| > > Equating innovation with taking risks is a faulty concept to start with. You can bet that the 'person' who invented the fire or the weel didnt take any risks. To start with, those were not invented by singular people 'taking risks' but invented by entire species Back then people were making human sacrifices and starting wars because 'the Gods told them to do so'. Innovation happens when risks are taken (eg. Montgolfier brothers, Wright Brothers, the guy who discovered testosterone by self injected blood taken from the testicular veins of horses...) and given that risk and confidence are a state of mind much less a business practice, you cannot conflate it just to science and technology but said risk and confidence will be visible all around society. So wars, genocides, violence and genearlly stuff considered bad. The rate of innovation has been slowing down due to the diminishing in the standard deviation of human behavior. Or as kids say: 'Less fucking around, means less finding out' Standard deviation of human behavior goes both ways, people rejoice that we eliminated the negatives but we have also eliminated the positives. No Einsteins without Hitlers, no Archimedes without Alexanders etc. So even if the guy who personally discovered fire or the wheel didn't take risks personally (I doubt it) he operated in an environment where the standard deviation of human behavior was much larger. For sure there were people jumping off trees with wooden wings, wars, genocides, much more violence. And that is statistically enough to make sure that at least one unit in the sample stumbles into something great like fire or the wheel. |
Not relevant. All of those were established behavior patterns at the time. Not 'risk taking'.
> Innovation happens when risks are taken
For every such example you can pull out from history, there are dozens of innovations resulting from incremental improvement and learning from others and the nature.
> The rate of innovation has been slowing down due to the diminishing in the standard deviation of human behavior.
There has never been more deviants in human history than now. In human history, sticking with the social norms, known behavior patterns and keeping the existing social group and its framework safe were critical to survival. From traditions to laws everything were based on those. With your logic, it should be the most innovative period in history whereas the past should be the least innovative. Yet you are saying the opposite.
Innovation as you see it has been slowing down because science and technology have been privatized through patents towards the end of 19th century by big money entering the field and consolidating it. Exacerbated by the 'state secrets' concept. Before that, virtually everything was Open Source during the scientific revolution.
> So even if the guy who personally discovered fire
There was no such singular guy.
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In any case, thanks for the discussion.