HN Explorer

Ask HN: What happens when there's nothing left to invent or discover?

20 points by meri_dian ↗ HN
Eventually we will reach that point. What happens when we do? How does it affect our economies and societies?

There have been very long stretches of history in which general human progress was stagnant.

Productivity growth will eventually slow, given that we are limited in what we can do by the laws of physics.

Of course I could continuously rearrange superficial designs of things, which may give me an infinite number of things to do, but that doesn't increase productivity. There are a finite number of ways to do something in a more productive and efficient way than previous methods.

Given this, eventually we will reach a time when we can't make any more progress in the traditional sense.

42 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 95.5 ms ] thread
marpstar
What makes you think that we'll reach that point? We've barely scratched the surface...
soneca
I think we will never reach that point.
CompelTechnic
We will finally start writing sufficient documentation.
osrec
Lol, and the maintenance and repairs industry will boom.
davelnewton
Until we have to invent things to make it so people actually write good documentation. Then document that.
Akinato
Haha, and we'll get to relearn everything that didn't already have sufficient documentation.
0xdeadbeefbabe
Since it would require discovery, we wouldn't answer this question.
tw1010
That would mean we had a perfect understanding of our biology and how chemicals effect the brain. It would mean having perfect predictive power about the future. That's when the fun starts.
jaxtellerSoA
Huh? How could we ever reach that point? The amount of things that can be invented are infinite.
techer
Everyone and everything will be dead.
trevyn
How will our economies and societies change if we fully understand how human beings work?
segmondy
We will never reach such a point. Given an infinite lifetime, we will find infinite ways to rearrange things and come up with new things.
darpa_escapee
Nothing left to discover or invent within our means, or do you mean that there is literally nothing left?

If it's the former, we've hit a local maxima. If it's the latter, I don't think we could speculate what would happen in that situation. It's too alien.

mcfunk
There will never be a point at which there is nothing left to invent or discover; it will be preempted by a point at which humanity is no longer around to invent or discover anything.
lixxz
Nobody living right now is qualified enough to even attempt to answer this question.
enitihas
I think people were asking themselves the same question at the end of the 19th century, when everyone thought mankind had mastered all of Physics. Suddenly so much new stuff(Relativity, Quantum Mechanics) was discovered and flipped our world view upside down. So I think there will always be something to be discovered or invented.
nakedrobot2
Why on earth would we run out of things to invent? This shows a stunning lack of imagination in my opinion. I guess at any point throughout the history of the human race, since before the time anyone had thought to invent shoes, rope, pottery, or fish hooks, there were people thinking that everything has already been invented, and there can't possibly be anything else to invent.

There will always be new things to invent.

slededit
On the contrary it is very imaginative. Seeing far beyond the horizon. We know (or think we know) the universe has finite entropy. Therefore there's an end somewhere - regardless of how far away that is.
yesenadam
It sounded to me like OP is assuming there will be a 'horizon'. "Eventually we will reach that point." Why assume that? It sounds like a false assumption to me.

It reminds me of the argument I hear occasionally about how one day soon there will be no new music, it will have all been written. Which sounds to me about as wrong as can be.

What you're talking about is an entirely unrelated matter, and mixing it 'very imaginatively' with the OP's point as if they're the same.

jws
There was a time when the European countries developed transoceanic sailing capabilities and began an age of discovery spreading outward to other lands. I wonder if they considered that finding and exploiting resources from new lands would be the norm, or if they realized that it would all be over in 300 years?
meri_dian
Exactly. Right now we believe creating new products and product categories is the norm. But eventually everything will become commodified, according to my thinking.
CDCollier
This is a wrong question and indicates a misunderstanding of what the universe is: infinite.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
davelnewton
Heat death of the universe.

It's not clear to me why you believe we'll reach that point before extinction--I find the notion highly implausible.

tinymollusk
Extrapolating previous trends of energy consumption. Historically, technological advances have greatly increased the energy consumption per human. At an accelerating pace (exponential energy consumption growth).

According to Geoffrey West's "Scale", humans biological needs are about 90 watts at rest, 250 watts for an extremely active lifestyle. The average American uses about 11,000 watts, 2 orders of magnitude more, and more than a blue whale.

It is possible we will invent new ways to tap energy, but exponential growth will have to end somehow.

(Unless you meant to imply that our technological progress could hasten the heat death of the universe, in which case I fully agree.)

Note - I do not mean this will happen any time soon, just that there is a theoretical upper bound to innovation: how much energy exists in the universe.

patorjk
In a sense, we're already reached that point. Everything that can ever be talked about or written, can be found in this library:

https://libraryofbabel.info/

Though that includes all possible gibberish as well as all possible knowledge.

Though as a more serious answer, something like the above link does make me wonder about the limits of information. I like to think that there's no limit on information, but clearly there's a limit on information that can be described by the English language (assuming a fixed book size).

rookiemaverick
We will do a big bang some where in the middle of no where, we will simulate life on the planets created by it, from time to time we will visit them, observe them, and one day we will fedup with that. We will leave them on their own to attain what we attained. And may be they will call us God.
computronus
Then discover why there is nothing left to invent or discover.
datpuz
"Eventually we will reach that point"

No, we really won't. As life continues to evolve and conditions in the environment continue to change, new solutions will constantly need to be invented to solve the new problems that arise. That process will never end.

pascalxus
Paul Graham would argue that since human desires are unlimited, we will never reach a point of not having any problems left to solve. This may be true. But... The question is what if we run out of SOLVABLE problems. There are sooo many extremely important problems that humanity has (housing, transportation, food/water, education inflation, medical) that can't currently be solved due to either barriers to entry or mostly due to government regulation.

In fact, I think we're starting to reach a plateau in the last 10 and the coming 10 years. With the exception of medical science and the entertainment industry, I feel there hasn't been much meaningful innovation that changes consumers lives. Sure, we have google maps and millions of apps, but honestly, 10 years ago, I didn't have any problems finding my way around the road, even if I had to draw out a map by hand (lol). Today, Transportation is still at the same speeds and costs, housing costs even more, medical insurance is everybit as expensive, etc.

The most dire forms of innovation needed by humanity today, are at the bottom of maslow's heirarchy of needs: shelter, food, water, and by necessity: transportation and medical insurance. These areas are not being worked on, due to the above reasons i mentioned.

AnimalMuppet
> With the exception of medical science...

You say that like it's not a massively important exception. Not dying is really high on most peoples' list of "meaningful".

chrismcb
Recently we landed booster rockets and took a picture of an atom... And there is so so much we don't know about our own planet. We still have a lot to learn and discovered and invent.