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Topic: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ideas? (Read 1647 times) |
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amichail
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Do individuals matter when it comes to big ideas?
« on: Nov 4th, 2005, 2:13am » |
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In a recent discussion, someone raised the possibility that clever ideas are more important to their creators than to society.
If the idea is sufficiently important and its creator is ignored for whatever reason, then someone else will come up with it anyway. So it's the initial creator who loses out -- not society.
In other words, individuals are not important when it comes to big ideas.
Can you come up with a way to try to validate this hypothesis empirically?
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Grimbal
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #1 on: Nov 4th, 2005, 3:26am » |
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I am not sure.
Today's keyboards are more complicated than they need because of the history of keyboards. If some bright person had anticipated its evolution early, we probably would have more logical keyboards. But instead we are stuck with this really weird design. It is too late for a bright idea (some still try) because we are used to it already.
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towr
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #2 on: Nov 4th, 2005, 3:42am » |
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The timing of ideas is important as well, as Grimbals example also shows.
Sometimes good ideas emerge before the world is ready, and it takes a few decades before the time is right and it has to be reinvented then. At other times new ideas are simply an inevitable result from current technology and ideas.
In as far as big ideas come forth from big problems, I think they're pretty much inevitable. If scientific data doesn't fit with current theories, people will try to find better theories.
But I'm sure there are some big ideas that don't come from solving such problems. Or perhaps rather from uncovering new problems first.
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rmsgrey
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #3 on: Nov 4th, 2005, 5:45pm » |
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My understanding is that the keyboard layout arose as a solution to the mechanical problem of mechanical typewriters getting jammed when multiple keys in close proximity got pressed near simultaneously.
The trouble with any argument that great inventions would happen anyway is that we don't have much data on things that weren't invented, or on things that multiple people could have invented, but only one did. Without some way of knowing what would have happened, there's no way to resolve the question of which features of what happened are and aren't significant.
There are actually ways to get the data in limited instances - for instance, the near-simultaneous formalisation of calculus by Newton and Liebniz. There are a number of other instances of near-simultaneous discoveries. On the other hand, there are situations where isolated cultures have developed independently and one culture has totally failed to invent something, or has invented something unique or nearly unique to that culture. A good example is 0 - as far as we know, only three cultures ever invented a symbol for 0 - the Babylonian 0 which died out, the Mayan 0, which went the way of all Mayan culture, and the Indian 0 which is the one we use today. So either only a handful of cultures have ever reached the level of sophistication needed to invent 0, or the invention of 0 requires a specific genius as well as the right cultural context.
If it is possible to use some form of time-travel or related tech to explore alternate histories, this is one of the questions that would be answered almost automatically. Of course, reporting your results to anyone back home could be tricky - probably wiser to take your significant other(s) along with you...
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Barukh
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #4 on: Nov 6th, 2005, 12:45am » |
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Basically, I tend to agree with rmsgrey. Let’s now take the question to the extreme.
Imagine a contact with extraterrestrial. Would this alien being know 0? Pi? Calculus? What is the minimal knowledge that must be shared in order for the contact to be possible at all?
Soviet physicist P. Makovetsky once claimed that the civilization that doesn’t know about Pi is so different from ours that any contact with it is impossible.
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Grimbal
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #5 on: Nov 6th, 2005, 6:15am » |
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Did ancient egyptians know about pi?
or better:
Do dogs know about pi? Can you communicate with dogs?
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| « Last Edit: Nov 7th, 2005, 12:46am by Grimbal » |
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towr
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #6 on: Nov 6th, 2005, 7:51am » |
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on Nov 6th, 2005, 12:45am, Barukh wrote:| Imagine a contact with extraterrestrial. Would this alien being know 0? Pi? Calculus? What is the minimal knowledge that must be shared in order for the contact to be possible at all? |
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If he's a spacefaring alien, I'm pretty sure he must know 0, pi, calculus and more.
If he's just living on his planet minding his farm, he can do very well without it.
And whether we can communicate with it will probably not depend on his knowledge of maths. Can you say hello with maths?
I'd try pictures first (if they can see).
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rmsgrey
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #7 on: Nov 8th, 2005, 10:29am » |
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on Nov 6th, 2005, 7:51am, towr wrote:
If he's a spacefaring alien, I'm pretty sure he must know 0, pi, calculus and more.
If he's just living on his planet minding his farm, he can do very well without it.
And whether we can communicate with it will probably not depend on his knowledge of maths. Can you say hello with maths?
I'd try pictures first (if they can see).
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"2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19"
And how do you go about sharing pictures? What range of colours do you use? How do you abstract information into an image? Textured models may be more suitable.
I can imagine an alien species that has a depth of intuitive understanding of specific objects and entities that they could successfully evolve an interstellar craft and navigate it without ever abstracting concepts of number. Though their craft may well only be capable of travel between specified locations at specified times rather than having a generalised ability to travel (without being adjusted)
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towr
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #8 on: Nov 8th, 2005, 11:34am » |
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on Nov 8th, 2005, 10:29am, rmsgrey wrote:A poor excuse for hello, although it should peek listining aliens interest. If they recognize it.
Quote:| And how do you go about sharing pictures? What range of colours do you use? |
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black and white.
Quote:| How do you abstract information into an image? |
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You can draw situations. Or make some sort of animation.
Quote:| Textured models may be more suitable. |
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I really have no idea what to imagine here.
Quote:| I can imagine an alien species that has a depth of intuitive understanding of specific objects and entities that they could successfully evolve an interstellar craft and navigate it without ever abstracting concepts of number. Though their craft may well only be capable of travel between specified locations at specified times rather than having a generalised ability to travel (without being adjusted) |
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I really don't see how that would work. I could imagine they'd steal someone elses spacecraft, which has such an intuitive interface they don't need to understand much about anything. But creating a working spacecraft themselves without an understanding of maths goes beyond my imagination.
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rmsgrey
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #9 on: Nov 8th, 2005, 12:37pm » |
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on Nov 8th, 2005, 11:34am, towr wrote:
A poor excuse for hello, although it should peek listining aliens interest. If they recognize it. |
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The entire content of "hello" is "I would like to communicate with you" - an attempt to get someone's attention and indicate your own attention.
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So a perfect thermal radiator and a perfect (diffuse) reflector? And across how wide a range of frequencies?
Quote:| You can draw situations. Or make some sort of animation. |
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Imagine aliens with eyes on stalks so that they have a much better depth perception than us - meaning their 2D representations would probably have to involve two canvases with noticeable parallax adjustments. It's actually a very sophisticated trick to be able to look at a hexagon and see a cube...
Quote:| [re "textured models"]I really have no idea what to imagine here. |
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Barbie dolls or similar - something tangible, but with an appropriate surface texture (so maybe not Barbie...)
Quote:| I really don't see how that would work. I could imagine they'd steal someone elses spacecraft, which has such an intuitive interface they don't need to understand much about anything. But creating a working spacecraft themselves without an understanding of maths goes beyond my imagination. |
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Language is pretty much a non-starter for these hypothetical aliens - rather than percieving every blade of grass as an instance of a concept of "blade of grass", instead they understand each individual blade of grass as an individual entity. For them, making a spaceship wouldn't be a matter of designing a series of parts that combine (in a modular fashion) to form a working whole, but rather like the process whereby a sculptor sees the unicorn (say) inside a block of marble and simply removes the rest - each aspect of the spaceship would contain within it the implication of the whole - our technology would baffle them because each part is separate from the rest and the combination is senselessly disjointed and inefficient.
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towr
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #10 on: Nov 8th, 2005, 1:25pm » |
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on Nov 8th, 2005, 12:37pm, rmsgrey wrote:| The entire content of "hello" is "I would like to communicate with you" - an attempt to get someone's attention and indicate your own attention. |
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So why would "2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19" be that? Rather than something else. It might be just a testsignal not meant to communicate anything to anyone. It has no meaning to anyone who doesn't know it's suppsoed to have any.
Quote:| So a perfect thermal radiator and a perfect (diffuse) reflector? And across how wide a range of frequencies? |
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I see no reason why it has to be perfect Just look how light and dark the opposite sides of the aliens home planet is. That's likely to be somethign he can differentiate. And you can look at other live on it to guess at what likely ranges of vision are.
(And if they come here, it's likelier they'll try to contact us first in some way and do the necessary research)
Quote:| Barbie dolls or similar - something tangible, but with an appropriate surface texture (so maybe not Barbie...) |
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Ah sure, why not. 3D models. Although it may be a bit less portable. A screen is easier to lug around then thousands of models.
*sigh* really to bad we don't have any aliens around to test our communication hypotheses on.. Everything on earth we can communicate with is really too much like us. And you can't be sure that will be the same elsewhere in the universe.
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Icarus
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #11 on: Nov 8th, 2005, 4:53pm » |
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For communicating with aliens, you might look at what they put on the plaques carried by the pioneer and voyager probes. You might also look at what the SETI project is looking for as proof of a signal from an intelligent alien species.
The key thing in establishing communications with a completely foreign intelligence is to find some common ground by which you can compare the differing lingual representations. With sending messages to aliens, there is no way of knowing what you have in common with them until they reply. So the best you can do is try to find things likely to be known to as broad a spectrum of intelligences as possible. Mathematics is the primary example. It is conceivable that an intelligent species able to receive intersteller messages has developed without any understanding of mathematics, but it is highly unlikely.
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Setting aside the hijacking of this thread to return to amichail's original question...
I strongly suspect that for some ideas, if they had not been discovered by their authors, no-one else would have ever come up with them, or at least, they would not have been discovered for centuries afterward. These ideas required special inspiration, and just the right fortuitous circumstances, to come into being. However, those ideas are few and far between.
The vast majority of ideas are discovered because the time is ripe for their discovery. Newton and Liebnitz's simultaneous development of calculus occurred because calculus was already being developed, just not put together as a coherent whole. The concepts of differentiation and of integration had both already been developed, and some of the key theorems of calculus were already known. (For example: Rolle's theorem. This key result about differentiation, whose generalization, the Mean Value Theorem, is required to prove the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, was discovered by Newton's mentor.) Newton and Liebnitz discovered calculus (really, the relation between differential and integral calculus) at the same time because all the groundwork for the development had already been made. Had neither of them followed where the groundwork led, any one of several other mathematicians of the time would have come across it within the next few years.
This is why simultaneous discovery is actually quite common in the annals of math and science.
The only way I can see that you could empirically test these ideas would be to take a large number of large groups of people, and isolate the groups for a long time (decades at least for a true test). Record the original ideas of each group and plot the percentage of ideas against the percentage of groups that discovered them (i.e. what percentage of the ideas were discovered by 1% or less of the groups, what percentage were discovered by 2% of the groups, etc.) Alas, that this is totally impractical, and also unethical!
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| « Last Edit: Nov 8th, 2005, 4:54pm by Icarus » |
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rmsgrey
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #12 on: Nov 9th, 2005, 12:00pm » |
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I was reading something a while back that said that the Greeks came within a hair of discovering Calculus. If this is true, then it suggests that things could have been very different - or the discovery could have failed to find an application and moldered on a scroll somewhere and got burned with the library at Alexandria...
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Three Hands
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #13 on: Nov 9th, 2005, 3:22pm » |
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Of course, the Greeks also developed the steam engine, it's just they only had a small-scale application of it (as a children's toy).
Could this count as an example of a discovery which was made twice by separate individuals? And how much does appropriate application matter for the big ideas? After all, several concepts have been adapted over the ages for more modern uses - Frege's system of logic, for example, is exceedingly important for computing, but Frege developed the system a long time before computing reached the stage where such logic became useful...
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towr
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Re: Do individuals matter when it comes to big ide
« Reply #14 on: Nov 10th, 2005, 2:44am » |
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The greek 'steam engine' wouldn't have been usefull as a steam engine if it was scaled up. It would have been impractical, ludicrously dangerous, and very inefficient.
I suppose they could learn from it that possibly steam could be used to do work. But engineering a usefull steamengine take a bit more.
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