

Ideas Having Sex - katovatzschyn
http://reason.com/archives/2010/06/14/ideas-having-sex/singlepage

======
parkan
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.

Dude, come on.

~~~
parkan
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.

------
xenophanes
> 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.)

------
jsharpe
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.

~~~
jerf
"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.

------
delano
_It is the ever-increasing exchange of ideas that causes the ever-increasing
rate of innovation in the modern world._

If that's true, it makes a pretty strong case for open source.

~~~
MikeCapone
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).

~~~
sprout
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.

~~~
MikeCapone
I was thinking more of companies that sell software, rather than individual
programmers. But you make a good point.

As I said, the overall productivity of society would definitely go up.

------
phreeza
Apparently he talked about this just now at TED.
<http://twitter.com/brainpicker/status/18446826048>

------
irickt
Here's a harshly negative review of Ridley's book.
[http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/06/19/ridleyed-with-
err...](http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/06/19/ridleyed-with-errors/)
Ridley's views are strongly colored by political dogma, which makes his ideas
on science suspect.

~~~
hugh3
_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.

------
narrator
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.

------
zargon
See also Ridley's article from the Wall Street Journal, "Humans: Why They
Triumphed": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1374718>

------
kwamenum86
The opening example does not demonstrate diminishing returns. Posted this
comment when this arricle was submitted before
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1508600>

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.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
the factor of production was time spent searching per pecan yielded.

~~~
kwamenum86
The time spent searching is still constant. It is just that the yield per unit
time has decreased.

------
wazoox
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.

~~~
miked
>> 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._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel>

~~~
wazoox
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.

------
mkramlich
OA title is linkbait or at least misleading. about innovation and economics,
no sex involved.

~~~
Semiapies
Yeah, who can possibly recognize a metaphor? Let's not waste the time of
people hunting down _real_ hot, nasty idea-idea action.

~~~
mkramlich
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.

~~~
b-e-p
Did you not interpret it as "ideas having sex"? How else could you interpret
it?

~~~
mkramlich
ideas [while] having sex

because I've heard/seen/thought the same thing many times before, and with
similar patterns such as:

thoughts while drinking

problem-solving in the shower

etc.

~~~
hugh3
But to be analogous to "ideas having sex" it'd have to be "thoughts drinking"
or "ideas showering".

