal risk -- he was the subject of an Inquisition. He was a polymath who made groundbreaking contributions to observational astronomy, modern physics, and the scientific method/ practice of modern science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
That is all true.
And it would have been someone else if not him. Maybe not exactly right then, but in that time frame.
We were ready to discover these things. Let me put it this way, if Galileo lived in another time frame, he would have discovered calculus. He would have invented the steam engine. Etc.
Yes, his intellect allowed him to be able to get there, but a man like Galileo would have been at the forefront of his chosen field in any time period. And many men like Galileo have existed throughout time. Even contemporaneously with Galileo.
And it would have been someone else if not him. Maybe not exactly right then, but in that time frame.
We were ready to discover these things. Let me put it this way, if Galileo lived in another time frame, he would have discovered calculus. He would have invented the steam engine. Etc.
Yes, his intellect allowed him to be able to get there, but a man like Galileo would have been at the forefront of his chosen field in any time period. And many men like Galileo have existed throughout time. Even contemporaneously with Galileo.
Agreed. Darwin had to rush publishing the theory of natural selection before Russell did it.
The higgs boson was also theorized by 3 teams independently of each other around the same time
> So what's going on here? Magic? Graham Hancock thinks a lost civilization of advanced humans visited the peoples of different continents and shared techniques like agriculture with them. Now, I like science fiction, but I think there's a better and simpler explanation for the agricultural multiple as well as all the other examples of simultaneous invention that have puzzled scholars over the decades.
Not to detract from the rest of the article but this is probably the least derisive, fair summary of GH’s work I have come across anywhere close to on a “mainstream” tech news site. Hell must be freezing over if people aren’t calling him a charlatan without actually bothering to read his work and listen to him, first hand, articulate his rationale.
Not to detract from the rest of the article but this is probably the least derisive, fair summary of GH’s work I have come across anywhere close to on a “mainstream” tech news site. Hell must be freezing over if people aren’t calling him a charlatan without actually bothering to read his work and listen to him, first hand, articulate his rationale.
Isn't this just the ancient astronaut theory without space travel.
As for the simultaneous rise of agriculture everywhere, could it simply be that much of the productive farmland got flooded circa 12,000 BCE when the sea levels rose 100 feet? [2]