[Hasknewbie]

It should be noted that the concept of originality and its associated "mighty pioneer Vs lowly copiers" mindset is mainly a Western cultural artifact. For example in China during most of its history if you wanted to become, say, a renowned painter, you were expected to spend your formative years copying the masters, because in that culture mastering your craft is (much) more important than being original.

I don't hold originality in that much high regard for two reasons: first, it tends to downplay the part that's not original, and most of the time that's most of the product. Everything Is A Remix [1]. And second, I would have more respect for distinct products if they didn't result in endless copyright/patent extensions -- it becomes a bit too easy to say it was "your idea" if it applies to stuff created 60 years ago. At some point it should become part of the baseline, instead of undue revenue for rent-seekers.

[1] https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

[Hoasi]

> For example in China during most of its history if you wanted to become, say, a renowned painter, you were expected to spend your formative years copying the masters (...)

This is exactly how you were supposed to become a master painter during the Renaissance in Europe as well.

[jacquesm]

That sparks a link to a nice little story: A couple of years ago in IJmuiden (a Dutch harbor town where I used to live) a containerload of 'old Dutch masters' was seized by customs. Inside endless copies of famous Dutch paintings, meticulous work made for peanuts by very talented Chinese painters who had learned to copy from their masters as well as ours.

[corporateslaver]

How many ground breaking innovations has China had? How many has the west had? Case in point, copying is not productive in the long run.

[sctb]

This is a tired and myopic dismissal and we can't learn anything from it. Could you please increase the level of substance in your posts?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[sho]

People said that about Japan 40 years, they said that about Korea 20 years ago, and it's already becoming irrelevant about China today. Yes, they caught up by copying, like everyone else did (including the USA).

There are now entire product categories which come out of China and no-where else. Drones. Camera gymbals. Personal electric scooters. Heck, their entire system of government could be called "innovative" - certainly no-one else has ever tried that before.

Give it 20 years and it'll be onto the next developing country which is copying to catch up, and China will be amongst the lead innovators - if not, as I suspect, the easy winner.

[Sangermaine]

>Heck, their entire system of government could be called "innovative" - certainly no-one else has ever tried that before.

Authoritarian one-party rule with a strongman at the top is nothing new, they just have newer tools to enforce it.

[sho]

Every shelf at your local store filled with imports from that one-party state is pretty new in my book. And "strongman"? What are you basing that on? Saddam Hussein was a "strongman". Xi Jinping is unusually powerful for the president of the CCP, sure, but he still needs to be re-elected in 2022.

[dredmorbius]

Or of the United States in the early 19th century. The 1851 Crystal Palace exposition was quite a shock.

[sho]

Care to expand on that? Why was the 1851 Expo a shock?

[dredmorbius]

Because the US was considered a backwater at the time by Europe, Britain particularly.

Merrit Roe Smith, STS.050, MIT

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fw92I_zpmRU

[jacquesm]

Steam engine?

Gun powder?

Paper?

Movable type?

Clocks, compass, alcohol and on and on.

Really this is a 'What did the Romans ever do for us?' type of question.

[dredmorbius]

How many ground breaking innovations has China had?

Quite an impressive number. Enough to fill over 27 volumes in a project spanning nearly 70 years: Joseph Needham's epic Science and Civilisation in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...

[epicide]

The point isn't that the west hasn't copied things. The point is that the west puts emphasis on originality and "innovation" and downplays the value of copying.

Learn to do it right (copy), then figure out how to do it better (innovate).

[ryandrake]

That’s the point: what makes “innovation” so good and noble, and duplication so bad? Why is originality the measuring stick?

I happen to think an inexpensive copy of a useful product is far better than a newly invented product that’s expensive or less useful.

Example: Cheap generic drugs vs expensive patented name brands.

[epicide]

Exactly. The obsession with "innovation" is how you get feature creep. You can improve something by copying it and figuring out how to do it easier/cheaper/quicker.

[Hasknewbie]

As @jacquesm noted, you kind of picked the wrong target there.

But to get to the root of your argument: accepting copying as normal does not mean "no innovation", but "different innovation". Does that mean ground-breaking stuff would pop up noticeably less often? Possibly. But it's also likely that once released these products would iteratively reach a higher level of quality than what we have now (I cannot equate "learning from the masters" with the existence of Windows 8 or Gnome 3, for example). Different paths, but headed the same way.

[namlem]

For most of human history, China was the most advanced civilization in the world.