• Lumisal@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Radio waves were thought to have no value, to the point that the person that discovered them thought so too.

    Following this graph, we would never have radio, because it didn’t have value. Which was true.

    There’s many things where something didn’t have value but does later on. That’s where this graph has a huge flaw.

    Unless you want to extinguish all progressivism.

    This graph also doesn’t work at a large scale. Good luck figuring out food distribution logistics that everyone just accepts at a scale of even 200,000 people, let alone millions. “But just make an organization of volunteers that deals with that!” - congratulations, you just reinvented “government”.

    Unfettered Capitalism is extremely obviously not the answer, but neither is idealistic anarchism that at best works only with a smaller sizes community that does not rely on anything post-industrial era due to advanced complex logistical systems of creation. There needs to be a new system.

    • themoken@startrek.website
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      14 hours ago

      I agree that this is extremely simplified, however your radio example implies physicists only do physics for money and nobody would have explored the applications of radio waves without a profit motive which seems at odds with… Well, literally every scientist I’ve ever met.

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        It wasn’t a physicist who found an application for radio waves though is the thing.

        It was someone looking to monetize it somehow, who also happened to be a scientist in a different field.

        Now, would someone else maybe eventually look into using radio waves somehow? Probably. But when the physicists are saying “neat, but useless”, it’ll probably delay such discovery even further since there’s only one motivation, not two. Not to mention, said scientist would now have to convince the community to give them materials to look into this radio waves thing that physicists think can’t be used practically. Materials which could be used for something else that could be deemed more important at the time because it’s use might already be known, like bridges or infrastructure or just electricity wiring in general.

    • DisgruntledGorillaGang@reddthat.com
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      14 hours ago

      Not necessarily. Just because someone at one time didn’t think it had value, that doesn’t mean nobody ever would think it didn’t have value.

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        The graph only states “is x valuable”. The consensus among discovery was no, until another invention (that itself didn’t have inherit value at the time) was created was it maybe from someone else.

        Like I said, the graph is flawed. Because by the graph rules, any further investigation would not be done.