Lucio wrote: Yes, but sometimes you have to put vast amounts of money into a project into a creative idea to actually bring it to reality. And often it is simply too much money to attract investors or even government to the idea.
Anna writes: Then I would assume that the creative idea wasn't or isn't very creative. You wrote: Take for instance drug discovery. Anna writes: I would assume that the drug discovery, at any time, has been financially beneficial. You wrote: Another example: particle physics. In the 90s there was that project for the Supercollider, a particle accelerator that would produce energies high enough... Anna writes: I'm not really sure what you are talking about. Could you explain? You wrote: Of course creative breakthroughs are possible. Anna:) Yes, that's what's make them unique:) On 10/4/06, Bruce LaDuke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The current rate of innovation doesn't really matter if society 'innovates innovation itself.' This **is** singularity because it removes the primary barrier for all social advance, which is the understanding of what advance is, where it comes from, how we accomplish it, and how it can be mechanized. Industry is the application of advance or the 'science of making things.' Advance itself is somewhat separate from the products associated with that advance as evidenced by the fact that one can have the knowledge to make something and choose to never make it. Not saying that one doesn't need money for some advances, but I'm saying you have to separate these two appropriately to fully understand both. That said, I see two primary obstacles to singularity and economics is not one of them. The first is Social Impacts. It is not a given that social advance will eliminate social risks and negative social impacts that result from that advance. For example, one can 'advance' to make bombs that fit in your shirt pocket that have power to destroy a city, but conflicting, beliefs, values, and ideologies will be the killer, not the bomb itself. It is quite possible to be highly knowledge adults and a social or spiritual babies at the same time. The second is Social Acceptance. It's one thing to discover singularity, but it is entirely another for society as a whole to accept it. This has been the primary obstacle to most great advances in ages past. The 'establishment' tends to resist truly radical advance because it reforms the establishment. The world is flat until after you're dead, then we might believe its round. On a personal level, what criteria do you use personally to accept or reject new ideas? Are politics, status, connections, reputation, etc. in any way involved in your decision? Point being that individuals, groups, and society often reject advance, or accept non-advances, for all the wrong reasons. My futuring manifesto talks about the three elements of advance, social impacts, and industry in a little more detail: http://www.hyperadvance.com/manifesto.htm Kind Regards, Bruce LaDuke Managing Director Instant Innovation, LLC Indianapolis, IN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hyperadvance.com ----Original Message Follows---- From: "Lúcio de Souza Coelho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: singularity@v2.listbox.com To: singularity@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [singularity] Counter-argument Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 23:25:53 -0300 On 10/4/06, Anna Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: (...) >From my experience: >Innovative creative ideas are in most, rewarding, and at times very >financially rewarding. (...) Yes, but sometimes you have to put vast amounts of money into a project into a creative idea to actually bring it to reality. And often it is simply too much money to attract investors or even government to the idea. Take for instance drug discovery. Sometimes it takes years of research and millions and millions on lab equipment and scientists to make some advance in some group of medications/substances; and as in any other risk activity, sometimes those efforts end in failure. There is even a provocative book about that, "The $800 Million Pill". Now, imagine that in the future, after we discover many other drugs, the cost for finding even newer ones may be so high that companies will decide that it is higher than the likely return obtained by selling the said newer drugs. And then advances in that field will come to a halt. In fact costs of drug development are already high enough to trigger work on a new field of research, the study of combinations of *existing* drugs, which may have some interesting returns at a far lower cost. Another example: particle physics. In the 90s there was that project for the Supercollider, a particle accelerator that would produce energies high enough to probe the inner workings of matter-energy and, who knows, even Existence itself. (Supposedly the Supercolider would shed some light on the hypothetical Higgs Boson, the so-called "God Particle".) However, it would be vastly expensive to build that and the project was cancelled. Yet another: large scale commercial exploration of space. In the 70's, during the Oil Shock, Gerard O'Neil proposed a massive government project that would build huge solar power stations in space and beam the energy to Earth by using microwaves. The would be cheap energy 24/7, *forever*. (Well, actually for the next few billion years. ;-) Although technically sound and able to pay itself after 10 or 20 years under some reasonable assumptions, the startup investment would be of course enormous, and the project was never implemented. Of course creative breakthroughs are possible. Ideas that were reasonably cheap to develop, like the electric bulb, and discoveries that were basically accidental, like electric induction, changed entirely the whole world. In the same way, one day for instance one may invent antigravity or a cheap space elevator and make commercial exploration dirty cheap. But until then all those "Failed Dreams", as Vernor Vinge called them in "A Deepness in the Sky", will look unattractive from an investment and return point of view. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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