Eventually we will reach that point. What happens when we do? How does it affect our economies and societies?<p>There have been very long stretches of history in which general human progress was stagnant.<p>Productivity growth will eventually slow, given that we are limited in what we can do by the laws of physics.<p>Of course I could continuously rearrange superficial designs of things, which may give me an infinite number of things to do, but that doesn't increase productivity. There are a finite number of ways to do something in a more productive and efficient way than previous methods.<p>Given this, eventually we will reach a time when we can't make any more progress in the traditional sense.
Paul Graham would argue that since human desires are unlimited, we will never reach a point of not having any problems left to solve. This may be true. But... The question is what if we run out of SOLVABLE problems. There are sooo many extremely important problems that humanity has (housing, transportation, food/water, education inflation, medical) that can't currently be solved due to either barriers to entry or mostly due to government regulation.<p>In fact, I think we're starting to reach a plateau in the last 10 and the coming 10 years. With the exception of medical science and the entertainment industry, I feel there hasn't been much meaningful innovation that changes consumers lives. Sure, we have google maps and millions of apps, but honestly, 10 years ago, I didn't have any problems finding my way around the road, even if I had to draw out a map by hand (lol). Today, Transportation is still at the same speeds and costs, housing costs even more, medical insurance is everybit as expensive, etc.<p>The most dire forms of innovation needed by humanity today, are at the bottom of maslow's heirarchy of needs: shelter, food, water, and by necessity: transportation and medical insurance. These areas are not being worked on, due to the above reasons i mentioned.
Why on earth would we run out of things to invent? This shows a stunning lack of imagination in my opinion. I guess at any point throughout the history of the human race, since before the time anyone had thought to invent shoes, rope, pottery, or fish hooks, there were people thinking that everything has already been invented, and there can't possibly be anything else to invent.<p>There will <i>always</i> be new things to invent.
Seems a good place to bring up Charles Holland Duell, the US Commissioner of Patents who supposedly said "Everything that can be invented has been invented" back in 1899. That quote has since been debunked as apocryphal, but the story behind the alleged quote is interesting.<p><a href="https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything-that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html" rel="nofollow">https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-every...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell</a>
Nothing left to discover or invent <i>within our means</i>, or do you mean that there is literally nothing left?<p>If it's the former, we've hit a local maxima. If it's the latter, I don't think we could speculate what would happen in that situation. It's too alien.
"Eventually we will reach that point"<p>No, we really won't. As life continues to evolve and conditions in the environment continue to change, new solutions will constantly need to be invented to solve the new problems that arise. That process will never end.
There was a time when the European countries developed transoceanic sailing capabilities and began an age of discovery spreading outward to other lands. I wonder if they considered that finding and exploiting resources from new lands would be the norm, or if they realized that it would all be over in 300 years?
We will do a big bang some where in the middle of no where, we will simulate life on the planets created by it, from time to time we will visit them, observe them, and one day we will fedup with that. We will leave them on their own to attain what we attained. And may be they will call us God.
In a sense, we're already reached that point. Everything that can ever be talked about or written, can be found in this library:<p><a href="https://libraryofbabel.info/" rel="nofollow">https://libraryofbabel.info/</a><p>Though that includes all possible gibberish as well as all possible knowledge.<p>Though as a more serious answer, something like the above link does make me wonder about the limits of information. I like to think that there's no limit on information, but clearly there's a limit on information that can be described by the English language (assuming a fixed book size).
I don't see why there would ever be a lack of progress... maybe at some point progress won't be at all relevant to our current society, but there will always be something new. And at that point, where we have solved all problems, like mortality, hunger, peace, etc. And the world is a perfect place, it will be so far out from our current lives, that it seems like a misallocation of brain power trying to think about "what then?".
Heat death of the universe.<p>It's not clear to me why you believe we'll reach that point before extinction--I find the notion <i>highly</i> implausible.
I think people were asking themselves the same question at the end of the 19th century, when everyone thought mankind had mastered all of Physics. Suddenly so much new stuff(Relativity, Quantum Mechanics) was discovered and flipped our world view upside down.
So I think there will always be something to be discovered or invented.
> when there's nothing left to invent or discover?<p>You're not married are you? You don't have kids either?<p>Most married people with kids find new challenges/problems/pain everyday, requiring innovative solutions. Spend a day with a toddler, they invent stuff ALL day.
That would mean we had a perfect understanding of our biology and how chemicals effect the brain. It would mean having perfect predictive power about the future. That's when the fun starts.
There will never be a point at which there is nothing left to invent or discover; it will be preempted by a point at which humanity is no longer around to invent or discover anything.
With there being more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth, running out of things to discover is not a worry that's on my list.
<i>There have been very long stretches of history in which general human progress was stagnant.</i><p>Or even going backwards, see Britain after the Romans left.