Is novelty endangered?

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Historically, scientific pursuits and the technology born from it seems to accelerate exponentially. Terence McKenna famously theorized Timewave Zero, where novelty will increase to a point where reality shifts to a singularity, or something. Terence's date didn't pan out, but the theory probably has roots in Moore's Law, which has panned out.

In the last hundred years, population has increased 500%. We have more educated scientists than ever before, it's glorious. Meanwhile AI is knocking at the door.

I think back to when I was in school and recall peers groaning about learning math because we have calculators that can do it for us. At least once I heard the warning that we won't always have calculators with us... oops.

I wonder what it will be like in the future; students are already leaning on AI. The students have a fair point, why learn if thinking can be outsourced. I'm a little worried how it might affect intelligence development.

So that's one nail - lack of incentive to learn or think.

And like Moore's law, we're fated to eventually find the limits of what's possible to know and do. I think we're probably still far from knowing everything but anyway this is all prep to imagine a scenario where there is nothing left to discover. Everything is known, and the knowledge is assembled in a way that there's no need for science anymore. Essentially, imagine a perfect AI, imagine talking to god.

Society would probably be unrecognizable by then, maybe like Futurama. Beings seem fairly content in that show, but the impossibility of discovery is an unsettling feeling to me. It's like taking away one of humanity's prime goals of consciousness. What would we do with ourselves then?

And even if we don't reach the climax of knowing everything, I see other ruts we could fall into. As it is, cutting edge science can be very expensive and resource demanding. As more resources get locked up in particle accelerators, less is available to develop telescopes or whatnot. There could be things that we can't afford to discover.

I have the urge to ramble on in three different directions with this, but I'm curious to hear other's thoughts too.

I'm thinking about going back to school for chemistry, but now that even controlled substances are getting fleshed out, I fear by the time I learn everything and reach the cutting edge, there will be nothing left to discover, so it will be a wasted journey.

Or I reach the edge and commit a decade to researching something that becomes obsolete 10 years later. In the 1800's, you could make a career out of science. Now days things change so rapidly, entire industries rise and fall within generations. Even the most secure corporations are likely to get hurdled by the next TikTok.

Wouldn't surprise me if someday SmartLabs carry out all our reactions for us, for it knows all reactions. A facility-sized robot that we feed with reagents and let it conduct research.

 

[Pandora]

At least in USA there has been an ongoing and concerted attempt to remove from the public education system knowledge and training having to do with critical thinking. This has been going on at least since I was a child and is very refined today.

The future may hold people like we have today - they act like and think they are experts on everything and anything because they can do a quick internet search, but do not have depth knowledge, education or experience on much of anything. But I think as long as we (or our AI overlords) don't blow it all up the future will hold people like we have today - those who are hungry and strive for more knowledge, who move forward using critical thinking skills and more. Some folks don't need outside incentives - they just have the internal drive.

If future AIs work with us as allies I think we will learn a lot more about everything and come nowhere near close to knowing everything. Scifi likes to imagine quantum computers that have mapped out every moment in space and time and thus have complete control. I have no idea if such a thing is or ever will be possible.

And in terms of humanity falling into various ruts no matter what we discover or can do, you can count on it. We are at our cores a curious, adaptable, intelligent, hierarchical, violent and petty species.

In terms of human interactions, yeah not much novelty. In terms of what humans do and what we become with AI ruling over us or by our sides, that should be infested with novelty. For those who make it to a radically different future from today, I can only imagine it will be interesting . . . .

 

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Some folks don't need outside incentives - they just have the internal drive.

I feel that drive more than ever, but it's fueled by questions that lack answers. If one day my every curiosity can be satisfied by a knowledge database, I probably wouldn't feel that drive. I imagine I'd just be constantly querying the database between addictive impulses, and lacking that excitement you get from organically getting to know something.

In terms of what humans do and what we become with AI ruling over us or by our sides, that should be infested with novelty

I can see it being a double-edged sword. There's a lot of novelty now, while we're getting addicted to sharing our preferences with each other. But if AI replaces our relationships, completely harvests our attention... It might be comparable to living in an echo chamber. The algorithm knows what you like, gives you what you want. People's most nuanced fantasies could be delivered in very personally significant ways that are beyond relating to others. Like a DMT trip ironically. Potential for infinite novelty, but everyone has trends they fall into.

 

[Seagull]

Historically, scientific pursuits and the technology born from it seems to accelerate exponentially. Terence McKenna famously theorized Timewave Zero, where novelty will increase to a point where reality shifts to a singularity, or something. Terence's date didn't pan out, but the theory probably has roots in Moore's Law, which has panned out.

In the last hundred years, population has increased 500%. We have more educated scientists than ever before, it's glorious. Meanwhile AI is knocking at the door.

I think back to when I was in school and recall peers groaning about learning math because we have calculators that can do it for us. At least once I heard the warning that we won't always have calculators with us... oops.

I wonder what it will be like in the future; students are already leaning on AI. The students have a fair point, why learn if thinking can be outsourced. I'm a little worried how it might affect intelligence development.

So that's one nail - lack of incentive to learn or think.

And like Moore's law, we're fated to eventually find the limits of what's possible to know and do. I think we're probably still far from knowing everything but anyway this is all prep to imagine a scenario where there is nothing left to discover. Everything is known, and the knowledge is assembled in a way that there's no need for science anymore. Essentially, imagine a perfect AI, imagine talking to god.

Society would probably be unrecognizable by then, maybe like Futurama. Beings seem fairly content in that show, but the impossibility of discovery is an unsettling feeling to me. It's like taking away one of humanity's prime goals of consciousness. What would we do with ourselves then?

And even if we don't reach the climax of knowing everything, I see other ruts we could fall into. As it is, cutting edge science can be very expensive and resource demanding. As more resources get locked up in particle accelerators, less is available to develop telescopes or whatnot. There could be things that we can't afford to discover.

I have the urge to ramble on in three different directions with this, but I'm curious to hear other's thoughts too.

I'm thinking about going back to school for chemistry, but now that even controlled substances are getting fleshed out, I fear by the time I learn everything and reach the cutting edge, there will be nothing left to discover, so it will be a wasted journey.

Or I reach the edge and commit a decade to researching something that becomes obsolete 10 years later. In the 1800's, you could make a career out of science. Now days things change so rapidly, entire industries rise and fall within generations. Even the most secure corporations are likely to get hurdled by the next TikTok.

Wouldn't surprise me if someday SmartLabs carry out all our reactions for us, for it knows all reactions. A facility-sized robot that we feed with reagents and let it conduct research.

I think the premise is a setup designed for failure.. No offense, but as a human you can only ever know what its like to be just that.. Knowing everything you have be everything? KNowing how everything work does not mean you have experienced it and even if u did then its simulated and not reality because how could you experience to be something you havent lived through. ..

Just as anything evolves and revolves around change or time that is infinite so is your soul infinite.
Novelty might be lost for a while but it always returns in the scheme for bigger things.
I am just trying to be positive and do things not because others tell me to but because i want to, thats why my dream can never die and the novelty only ends when i decide to end the dream.

 

[universecannon]

I always find it interesting when I go back and read Robert Anton Wilson or other writers from 60 years ago. They often presumed that by now (or even the year 2000) we'd all have flying cars, be exploring space, expanding our consciousness, have extreme longevity or maybe even immortality etc.

I used to be a fan but now I'm not so sure Terence was on the mark with his novelty idea. Novelty seems like a fairly abstract, subjective concept in many ways, so it's hard to measure. Technology is still expanding sure, but not exponentially. Some fields/specific tech does expand exponentially for a time, but then slows down or plateaus to some degree.

Civilizations seem to bloom and then collapse, faster and faster over the course of history, and our economies are propped up by defense contracts where a large % of our technological ingenuity goes towards better ways to murder other humans. I'm not very optimistic about the future of AI if we don't fix our broken brains first.

 

[Jamie01]

It’s hard to say where humans might be atm though, if not for the billionaires hoarding everything for themselves. Everything is a transaction and everything is a competition. That alone is enough to fuel one type of progress or novelty while entirely halting other avenues we could go down.

Even now as we speak mass sums of money that could empower so many are wasted on war, occupation…genocide.

 

[ommani]

It’s hard to say where humans might be atm though, if not for the billionaires hoarding everything for themselves. Everything is a transaction and everything is a competition. That alone is enough to fuel one type of progress or novelty while entirely halting other avenues we could go down.

Even now as we speak mass sums of money that could empower so many are wasted on war, occupation…genocide.

The amount of military aid that is subsequently spent on weapons used for indiscriminate bombing campaigns is insane… not to mention the AI systems being used to identify targets on a mass scale… who doesn’t like their mdma with a side of ethno-nationalism, am I right…

 

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I think the premise is a setup designed for failure.. No offense, but as a human you can only ever know what its like to be just that.. Knowing everything you have be everything? KNowing how everything work does not mean you have experienced it and even if u did then its simulated and not reality because how could you experience to be something you havent lived through. ..

Just as anything evolves and revolves around change or time that is infinite so is your soul infinite.
Novelty might be lost for a while but it always returns in the scheme for bigger things.
I am just trying to be positive and do things not because others tell me to but because i want to, thats why my dream can never die and the novelty only ends when i decide to end the dream.

I don't mean a human will be able to know everything, or that civilization will capture knowledge outside of our lived experiences. But in theory, there's a fundamental limit to what we can know. For example, the periodic table is more or less finished. There's only a few elements that we don't know the properties for, but 99% of what's relevant hasn't changed in the last fifty years. Our collective understanding of all the possible interactions between matter is maturing each day. Being alive in this age is pretty exciting for that reason, things are always changing and new discoveries are constantly being made.

For me personally, I find I enjoy a journey more than the destination. When I finish a project, it suddenly becomes less attractive to me. If humanity solves every problem and perfects every system, what would be the point anymore?

I always find it interesting when I go back and read Robert Anton Wilson or other writers from 60 years ago. They often presumed that by now (or even the year 2000) we'd all have flying cars, be exploring space, expanding our consciousness, have extreme longevity or maybe even immortality etc.

I used to be a fan but now I'm not so sure Terence was on the mark with his novelty idea. Novelty seems like a fairly abstract, subjective concept in many ways, so it's hard to measure. Technology is still expanding sure, but not exponentially. Some fields/specific tech does expand exponentially for a time, but then slows down or plateaus to some degree.

Civilizations seem to bloom and then collapse, faster and faster over the course of history, and our economies are propped up by defense contracts where a large % of our technological ingenuity goes towards better ways to murder other humans. I'm not very optimistic about the future of AI if we don't fix our broken brains first.

Yea the tension between people on a personal and global level is a big risk factor. We certainly won't live to see the future I'm imagining if we don't fix that along the way.

The predictions from 60 years ago are interesting. And all the things they didn't predict, like internet and cellphones. I think that's a sign though that there are limits to technology, they just hadn't found many of them 60 years ago. They had the chance to dream, no one could prove back then [flying cars] wasn't possible. Surely people spent years merrily toiling away on flying vehicles, exploring their deepest desires through direct interaction with the unknown world.

But if there was a future database that has compiled all of the possible strategies and concluded flying cars is impossible, I doubt anyone would keep trying. If all non-fictional facts are documented and organized in an available way, would anyone 'waste' time experimenting? You could just ask for the best way to do anything you want and get a straight answer. Then over time everyone does everything the same way, the best way. Maybe by then everyone is linked to the AI, and we continue to exist as a hive mind. Or maybe AI deems humanity obsolete by then.

And just the sheer amount of information we're accumulating is maybe more than any one person can keep up with in the future. Many people spend the first 22 years of their life in education. That's going to have to start becoming 23, 24, 25 years if we expect someone to learn all the contributions that have been made before them, in order to make a contribution of their own. It's interesting how AI is coming at the perfect timing, to hopefully carry some of the knowledge load, or conduct simulated experiments that save decades. But it's also scary that after a hundred years of that, it might be impossible for anyone to comprehensively understand how technology works. I think 99% of us are already living that way, basically accepting computers, cars, etc. as operating on magic. Even the people on the cutting edge that invent a new screen technology or something, they have little idea how the other 90% of the phone works.

So imagine we turn over research and development to AI. Within a generation or two, we'd be totally dependent on AI sustaining and growing our tech, because by then a whole team of smart humans might not be enough to fully understand it.

Idk, I just find it frustrating when I think of a new idea, only to find it has been done decades ago. For me, there's still a fix: get a higher education and join the cutting edge. But I imagine in the future it will get harder and harder for an individual to make an impact.

 

[Mechanism]

I totally see where you're coming from. Seems like the default perspective right now is built around competing for things because they're scarce. But all of the technologies coming to fruition right now alleviate that scarcity.

If scarcity goes away, I think a lot of people will find that their competitive mindset goes with it. People's goals will probably shift towards personal enrichment instead of money or status.

Basically, in order to feel better here, I suppose you'd have to examine why you want to make an impact instead of how to make one. So yea, why do you want to make an impact?

 

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I feel like it would validate my finite existence in a world that I've inherited and will outlive me. I could not worry about it and just have a great life of recreation. I was privileged to have an entire year off work to do whatever but it got boring and meaningless. It's good to have people expecting you, somewhere to be; gives you a reason to get out of bed. But it's not fulfilling to do mundane work. I try to push my limits and get creative with my labor, and I feel like I could be doing more with that in a science field. It's a rush to find a new trick and teach it to the group. I think that's human nature.

I like making cute artsy gifts for this girl I like. I get to see her tomorrow. I'm bringing her a little pumpkin with some fall leaves I preserved in glycerin. Hoping it's a nice decoration, demonstration of some science, and makes her smile.

 

[Mechanism]

That's really self aware! That last sentence makes a lot of sense, and I'm guessing touches on the root of your drive (along with most of the rest of us). I think a lot of us want to belong to, and feel useful to a group. I'm sure there will be other ways to cultivate that feeling. Probably something we picked up from running down gazelles on the African savannas.

By the way, someone I really respect recommended "The Status Game" by Will Storr. I've been meaning to read it but haven't gotten to it yet. Listening to people talk about it makes it seem like it'd be very useful for understanding a post scarcity world. Actually, this conversation has motivated me and I think I'll start it tonight.

 

[Transform]

For example, the periodic table is more or less finished. There's only a few elements that we don't know the properties for, but 99% of what's relevant hasn't changed in the last fifty years. Our collective understanding of all the possible interactions between matter is maturing each day. Being alive in this age is pretty exciting for that reason, things are always changing and new discoveries are constantly being made.

This reminds me of what I read recently regarding emergent superluminal phenomena. Basically, angular velocity 'doesn't count' in that you can sweep a laser beam across a substrate such that the point of illumination can move at an apparent superluminal velocity. Of course, nothing is actually moving faster than the speed of light - but if the laser light modulates the properties of the substrate you can get a region of altered properties which does "change position" at a superuminal rate, like an area of altered refractive index in a sample of indium tin oxide, for example.

So, yes, there could be some pretty exciting possibilities that arise from this technological trick alone!

 

[fink]

I would say that novelty comes in two distinct forms. Natural and perverted.

For example, moving to a new location will provide natural novelty. Never seen that bug or those trees before. Not just in species but in arrangement. Natural novelty is endless, at least on a human life scale. We can always find a clump of grass arranged in a new way.

The desire to create novelty is something different completely. Sexuality is an obvious one, even in a monogamous relationship, we tend to explore perversion to experience novelty. A quick internet search confirms how deep this perversion goes in 2025.

Violence is another. Two lions fighting has probably looked more or less the same since the start. But humanity's desire for novelty in violence has continuously perverted the act. It will continue to become more perverse until we accidentally wipe ourselves out.

There are positive perversions too. Art and music can continue to produce novelty by perverting the arrangement of imagery or chords. Think surrealism or jazz as an example.

In any case, my answer would be no. Novelty cannot be endangered. Even if I did see every possible arrangement of a clump of grass or listen to every possible arrangement of musical notes, at some point I will die and the next generation can start over.

 

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I totally see where you're coming from. Seems like the default perspective right now is built around competing for things because they're scarce. But all of the technologies coming to fruition right now alleviate that scarcity.

If scarcity goes away, I think a lot of people will find that their competitive mindset goes with it. People's goals will probably shift towards personal enrichment instead of money or status.

It would be a bit of a tangent from my original topic, but I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts about scarcity. What makes you think that we're close to alleviating scarcity with modern technology?

Scarcity going away is unimaginable to me. I'm sort of suggesting the opposite could be happen. Technology is used to maximize resource exploitation. I have really pessimistic outlooks on how that could unfold. There's only so much low hanging fruit. Just like there are galaxies we will never be able to get information about, because of the distance, speed of light, expansion of space -- we're going to find the limits of how deep we can scrape our planet for minerals and such. As far as resource competition, it's like a game of musical chairs, maybe. No one really knows for sure, but people near chairs have an incentive to grind the music to a halt.