You can't turn a blind eye to the natural saturation of need vs solutions, and derive unlimited optimism from the fact how the people were wrong when they said "everything is already done".<p>You can't see ideas as some isolated objects that can come into existence on their own. The overall ecosystem breeds the ideas. The forces of demand create the supply chain. Human need funds the solutions. Peace times, plenty of food give the time and effort needed for inventions. If Europe has all the science going on in the 17-19th centuries, it is not because only Europe has best minds. Europe has the people with free time, food and riches to afford the science work.<p>You can't ignore the overall context of the world around you. You can't keep selling infinite ideas. You can't feed infinite amount of sugar to a person. The so-called solutions can turn toxic, dangerous, and unwanted things. Some ideas might be just be a package of problem and solution packed together. When you buy the solution, you receive the problem as well, which didn't exist earlier.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, they've never been the interesting or limiting part of creating a real product.<p>Knowing what is the right problem to solve, what the right idea (of many) to apply to it, and then being able to execute, delivering to the right audience, refining as necessary are the actual things that separate success from failure.
As an engineer I'm afraid in the age of AI all the easy ideas have been found / lots of companies are working on. It's the hard ones we all know that seem to be intangible. I am still struggling to make things on the side and not feel the weight of my inner thoughts self doubting essentially on "is this juice worth the squeeze if anyone can do it?" but I keep doing it out of the supposed fun I get out of making something. Novel ideas do seem hard to come by though.
There's more than one guy selling hot dogs on the beach. Not joking. This is the most important realization I ever had.<p>Anyway, on AI, lots of people just don't want to do all the QA and interaction to build the software. And those people are willing to pay to not have to.<p>Design custom hot dogs (software). That's my advice. It's working very well for me. People hire me for my in depth experience in certain fields (logistics, manufacturing, database stuff generally, chemistry). That they can spend time to learn and discuss it with an LLM doesn't change that one bit. I'm earning more than ever.<p>People use my software because it's a little cheaper or a little better than some other similar software.<p>There's room for everyone. You don't need to be the only one in your industry.<p>Expand the breadth of expertise you can offer. Just as has always been the case, people will rather pay you for it than learn it themselves.
> “Ideas are getting harder to find” is a pretty bleak thing to believe. It says, “Look around the world. This is pretty much as good as it gets; the returns start diminishing from here. All the problems you see are unlikely to be solved anytime soon, so you better get used to them.” Why would anyone agree to such a thing without putting up a fight?<p>I don't think the first quote implies the second, as claimed. The first is about scientific discovery and the second is about political and social problems.
If the general public tends to believe there's not much left to discover then I wonder if this sentiment itself might be a clue that the opposite is true to a greater extent, or even that we're arguably "behind" in the short term.
Maybe we're about to enter an Economy of Ideas: with everyone and their grandma soon being able to make anything they can think of, it'll come down to who has the better idea (and the vision to polish and continue it)..<p>The Idea Guys™ will finally get their day :)
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Ideas are not found. But its a good way to show the readers not to waste time with this essay.
I believe that was rather his point. That assertions like “ideas are getting harder to find” or “all the good ideas have already been exploited” proceed from structural misunderstandings about intellectual progress.<p>For what it’s worth, I felt my time reading this breezy bite-sized essay was time well-spent. I enjoy Mastroianni’s voice as well as his thinking, and I look forward to his forthcoming book on this subject.<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/772441/the-strangest-idea-in-the-world-by-adam-mastroianni/" rel="nofollow">https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/772441/the-stranges...</a>