A research supervisor recounts a conversation with a distraught student who feared all the easy ideas had already been done. The worry is shared by many thinkers who study scientific progress. Scott Alexander argues that all the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and Holden Karnofsky expects art and science to keep slowing down by default. Dean Keith Simonton notes that the days when a single doctoral student could publish revolutionary papers, as Einstein did in 1905, are probably gone. Modern science has grown so large and specialized that cutting-edge work often comes from big collaborative teams.
The author once found this view seductive but now considers it outrageous, both because it seems wrong and because it undermines the human drive to discover. People only pursue discoveries when they believe they are worth trying, and a meme like "ideas are getting harder to find" could discourage that effort and help fulfill its own prophecy. The author suggests two cognitive biases behind the pessimism. First, every idea looks obvious in hindsight, as with heliocentrism, germ theory, and randomized controlled trials, which took thousands of years to develop. Second, new ideas always feel hard to generate, so future discoveries seem obscure even when they are not.
History offers a warning. In the 1890s, many believed physics was nearly complete. Max Planck later recalled a professor telling him that theoretical physics had reached a degree of perfection comparable to geometry. That belief proved mistaken, as the discoveries that followed showed.
The author concludes that mere mortals can still uncover useful truths, and that defunding fields such as theoretical physics on the grounds that nothing useful remains would be a mistake. Pessimism about ideas should be met with skepticism, because past generations who felt the same way were wrong.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing