Throughout the past millennium, especially in the last two hundred years, the world has witnessed extraordinary ideas across various human domains—from intercontinental flight to tuberculosis treatment, the invention of television, the automobile industry, electric lighting, quantum mechanics, civil rights, genetics, nuclear energy, jazz music, organ transplantation, the space age, and much more. However, if we examine our current reality, we find a shift in the nature of ideas. Today, everyone relies on artificial ideas facilitated by digital technology across different sectors.
In his book “Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking,” Michael Bhaskar questions why the flow of big ideas that contribute to human progress has slowed down. By “big ideas,” the author refers to those that represent significant breakthroughs capable of changing human lives and impacting the future. He discusses the current retreat of human boundaries, explaining that the concept of human limits encompasses much more than just knowledge; many discoveries and inventions have led to monumental human advancement. He also offers a vision for how the flow of big ideas might be revitalized in the future.
A Revolution in Ideas:
Humanity has undergone a significant revolution in ideas; there were no limits on humanity, and the history of the past millennium was filled with discoveries and achievements as if they were a natural part of the human system. The author clarifies that big ideas go through several distinct stages before they ultimately become human achievements whose impacts endure through the ages:
Stage of Conception: Similar to what happened with Newton when he observed an apple tree and came to the law of gravity.
Stage of Implementation: This phase activates the idea and presents it to the world; if the conception remains only in one’s mind, it cannot be considered an invention.
Stage of Marketing: This stage is crucial for the widespread dissemination, adoption, or acceptance of the idea.
The author does not deny the role of chance in most discoveries. For instance, Robert Koch developed a bacterial culture after leaving potatoes outside to rot, while Columbus discovered America by accident.
Consequences of Stagnation:
The author questions what types of social environments lead to the emergence or suppression of ideas, and what incentives and institutions shape these environments. Many civilizations have witnessed their collapse when they believed that life was stable, leading them to stop thinking and developing. At that point, risks and crises accumulated; climate change worsened, soil deteriorated, resources were exploited to the point of diminishing returns before collapse. During this time, they were culturally trapped, unable to fully recognize or address issues. It was not that they were unintelligent or failed to see emerging problems; they were merely devoid of solutions.
Based on the above, a new set of risks threatening humanity has recently emerged, including global climate change, antibiotic resistance of viruses, depletion of natural resources such as fresh water, rare earth minerals, and fertile topsoil, stagnation of economic growth, and the continued spread of cancer. In developed countries, over 17 million cancer patients are diagnosed each year, and this number is expected to rise to 27.5 million by 2040. However, until recently, oncology had only three main treatments: surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy—referred to as “cut, burn, and poison.” Many expensive drugs have a poor track record, and all treatments have their side effects.
On the other hand, a form of immunotherapy has emerged, which is considered a promising treatment that could revolutionize the “war on cancer.” Some researchers even compare it to the discovery of penicillin, seeing it as a turning point that will forever change the field and human lives. Yet, the author believes that immunotherapy is not a sudden invention like other success stories; it took decades of futile attempts, not to mention vast amounts of funding for research.
Artificial Ideas:
Quantum computing is an emerging but rapidly evolving art, with institutions like Google and IBM investing billions to achieve “quantum supremacy,” the point at which quantum computers can perform computations that are impossible for classical computers. Quantum computing has implications across various fields such as chemistry, encryption, materials science, pharmaceuticals, finance, and logistics.
The author also mentions some modern ideas that have emerged recently, such as Google Maps, Zoom, Minecraft, and Spotify, which are primarily based on digital technology. He believes that what is occurring now represents a revolution of modernization and marginal innovation. For example, in the political realm, no radical new or ambitious vision for the world is developing the current political concepts; most programs, policies, and ideologies aim to adapt or improve the existing system.
The author remains optimistic that the application of artificial intelligence can lead to critical advancements in the coming years, noting that the field is now focusing on Machine Learning approaches to solve foundational problems. As computational power evolves and flourishes, there is also an increased capacity to see new things in data that go beyond human perception.
He elaborates that humanity is at a perilous historical juncture, with extraordinary new discoveries and achievements—from quantum biology and nanotechnology to parametric architecture, exoplanet astronomy, governance of payment units, blockchain, and virtual worlds. However, after these successive discoveries and inventions, we are experiencing stagnation. Here, the author highlights the views of some scientists and critics who summarize that we currently live amidst a “great intellectual famine.”
Potential Pathways:
The author notes that the future of big ideas remains uncertain, but he presents three potential pathways that may unfold:
The Long Twilight Path: This is the most pessimistic trajectory, preceding sunset and collapse. Civilizations have repeatedly suffered setbacks from external shocks like famine, disease, or invasion. Humanity may fall prey to any of these threats, even if the available tools to combat them are much improved. He illustrates this point with the fall of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarians when the empire became increasingly degenerate and dysfunctional, rendering it an easy target for northern barbarians, thus ending the classical era and ushering in what was formerly known as the late antiquity.
The author posits a hypothetical scenario of what could happen if stagnation persists and new tools fail to deliver what is needed to save humanity. He envisions that research productivity will continue to decline, difficulties will indefinitely delay new tools, and new big ideas will become prohibitively expensive, while cultural abundance grows. Political experience could become exceedingly risky, the population shrinks, and the global economy nears zero, especially alongside climate change.
The New Utopia: This is the most optimistic pathway, where the author speculates that things could proceed ideally. There is theoretically no reason preventing improvements in living standards equivalent to those witnessed in recent centuries. Taking into account that the developing world is busy closing the gap with advanced economies, all major civilizations are functioning within knowledge limits. We might be on the brink of a new revolutionary wave in tools and technology similar to that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 3D printing, synthetic biology, and neural interface technologies linking computers and human brains.
The author also points out sources of optimism emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the integration of supply chains worldwide to provide vaccines in response to the crisis and safeguard humanity.
The Murky or Neutral Path: This pathway indicates the generation of ideas but at a slow rate, with the outcomes of these ideas being uncertain. The central idea of this book is that the West is currently spending heavily while achieving little because it repeats the same actions in the same ways over and over. A global mix of ideas might break this stagnation, producing a new array of tools that could, in turn, lead to a broader acceleration in the production of big ideas.
Suggestions for the Future:
The author proposes several suggestions for rekindling the flow of big ideas and achieving a better future:
First: Define Tasks: Unify efforts in all research and development processes, regardless of how fraught they may be with risks and challenges. This was exemplified in the early 1950s when the United States decided to allocate a portion of its national output to establish NASA, which subsequently discovered the GPS system, invented prosthetics, and aided the advent of the internet as a result of concentrated efforts and research.
Second: Diversify Experiments: Conduct more experiments, creating an organizational space for risky trials, rather than stifling them through countless committees or excessive precautions or the weight of vested interests.
Third: Revolutionize Education: There is no room for waiting or merely presenting facts; it is crucial to teach sciences that enable students to learn and explore independently, fostering independent thinking, allowing students to proactively connect the dots. It is also important to adopt a working groups approach, where students assist one another, multiplying their cognitive gains threefold.
Fourth: Encourage All Ideas: This reflects the notion of governments providing incentive rewards to institutions that can solve societal problems.
Fifth: Be Bold: Innovation is always fraught with risk; for instance, Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced smallpox vaccination to Britain, first tested it on her son. Additionally, aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal was a major source of inspiration for the Wright brothers in making decisions related to their first flight—he died in an accident involving one of his aircraft.
In conclusion, the author emphasizes that the current upheavals in the world and the pandemic should be leveraged to reimagine ambitious thinking. Among the risks are the birth of solutions, as human progress has stemmed from the conception and rapid execution of big ideas, widening the horizons of knowledge and making fundamental forces—such as energy and evolution—traceable, while unraveling the enigma of disease. After the end of the 20th century, Albert Einstein transformed fundamental categories like time and space into measurable ones, culture underwent a revolution, and mass entertainment, via television and radio programs, became a reality, while the nature of art was gradually redefined, evolving from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism.
Source:
Michael Bhaskar, Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking, The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2021.
RE “a form of immunotherapy has emerged, which is considered a promising treatment that could revolutionize the “war on cancer.””
The official mainstream “war on cancer” has been an unofficial “war” on the unsuspecting public: to keep them misinformed and misguided about the real truth of this “war.” The latest program/”promise” is an extension or reincarnation of the enduring deep racket.
This PHONY official “war” was never meant to be won but to be CONTINUED (preferably endlessly, at least for decades) so that the criminal BIG allopathic medical business (the medical mafia) built around it makes insane profits and defrauds the general naive/foolish public, which they’ve been doing successfully … so “THEY ARE winning THEIR war against the general forever-naive/forever-foolish public”..
The orthodox cancer establishment has been saying a cure for cancer “is just around the corner” and “we’re winning the war on cancer” for decades. It’s almost all hype and lies (read Dr. Guy Faguet’s ‘War on cancer,” Dr. Sam Epstein’s work, or Clifton Leaf’s book, or Dr. Siefried’s work on this bogus ‘war’, etc). The criminal medical establishment deliberate and falsely self-servingly claims and distorts a ‘win’ in the bogus ‘war on cancer’ when the only truly notably win is a reduction in lung cancer mortality due to a huge reduction in smoking (eg ca. 40% reduction of the overall cancer death rate in men between 1990-2006 was because of a large reduction in cigarette smoking [https://tinyurl.com/ypk4ccyj]), which has NOTHING to do with their cancer treatments. Lying is their mode of operation.
Since the war on cancer began orthodox medicine hasn’t progressed in their basic highly profitable therapies: it still uses primarily and almost exclusively highly toxic, deadly things like radiation, chemo, surgery, and drugs that have killed millions of people instead of the disease.
As long as the official “war on cancer” is a HUGE BUSINESS based on expensive TREATMENTS (INTERVENTIONS) of a disease instead of its PREVENTION, logically, they will never find a cure for cancer. The moonshot-war on cancer inventions, too, includes industry-profitable gene therapies of cancer treatment that are right in line with the erroneous working model of mechanistic reductionism of allopathic medicine.
The lucrative game of the medical business is to endlessly “look for” a cure but not “find” a cure. Practically all resources in the phony ‘war on cancer’ are poured into TREATMENT of cancer but almost none in the PREVENTION of the disease. Eg, Heidi Williams, the director of science policy at the Institute for Progress, explained that from the time the “War on Cancer” was announced, in 1971, until 2015, only six drugs were approved to prevent any cancer. From 1973 to 2011, nearly 30,000 trials were run for drugs that treated recurrent or metastatic cancer, compared with fewer than 600 for cancer prevention.
It’s IRREFUTABLE PROOF POSITIVE that BIG MONEY and a TOTAL LACK OF ETHICS rule the official medical establishment.
It’s just like with any bogus official “war” (‘war on drugs’, ‘war on terrorism’, ‘war on covid’ etc) — it’s not about winning these wars but to primarily prolong them because behind any of these fraudulent “war” rackets of the criminal establishment is a Big Business, such as the massive cancer industry. The very profitable TREATMENT focus of conventional medicine, instead of a PREVENTION focus which these official medical quacks (or rather crooks) can hardly make any money off, is a major reason why today 1 of 2 men and 1 in 3 women can expect a cancer diagnosis at some point in their lifetimes (https://tinyurl.com/ypk4ccyj) yet that rate was multiple times lower 5 decades ago when the phony ‘war on cancer’ began (1 in about 16) and the current much higher rate cannot at all be attributed solely to an aging population. And 5 decades ago when this bogus war began cancer was the second leading cause of death and 50 years later it is STILL the second leading cause of death in the country this “war” was declared in (https://tinyurl.com/ypk4ccyj). These facts alone prove we are NOT winning the war on cancer.
At the same time, this same orthodox cancer cartel has been suppressing and squashing a number of very effective and beneficial alternative cancer approaches. You probably guessed why: effective, safe, inexpensive cancer therapies are cutting into the astronomical profits of the medical mafia’s lucrative treatments. That longstanding decadent activity is part of the fraud of the war on cancer.
If the public were to scrutinize what the medical industry and its government pawns are telling them about the ‘war on cancer’ instead of blindly believing what they’re saying, they’d find that the cancer industry and the cancer charities have been dismissing, ignoring, and obfuscating the true causes of cancer while mostly putting the blame for cancer on the individual, denying or dismissing the serious harms from orthodox cancer treatments and chemical toxicants, and resorting to deceptive cancer statistics to “educate” (think: mislead) the public that their way of treatment is actually successful — read this well referenced scholarly article’s (“A Mammogram Letter The British Medical Journal Censored”) afterword on the war on cancer at https://www.rolf-hefti.com/mammogram.html (scroll down to the afterword that addresses the fraudulent ‘war on cancer’).
What the medical establishment “informs” the public about is about as truthful as what the political establishment keeps telling them. Not to forget, the corporate media (the mainstream fake news media) is a willing tool to spread these distortions, lies, and the scam of the war on cancer.
Does anyone really think it’s a coincidence that double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling called the ‘war on cancer’ a fraud? If you look closer you’ll come to the same conclusion. But…politics and self-serving interests of the conventional medical cartel, and their allied corporate media, keep the real truth far away from the public at large. Or people’s own denial of, or indifference to, the real truth.