Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Is something new that isn't a synthesis of past things not just a stochastic process?

Human inventiveness seems to heavily follow a pattern of relatively minor iterations of what came before, extraordinarily rarely something that even seems to defy the past and be truly different and independent.



Democracy, nuclear power, calculus, dna helix, x-ray, written word, relativity comes to mind for starters. There are millions others.


Care to elaborate how any of those involved humans inventing something that wasn't a combination of synthesis with a stochastic process filling in the gaps?

E.g the discovery of x-rays took over a century of applying small iterations to established processes to accumulate data. There was no big, sudden leap of insight there.


How is democracy a stochastic process?


Not what I meant. Talking about the process of the inventions, not the inventions themselves.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: