This article appears highly questionable (as Reason fodder often is). The list of "20th-century inventions that were never patented" is completely wrong, cellophane is USPTO #1266766, Bakelite is #1233298, zippers are contested because of terminology and structure differences but there's at least two candidates, and the others are probably covered by dozens if not hundreds separate patents. Not that I think the modern intellectual property system is functional or sane, of course.
The structure and basic mechanism of action of penicillin was determined in 1945, not that much later than its 1928(ish) discovery and certainly not "the time bacteria learned to defeat it".
I don't even know what to make of the comment that machines in early industrial england "would not have surprised Archimedes".
The sole source to support the claim about nonexistent connections between science spending and innovation appears to be an OECD study, which I would very much like to see.
Hero of Alexandria worked (as the name suggests) in a hub of technological development, published extensively, and was cited by many influential arabic texts.
These are just a few statements I picked at random, without even taking the bait of spurious, unsupported "rah rah free markets would have made it better!" fluff sprinkled throughout. I don't know how you can celebrate innovation and be so thoroughly wrong on so many facts in a single article.
> Nobody predicted this. The pioneers of political economy expected eventual stagnation. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Robert Malthus
Not true. There were stronger optimists than the people discussed, such as William Godwin. He did not think progress had diminishing returns. And he wrote a book refuting Malthus's pessimistic views on overpopulation!
(BTW, interesting story, Godwin thought Malthus' pessimism was sufficiently dumb that it didn't need a reply -- people would see it was false without help. He only replied later after Malthus started to gain substantial influence. By then, it turns out, he was too late.)
I saw a talk by Matt Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist, and it was quite interesting.
One interesting question posed was whether Ridley believed in Ray Kurzweil's singularity theory. He responded that he believed futurists are looking at the wrong area of technology as the center of advancement in the next 50 to 100 years. Just as futurists from previous eras predicted huge advancements in transportation (like flying cars), because transportation happened to be booming at the time, current futurists focus too much on communication, and assume it will continue to advance at the same rate. He predicts that advancement in communication will slow down in the future, to be replaced by another area, such as, for example, biotech.
"He predicts that advancement in communication will slow down in the future, to be replaced by another area, such as, for example, biotech."
Then he may understand generalized futurism, but he doesn't understand Singularity theory. They're the ones going on about brain uploading and nanotechnology, not saying we'll have nicer cell phones in the future. Predicting that the future will be the result of current trends just played out a bit larger is not a problem Singularity theory has, as the entire argument is exactly the opposite.
Indeed, if the goal is maximum rate of innovation.
If the goal is to make as much money as possible, probably not (well, a faster rate of innovation would probably increase the total productivity of society more rapidly, but the people personally involved with open-source might be making less).
More a question of fewer people involved in software than software professionals making less.
I've been paid a fair amount of money to write software that I could have created just as easily in a tenth of the time with off-the-shelf FOSS software, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Did I make money? Yes. But I could have made just as much money, and accomplished 10 times as much if my hands hadn't been tied by proprietary preferences. (And just for the record I'm talking about entrenched legacy stuff that's still in use, not any big modern names.)
FOSS shrinks markets, but it doesn't make work less valuable. If anything it makes work more valuable.
Ridley's views are strongly colored by political dogma, which makes his ideas on science suspect.
I've only looked at the URL so far, but George Monbiot accusing anyone else's ideas of being suspect because they're coloured by political dogma is like a kettle being called black by a galactic-core sized black hole. Painted black. At night.
Yes, I realise I'm relying on ad hominem to dismiss someone else's ad hominem review here (I finally looked at the article, he starts off by complaining about Northern Rock, I haven't read on...), but I'm gonna assume that if Monbiot's points have any validity they'll eventually appear in a review by a less far-out reviewer.
We have so much innovation and technological advancement that there's now quite a lot of energy put into controlling the dissemination of technology. For instance, look at how much effort our government spends controlling the dissemination of 70 year old nuke technology to countries like Iran.
Diminishing returns says that as you increase a factor of production the output relative to tha increase becomes smaller. In other worse return per unit investment gets smaller with each increase becomes smaller. In other worse return per unit investment gets smaller with each marginal investment. The author totally gets this concept wrong with the bowl of nuts analogy. If you are using one hand to look for pecans in a bowl of nuts and the pecans become harder to find over time, then this does not demonstrate diminishing returns because no factor of production was modified.
So this is by the guy who ran Northern Rock into the wall. Strangely enough I'm pretty tempted to consider whatever he says to be complete baloney, and himself as a dangerous maniac.
>> So this is by the guy who ran Northern Rock into the wall.
Umm, no. Ridley was a non-executive director. He accepts blame for its demise in the book. He wasn't an executive running the company, though as a director he certainly should have exercised more oversight.
If Ridley worries you so much, would you consider this former director of an effectively bankrupt financial institution to be a "dangerous maniac"? Unlike Ridley, he's now one of the most powerful men in the world:
Emanuel was named to the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) by President Bill Clinton in 2000. His position earned him at least $320,000, including later stock sales.[31][32] He was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, and the Board met no more than six times per year.[32]
During his time on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities.[32][33] The Obama Administration rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) later accused the board of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." Emanuel resigned from the board in 2001 when he ran for Congress.
I don't know what you're trying to insinuate here. Maybe you suppose that I'm an awful liberal-democrat and that I therefore like Emanuel because he was appointed by Clinton and Obama? Tough luck, I'm much more of a rabid leftist than that (though it should not be displayed too much here on HN, an ultra-liberal outpost), and I despise the zionist Rahm Emanuel as much as Ridley.
It's funny, I submitted this as "Ideas Having Sex: prosperity exceeds John Stuart Mill & Adam Smith expectations" at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1434908 about a month ago and it got flagged and deaded. That was the full title from the original article which at least hints at the innovation and economics angle.
The only people who care about complaints about "link-baiting" - as opposed to genuinely deceptive - original titles are the ones who make such complaints. For everyone else, it's pointless, self-righteous whining to skim over. It's, to continue the little theme here, posting masturbation.
This is why this is the only response you're getting from me on this thread, and why I always, always vote down any such valueless whinging about what some blogger titled eir post.
With all due respect, it sounds like you do not understand or appreciate what has made HN a higher calibre community than Reddit or other similar sites. As if that's not enough, you actively sabotage those who do, and then have the audacity to accuse these persons of "whining" and "masturbation." Methinks thou dost protest too much.
my comment was polite, fact-based and intended to help save other HN readers time, yet voted into negatives. you come back with something rude and voted up. the Internet sucks sometimes.
You were whining about a title. Worse, you were whining about an obvious metaphor being "misleading", which only makes sense unless you expect HN readers to believe concepts can literally, physically copulate.
There is nothing polite or fact-based about that. You were just making a complaint that was neither relevant nor useful.
I did not interpret the title as "[Two] Ideas Having Sex" I interpreted it as "Ideas [Had While] Having Sex." But there was no sex in the article. Therefore, I concluded that the title included sex merely for the titilation factor and to boost readership. Thus, as I originally said, it looked misleading to me. And my comment was relevant and intended to be useful.
Also, I don't think there's anything wrong with concise, specific criticism about a submitted article if the intent is to help improve the quality of HN as a resource. YMMV.
Your misreading the title is no grounds for whining about link-baiting, and offering it as an excuse indicates you did not bother to actually read the article in any detail.
YMMV, but I don't see anything useful about "tl;dr: nobody has sex in article"-style remarks, no matter how you frame them. I want to see fewer of such, and I will continue to try to discourage them, but I will not further respond to you in this thread.
It's not hard to see the decline. A year ago, pithy, baseless insults typically languished at 1 point or went into the negatives. Now they're getting voted up more and more. I wonder what PG has in mind to fix this, or if he has the time/inclination these days.
The structure and basic mechanism of action of penicillin was determined in 1945, not that much later than its 1928(ish) discovery and certainly not "the time bacteria learned to defeat it".
I don't even know what to make of the comment that machines in early industrial england "would not have surprised Archimedes".
The sole source to support the claim about nonexistent connections between science spending and innovation appears to be an OECD study, which I would very much like to see.
Hero of Alexandria worked (as the name suggests) in a hub of technological development, published extensively, and was cited by many influential arabic texts.
Dude, come on.