We are, so far as we know, the sole place in the universe that is creating knowledge, an open-ended stream of knowledge that could transform the rest of reality.
- Brett on the Naval Podcast
I.
We, humans, look forward to a future where our to-do list is empty. One where there are no more problems and conflicts to solve. One where all that humanity knows is peace and tranquility. One where we as a species are finally successful.
Not only is such a future impossible, but it is also depressing. I argued in this article how our source of joy is the road to success and not achieving success itself. The former is challenging and rewarding while the latter is disappointing and unremarkable. This is nothing new - we are all familiar with the platitude, “the journey is more important than the destination”. But it makes one glaring mistake. It assumes the existence of a destination. What if there is no destination at all?
Consider the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) - one of our landmark inventions. The first ICE was invented around 1860 and the rest is history. It gave birth to one of the largest industries today: the automotive industry. Here are a few facts about the automotive industry:
Just in 2020, the automotive industry produced 91 million vehicles1
It is expected to directly employ 15 million people in India by 2022 and India is only the 4th largest manufacturer of vehicles2
It is hard to imagine a world without this industry. Automobiles are pivotal to global trade, economy, employment, tourism, and personal commute.
Here is one more fact about this industry:
It contributes to 29% of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions in the US3 and 17% of total global GHG emissions
To put that in perspective, it is the 2nd largest contributor to global warming after manufacturing and construction (which is responsible for 24% of the total GHG emissions)4.
While it is hard to imagine where we would be if the ICE was not invented, our survival partly hinges on the elimination of ICE-based vehicles. What was a terrific solution back then, is now a terrible annihilator.
We have a similar story with plastics. Plastics became widespread following WWII. Not only were synthetic plastics cheap and easy to produce, but they also helped fight the spread of communicable diseases. Given the poor sanitation standards back then, single-use plastics like disposable cups and straws eliminated the reuse of tumblers and glasses, thereby, curbing the spread of contagious diseases.
Plastics came to our rescue during the COVID-19 pandemic too. Many restaurants and grocery shops, in their effort to minimize contact, banned their customers from bringing personal reusable cups and bags.
The World Economic Forum also acknowledges the indispensable role of dispensable plastics (pun intended) in our fight against COVID-19:
There is no denying that single-use plastic has been a lifesaver in the fight against COVID-19, especially for frontline health workers. It has also facilitated adherence to social-distancing rules, by enabling home delivery of basic goods, especially food. And it may have helped to curb transmission, by replacing reusable coffee cups and shopping bags in many cities over fears that the virus could stick to them.
While plastics helped combat the spread of diseases in the 20th century and continues to help us with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all too familiar with the toxic impact of plastics on marine life and our planet’s health.
Again, plastics helped solve a problem back then. But they themselves are a problem today.
II.
The root cause of many of the problems we face today from climate change to weak passwords were great solutions at some point in the past. This is what we humans do - we identify a problem, find a solution, that solution gives rise to other problems which we try to solve, and so on. The more solutions we find, the more problems we are going to manufacture.
However, not all problems are manufactured, many problems are discovered. As we find solutions to current problems, problems that were previously out of our reach comes within our reach.
Consider rockets. Humans were primarily motivated to launch stuff into space not for space exploration but for facilitating technologies like GPS, satellite TV, and military surveillance that would benefit people on Earth. Even today, 95% of the rockets we launch today are for putting satellites that help us live better lives on Earth (i.e space-for-earth). If we hadn’t developed this capability to launch things into space, we would be unable to take space exploration seriously today (i.e space-for-space)5. Consequently, space tourism, colonizing Mars, and interplanetary travel would remain confined to science-fiction novels.
Consider IVF. It was developed in the 1970s to treat female infertility caused by damaged or blocked fallopian tubes6. But today, IVF is also used for detecting and preventing inheritable diseases like down syndrome, schizophrenia and diabetes.
Consider integrated circuits (ICs) or microchips. One of the earliest attempts at integrating circuits was by German engineer Werner Jacobi. Take a wild guess at the problem Werner was trying to solve. From Wikipedia:
Jacobi disclosed small and cheap hearing aids as typical industrial applications of his patent. An immediate commercial use of his patent has not been reported.
It is laughable to know that “hearing aids” was the best we could do. But today, from smart-bulbs to rockets, ICs are ubiquitous.
David Deutsch captured this phenomenon succinctly in his book The Beginning of Infinity (affiliate link):
Science continues to make progress even, or especially, after making great discoveries, because the discoveries themselves reveal further problems.
III.
Discoveries, solutions, and inventions by their very nature, reveal problems that were, until that point, invisible to us. This phenomenon is best visualized using the same GIF that was used to explain the spread of COVID-19.
Each dot is a problem that we solve and as the GIF shows, it only leads to the discovery of more problems.
Consider the problem of the concentration of power which ultimately led to the 2008 financial crisis and wiped out nearly $2 trillion from the global economy7. The Bitcoin whitepaper, also published in the same year, was a direct response to this event. It introduced a decentralized system called the blockchain that solved the power concentration problem. Once we solved that problem, new problems (new dots) emerged - cryptocurrencies facilitating ransomware attacks and money laundering, high carbon-cost of cryptocurrency mining, and so on.
Solutions don’t just solve problems, but they also give rise to new problems. To quote David again:
We will never run out of problems. The deeper an explanation is, the more new problems it creates.
Bottom line: the number of problems is infinite. This is why, at the beginning of his book, David asks the reader to etch this engraving in his/her mind:
How are we supposed to feel about all of this? Are we supposed to be happy that we will never run out of interesting problems to work on? But isn’t it demoralizing that no matter how much we try, we are always going to have problems? The answer to this lies in the second engraving David asks us to keep in mind:
He explains:
It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable. We survive, and thrive, by solving each problem as it comes up. And, since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics, none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassable barrier. So a complementary and equally important truth about people and the physical world is that problems are soluble. By ‘soluble’ I mean that the right knowledge would solve them.
IV.
Human knowledge is very much like the big bang. Our knowledge of the universe, the problems that constitute it, and the solutions to those problems keep increasing.
We will never stop having problems and we will never stop creating solutions too. It is an infinite loop. We really are like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill over and over again. But there is much to love about this infinite loop. Without it, humanity would be bored. If new problems were not getting manufactured/discovered, then with every problem we solve, we would be moving closer to the point of 0 problems. And that is sad.
Infinity divided by two is still infinity. Similarly, we would always be at the beginning of infinity no matter how much progress we make and this is what the title of the book “The Beginning of Infinity” alludes to.
There is no destination, there is only the journey.
That’s all for this week!
Thanks to Harini for reading drafts of this.
All views expressed by the author are personal.
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Source. Also, I am not considering the production volumes of 2020 since it was an aberration (thanks to COVID-19).
Source: Analysis by KPMG India
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
Source: Embryo Project Encyclopedia