Innovation's low-hanging fruits: on the demand or supply sides?

Figuring out a non-eugenics technology to raise IQ's would go a long way towards solving other problems. Nick Bostrom in one of this talks argues that raising everyone's IQ by ten points would revolutionize the world for the better, not by making the smartest people marginally smarter, but my "uplifting" billions of dullards above a threshold where they became more educable, more employable, more law abiding, more likely to save money and plan for the future and so forth.

Psychologist Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware would probably agree with this outcome:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf

One of the problem of our time is that the average person has less friends with whom he can talk about everything than he had a hundred years ago. It's not clear that the solution is technology but it's probably innovation.

At the moment I have the problem that I can't be as loud as I want in my flat. Especially after 22 o'clock. It would disturb my neighbors. Having an efficient way to build houses in a way to shield neighbors from each others noise would be worthwhile.

We have a political system that's very messy. Finding a way to improve it requires good innovative thinking. Concepts such as liquid democracy have the potential to be viable.

Working lie detectors would revolutionize our legal system.

I think the whole education system has a lot of potential for innovation that radically improves it.

Divorce rates are really high and that suggests that either people make errors in matchmaking or that people are bad at doing the work to keep up a relationship. Both are problems where innovation might help.

Running prisons in a way that the people who get released don't commit further crimes is an unsolved problem.

I don't see any conceivable realistic technological innovation that would be as transformative as the flush toilet, vaccinations, birth control, telephones, cars and airplanes.

I don't think airplanes were considered conceivable and realistic before they were invented. I don't think people did conceive of flush toilets before they got invented.

He certainly has a point here: imagine society without toilets or youtube, which would be most tolerable (or most >survivable)?

Village dwellers (at least here in Ukraine) don't have toilets and don't lack them much. It is only important in cities.

What current needs do we have that we're waiting for innovation to solve?

Lots of. As example, the most mundane of the important problems: housing is absurdly expensive.

Even if we had teleporters, would future Tyler Cowens be writing that they're not as innovative as the car - and would they >be correct, in that a teleporter is just a more efficient way of solving a problem that cars and airplanes had already >partially solved?

No, they would be wrong. Teleporters would be indeed transformative technology. Among many other changes, they mean that "place where you live" and "place where you work" are not connected at all, at least within national borders.

I don't see any conceivable realistic technological innovation that would be as transformative as the flush toilet, >vaccinations, birth control, telephones, cars and airplanes.

I think there were a lot of predictions of this kind in the past.

Poverty is another one; but it's not like we know of a specific technological innovation that would solve poverty, if only someone would develop it.

Taboo "poverty". By the 19th century standards we have indeed solved it, at least in the developed world.

But the flush toilet can only be invented once. We might have access to talking super toilets with multi-coloured fountains - but all the bells and whistles are less useful that the original flushing toilet aspect.

how about a teleporter combined with a toilet. It could sit somewhere in your house, scanning your bladder and colon periodically, and then removing accumulated waste without you having to do anything. While it is doing that it could also remove any viral particles or unhealthy bacteria from your bloodstream, excess ear wax, unwanted body hair, tumors, arterial plaques, unpleasant memories, etc. THAT would be a real innovation!

I don't see any conceivable realistic technological innovation that would be as transformative as the flush toilet, vaccinations, birth control, telephones, cars and airplanes.

You need to think bigger. Agriculture, remember?

Poverty is another one; but it's not like we know of a specific technological innovation that would solve poverty, if only someone would develop it.

Molecular nonotechnology? If we can replicate any item at low cost, this could eventually eliminate poverty, once you get to the point where all the basic items that people need in order to live a reasonable life are no longer scarce goods, and are incredibly cheap to produce.

Very interesting. No objections to your main points, but a few comments on side points and conclusions:

• You say "it's not like we know of a specific technological innovation that would solve poverty, if only someone would develop it." I would identify Greg Cochran's 'genetic spellcheck' as such a tech, along with what other people are suggesting. http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/typos/

• "We might have exhausted the low-hanging fruits in our desires." I think this is right, but it's complicated. I think the Robin Hanson way to frame this could be the following: innovation has been this rising technological tide that has made it a lot easier to meet most of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But now most of the 'gains' from innovation are made in positional goods and services, which aren't the same sort of gains as, say, flush toilets, so they don't feel "real".

That's because flush toilets responded effectively to a real human need: how to dispose of human waste in urban areas. Once that problem is solved, further innovation is mainly wasted.

I expected a better pun...

What's problems are we facing that are as important as removing human waste from urban areas?

Let's see... Traffic fatalities, to become extinct within 30 years or so, as self-driving vehicles take over. Also will transform the transportation and urban landscape to unrecognizability.

Poverty is another one; but it's not like we know of a specific technological innovation that would solve poverty

You can't "solve" poverty, the distribution will always be there, it's statistical mechanics and probability at work. Not even the former soviet union, with no unemployment and with the standard of living near uniform, was able to bring up everyone to this admittedly low standard.

Maybe solving death and disease

"Solving" is a strong word. But cancer research keeps chugging along, with new ideas popping up at least as fast as before. Augmentation, miniaturization and automation is progressing well, too. The latter would be much further along if not for the many regulatory issues. Medicine is ripe for an industrial revolution, with surgical conveyor belts replacing master craftsmen and their apprentices.

Even if we had teleporters, would future Tyler Cowens be writing that they're not as innovative as the car - and would they be correct, in that a teleporter is just a more efficient way of solving a problem that cars and airplanes had already partially solved?

That's just silly, if someone claimed that. There is more difference between an airplane and a teleporter than between an airplane and a rickshaw. Imagine, no roads, no travel time, no humans clustering into cities and countries... Unfortunately, there is no indication that teleporting is anywhere on the horizon, we don't have any clue about the new physics that would allow that.

As for something as revolutionary as the birth control, responsible eugenics is getting closer to reality, and is held back mostly by the prevailing hypocritical morality.

I suspect that this OP is sort of a devil's advocate and you personally don't believe Tyler Cowen that the pace of innovation is really slowing.

It depends what you mean by transformative. Perhaps there aren't many innovations left that would change the lives of ordinary people, but there are plenty that would change the scale of our civilisation: space industry, robotics, fusion, etc.

Good pain control meds, though admittedly, there are legal barriers in the US to making good use of the meds we've got. Anyone have information about intractable pain in Europe?

Anti-aging tech would see a lot of demand. On a smaller scale, getting connective tissue to heal quickly and completely would be quite popular.

Simple tech which would enable people to keep track of their stuff.

This suggests that while we may indeed be plucking the innovation low-hanging fruits, it might not be because we lack a supply of innovation, but because we're exhausting the easy demand for innovation.

This makes a lot of sense. On the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us, they say that solutions to problems are either aspirin or vitamins. Entertaining movies are a vitamin, because they're fun to have, but people didn't feel like they had a lack of entertainment problem before cinema was invented. Flush toilets are an aspirin sort of solution, because bad sanitation is a really obvious, really unpleasant problem. Though, most of the "aspirin" examples they use are more like email than flush toilets, so maybe flush toilets are more of an antibiotics innovation than an aspirin innovation. By that standard, there aren't many antibiotics-level innovations left outside of medicine, for the parts of the world with the most money to fund them. (I could also see there being some left in ways of avoiding or dealing with pollution, and psychological and social things.)

Tyler Cowen made the interesting point that the internet isn't as innovative as the flushing toilet (or indeed the television). He certainly has a point here: imagine society without toilets or youtube, which would be most tolerable (or most survivable)?

I'm probably missing the main point of the article here, but this is really interesting to think about.

Are we assuming that everyone keeps using outhouses if there are no flush toilets? Just from thinking about it for a few minutes, I can picture a relatively sanitary city where people defecate in plastic bags and trash pickup is much, much more frequent to account for that. If we were still using outhouses, communication technology (including the internet, but before that, telephones etc.) would be really important as a way of letting the population spread out (and work from home) to avoid sanitation problems.

Even if we had teleporters, would future Tyler Cowens be writing that they're not as innovative as the car - and would they be correct, in that a teleporter is just a more efficient way of solving a problem that cars and airplanes had already partially solved?

I don't think so, because there are threshold effects. For example, consider the airplane vs. the car: having airplane travel available doesn't just mean your trips are shorter; it enables many trips that otherwise would not even be considered, and therefore enables many kinds of activities that otherwise would not be considered. If I can fly to a distant city in a few hours, that enables me to have relationships, both business and personal, with people in that city that I couldn't have if I had to take days to drive there. If things can be shipped across country overnight on an airplane, many more economic activities requiring "just in time" delivery become possible. And so on.

In summary, outside of the medical field, I don't see any conceivable realistic technological innovation that would be as transformative as the flush toilet, vaccinations, birth control, telephones, cars and airplanes. We might have exhausted the low-hanging fruits in our desires.

I would say:

AI (non-conscious AI), replacing various service jobs and labor jobs, freeing up humans time).
Fusion Power, providing much cheaper energy, which can then also be used to power electric cars. Anti-agathics. Providing long life or even conquering death. In addition to the individual benefits, allowing people to be productive for longer helps the economy. (For this, you need to make people HEALTHY for longer, not just survive longer, of course). Virtual environments reducing the need for transportation, offices, etc. If most people eventually can work from home and still achieve the same results as working together in an office, then you safe on infrastructure costs (less people driving the roads), energy costs, time, etc, and possibly improve happiness. Genetic Engineering. Cure diseases, enhance intelligence, etc.

There are more. And those are just some of the ones we have already thought of. There are probably plenty more that we havent thought of, that people will innovate once we develop new technologies.

The distinction between demand-side and supply-side arguments for the supposed lack of innovation is interesting. However, I don't agree that we have "exhausted the low-hanging fruits in our desires". I think that our lives have been transformed only the last few years by the spread of smartphones (certainly my own life has). I did want to have constant internet access, to be able to chat with my friends whenever I wanted, etc, and now these desires are satisfied. I expect there to be many many more desires that will be satisfied by information technology and other advances in the coming years.

In short, I don't think our desires are anywhere near being satisfied, but that plenty of them will be satisfied in the coming decades.

What's a low-hanging fruit in a world where ladders grow on trees?

Here's a recent idea I had: A tattoo that responds to blood alcohol content over a certain level (e.g. causing an itchy sensation in the skin, or releasing a small amount of something that causes nausea), making it difficult / anti-habit-forming to get drunk. I'm thinking this could solve the alcoholism problem, comprehensively, without discouraging moderate drinking or relying on willpower.

Another variant would rely on social pressure. Although that is less reliable, it could be safer or easier to implement than one that creates a physiological reaction. For this version, one would have a tattoo that is usually invisible, but becomes visible in the presence of high alcohol level. It could e.g. spell "drunk" across the person's forehead.

Of course, such an invention is not quite on par with flush toilets. Not everyone gets drunk, and it is not infectious. Alcohol is not necessary for civilization. However, comprehensively eliminating alcohol overconsumption would be pretty darned helpful and would eliminate a lot of spillover costs of alcohol consumption, like drunk driving, spousal abuse, and so forth. Moreover, ethanol in excessive doses damages the liver, heart, and skin over time.

In addition to helping people who are alcoholics or at-risk directly, a side effect of such an invention is that people who do not drink due to perceived risk of alcoholism (or reluctance to expose oneself to such a risk) would be able to start drinking. This would probably have benefits that go beyond the extra hedons. Assuming it functions as a nootropic for social characteristics, it could lead to more people being better connected socially (i.e. having more close friends).

Incidentally, I don't see a reason something along these lines could not have been developed 50+ years ago.

The link to Tyler's interview should point here.

In summary, outside of the medical field, I don't see any conceivable realistic technological innovation that would be as transformative as the flush toilet, vaccinations, birth control, telephones, cars and airplanes. We might have exhausted the low-hanging fruits in our desires.

I remember being surprised when hearing someone talk about Reagan's tax cuts- their basic argument was that because Reagan had cut taxes by over half, there was no possible tax decrease that would have as much impact as the Reagan tax cuts, which seemed sensible. And I do think that this argument does apply to many situations- when it comes to sanitation, I do think the problem is over half fixed (counting toilets and refrigeration here as part of 'sanitation'), and I think that minor routine improvements are much better than rare flashy improvements (as the saying goes, refrigeration has saved more lives than surgery).

But it seems likely that there are many areas where life could get significantly better, and I don't think I would class them all as "medical." C4 rice, for example, seems like it could be a second green revolution, dramatically increasing living standards and the number of humans we can support on Earth- but while it uses biology, it's not really medicine. Raising the 'sanity waterline,' as the saying goes, might also have tremendous benefits, and several innovations could contribute to that. (Here I'm mostly thinking of positive psychology and related things, perhaps taught widely in schools.)