Innovation

[daylen]

Si-Ne: r-selection on dreams -> express more memes -> less survive through communication
Ni-Se: K-selection on dreams -> express fewer memes -> more survive through communication

Discovery and invention blurs a little when you consider instruments. Better telescopes, microscopes, particle accelerators <-> More discoveries

To re-differentiate: In lack of a well-developed culture or memome (based on Malthusian-equivilent limits), Si-Ne discovery is dominate in absence of invented instrumentation (e.g. Pythagorean theorem). Near cultural-Malthusian limits, Ni-Se invention is dominate in the creation of instruments capable of making marginal discoveries (e.g. LHC discovering the higgs-boson). By this criteria, the publication measure sort of breaks down. Something like the lindy effect may be used in substitution.

[7Wannabe5]

@daylen:

Does this relate to tendency towards “re-inventing the wheel?”

Also, could you explain with example applied to soil microbiology?

[daylen]

Re-inventing the wheel would tend to be more common closer to cultural-Malthusian limits. Agents using Ni-Se are under heavy time-constraint to determine how they can make marginal discoveries(*), so for them, it may be more time-efficient (or just easier or more fun) to re-invent parts of the required instrument along the way using their K-selected latticework (Ni) to conjure up experimental (Se) designs as opposed to exploring (Ne) established solutions/data (Si).

Newton, using Ni-Se, invented optical instruments for the purpose of discovering optical laws. This encouraged the innovation of optical instruments resulting in better microscopes. Each generation of more powerful microscopes opened up the discovery frontier in microbiology (analogous in ecology/economics to the discovery of an island with untapped niches/resources). Agents using Ne-Si explored this new territory fixating on discovery for the purpose of incentivizing invention.

Si-Ne: discovery -> invention (focusing on why inventions should be made), "these soil microbes should help plants grow and can be attracted with nutrient X"
Ni-Se: invention -> discovery (focusing on how discoveries can be made), "this microscope can allow agents to study smaller things like Y"

(*) I do not mean marginal as less important. Just as being closer to the limits of what can be known.

[daylen]

To go full circle, we could say Newton was incentivized by the plague to invent optical instruments so that others could discover why diseases spread (probably unconsciously but still interesting to speculate on).

[daylen]

As for innovation and diffusion, roughly the same correspondence can be made for the judgement axes.

Te-Fi: innovation -> diffusion (what should be developed when), (investment in products)
Fe-Ti: diffusion -> innovation (who would benefit from this), (investment in agents)

[7Wannabe5]

@daylen:


Oops, I didn’t really mean “reinventing the wheel”, rather something more like “return to fundamentals.” For instance, thinking about an entirely different design for better enabling transportation based on reduction of friction, rather than simply thinking about how to increase marginal efficiency of standard wheel design.

Also, I am going to take back what I said about not caring about innovation based on your modeling of Fe->Ti = diffusion -> innovation, because that is exactly how my brain works in certain situations*. For instance, at very quick moving book sales or auctions, I would first evaluate whether interesting/rare, then picture who would want to buy the book and then estimate price I could get.

*Situations in which I am trying to make me some money


Anyways, I decided to attempt an experiment towards greater personal creative idea production based loosely on advice offered in “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson combined with some of my own unique flavor of cuckoo/bananas.I was already reading a lot of books at the same time, so my experiment was switching between 10 different reasonably topic/genre randomized books at each chapter break and taking intermittent half hour power walks to churn process all the ideas together.

The results were good enough that I am going to recommend the practice. Three of the books I was reading were “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking” by Ellenberg, “In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life” by Robert Kegan, and “My Horizontal Life:A Collection if One Night Stands” by Chelsea Handler. And during the course of one of my walks, I found myself bringing together concepts from these three very different books into a sensible new meme formation. I was considering how it seemed like it simultaneously was and wasn’t true that alcoholism had kept Chelsea Handler at an adolescent level of functioning (as defined/described by Kegan) well into her late 20s, and wondering whether or not she would have benefited from Kegan’s advice that adolescents should be encouraged to enjoy orgasm creating relationships/interactions absent the risks inherent in penetrative sex, and then suddenly Ellenberg’s humorous take on non-linearity and the Laffer curve popped into my mind, and I formed the thought that graph of the societal benefits to be derived from the practice of encouraging adolescents to engage in non-penetrative sexual behavior would likely look something like the Laffer curve.

[7Wannabe5]

My innovative idea for today is a new hobby fitness activity. It combines trail or power walking with drumming. The advantages would be the additional upper body and aerobic conditioning provided by drumming while walking, the likely increased motivation due to greater emotional connection to rhythm of activity, and the drumsticks could also possibly be useful for self-defense.

Obvious downside would be that the activity would likely be regarded as highly eccentric until it caught on. However, this might also somewhat serve as a boundary of self-defense.

[classical_Liberal]

this might also somewhat serve as a boundary of self-defense.

Also, the drumming would keep bears away on trails in more natural settings.

[7Wannabe5]

True! One time when I was hiking in Alaska with my sisters we resorted to singing John Denver songs very loudly after hearing a distinctive low growl just off our path.

I was trying to remember some innovations I came up with in the past, but never got around to marketing. One idea ewas based on combining the memes of dressing up concrete porch geese which was popular with semi-rural working class folk, hula-tufa which is process for making light-weight attractively mossy-aged garden ornaments out of mix of cement and organic materials, and the obsessive mania of college football fans. My plan was to manufacture more “classy” natural looking porch/garden ornaments based on college football mascots which could hold pennants or be donned with scarf in team colors on game days, but otherwise blend unobtrusively into garden genteel enough in appearance to satisfy Vita Sackville-West.

[7Wannabe5]

From “Prosperity Without Growth” by Tim Jackson:

Perhaps the most telling point of all is the rather too perfect fit between the continuous consumption of novelty by households and the continuous production of novelty in firms. The restless desire of the “empty self” is the perfect complement for the restless innovation of the entrepreneur. The production of novelty through creative destruction drives (and is driven by) the appetite for novelty in consumers.

The chapter from which I pulled this paragraph completes without offer of what to me is obvious solution. Instead of hoping to quash such a natural human drive, obviously deeply based in our omnivorous search for new foodstuffs and our sexual tendency towards outbreeding, individuals should be encouraged towards home production of novelty making use of closed loop recycling of materials and solar acreage limitations on energy supply and/or linear trade/barter of very small scale novel production.

This practice would be entirely in alignment with social signaling, because way cooler to own one painting gifted by artist friend than 10 knockoff prints, or make your own totally unique table out of reclaimed window and washed pebbles than buy something from new line at IKEA, or make sandwich with mix of heirloom tomatoes you crossed and grew yourself, etc etc etc

Obviously, one thing that truly sucks about the modern world is how you can get the same “new” chicken sandwich at every exit on the toll road. True novelty can only be created on small scale.