[worksonmine]

> The first patent was issued in the 1400's — it is exactly how humans have progressed technologically and sociality.

The last 600 years is a rounding error in the history of humans. Imagine if the different methods of lighting a fire were patented. Those humans also burned witches and imprisoned people for criticizing the church.

We would have a better world if our goal was progress for all over profit for a few.

[mkl]

For the first 200,000 years of human existence, hardly any technological development happened at all relative to the last 600 years (though I am doubtful how much patents contributed to that development). The rate at which technological development has continued to speed up is part of what's causing problems here: patents last ~20 years, which is an eternity in IT. The other problem is granting patents on software at all - the USA is unusually permissive in this.

[graemep]

Most witch burnings happened in the last 600 years - there had been very few (at least in Europe) in the previous millennium and a half. I just pointed out in another comment that the first criminal blasphemy laws in England and Wales were also passed 600 years ago.

It is not easy to divide human progress into before and after. Technological progress very much depends on what has gone before. It accelerated when it reached a certain point of development.

I agree with you that patents are not a key cause of progress, and they often impede it by preventing people other than the patent holder further improving anything patented.

I also think they probably work pretty well for mechanical inventions, but they have been applied to everything - drugs, software, electronic devices, even business methods in some places.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> Imagine if the different methods of lighting a fire were patented.

It would have implied a better, more developed society.

It would implied that there is a writing system.

It would have implied that there was a way to store records long term.

It would have implied that there was a long distance communication system.

It would have implied the existence of some state and rule of law.

It would have implied some type of justice system where you could get redress.

It would have implied a society with excess production of essential materials that it can support the division of labor involved in supporting this system.

[worksonmine]

Not really, it could also have implied cavemen killing everyone they see lighting a fire instead of spreading the knowledge.

[smabie]

And yet, it turns out last 600 years saw many orders of magnitude more innovation than the years prior.

[chongli]

We’d expect this regardless of intellectual property laws. I think the overall innovation follows a logistic function. Early in history most people were primarily engaged in subsistence (hunting or agriculture). It took a really long time to develop the basic tools and infrastructure to get to the point where people could start to specialize in jobs not immediately related to food production, storage, or defence.

None of that stuff is strictly dependent on IP laws, they just happened to be the obvious solution to the problem “how do researchers and artists protect their investments from folks that steal/copy their ideas and beat them to market?”

[wongarsu]

Even ignoring education, the compounding effect of innovation and how most people didn't have the preconditions for innovating at all, you would expect us to have vastly more innovation right now just by virtue of having more people. We now have 20 times as many people on earth as in 1400, 40 times as many as in the year 1, and 200 times as many as in the year -4000.

[worksonmine]

Correlation ≠ causation. The printing press came around the same time and probably contributed to this development, not patents. If he was greedy maybe he would've patented the technology and normal people wouldn't learn to read.

[mrguyorama]

Also, much more importantly, the invention of the scientific method and science as a philosophy of epistemology.

Common knowledge of physics for a thousand years was that heavier things fall faster, so spoke Aristotle. Nobody actually "fact checked" that because "duh, of course heavier things fall faster, this feather falls so slowly, everyone knows that" and so knowledge could not advance.