#41 – Michael Bhaskar on Big Ideas and the Great Stagnation

Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher and publisher. He is a former consultant Writer in Residence at DeepMind, and most recently he wrote a book called Human Frontiers, which tries to answer the question: “why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down?”
In our conversation, we discuss —

The 'Adams curve'
How so much of the modern world was invented in exceptional 20th century research institutes such as Bell Labs and Xerox PARC
Evidence for slowdown in new ideas from analysing the patent record
Whether scientific progress is limitless, or whether there are things we'll never be able to know
Whether 'big ideas' are also slowing in the arts
Reasons for optimism about progress in big ideas, especially from advanced AI

You can read more about the topics we cover in this episode's write-up: hearthisidea.com/episodes/michael/.
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