Inventions, stories, and ideas that don't matter (with Pablos Holman)
Spencer Greenberg speaks with Pablos Holman, an inventor, about the importance of a "hacker mindset," distinguishing deep tech from shallow tech, and the need to tell positive stories about science and technology. They discuss how to foster innovation, from 3D printing food and cryptographic protocols to computational modeling for global problems, and the challenges of patent systems and regulation.
Deep Dive Analysis
12 Topic Outline
The Concept and Potential of 3D-Printed Food
The 'What Can I Make This Do?' Hacker Mindset
Distinguishing True Creativity from Idea Cross-Pollination
Critique of Ideas and Innovations That Don't Matter
The Profound Influence of Stories on Human Behavior
Understanding the Hype vs. Value Dichotomy in Innovation
Revisiting the Potential of Nuclear Energy
The Concept of an Innovation Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
Cryptocurrency as a Future Regulatory Mechanism
Differentiating Between Deep Tech and Shallow Tech
The Evolution and Challenges of the Patent System
The Undervalued Role of Ideas and Inventors
9 Key Concepts
3D Printed Food
A concept where meals are printed pixel by pixel using powdered, shelf-stable ingredients, hydrated, and laser-cooked. This approach aims to eliminate food waste and enable personalized nutrition tailored to individual needs, moving beyond traditional cooking inefficiencies.
Hacker/Inventor Mindset
This mindset is characterized by asking, 'What can I make this do?' rather than 'What does this do?' It involves breaking down existing technologies to understand their components and possibilities, leading to novel inventions and new capabilities.
True Creativity
A rare form of invention where new ideas emerge without direct external influences or existing precedents. This contrasts with most innovation, which often involves cross-pollinating and extending existing ideas from different fields.
Hype vs. Value
Hype encompasses elements that generate interest and social status, while value refers to intrinsic benefits that genuinely improve human well-being. The challenge is that pure value often struggles without sufficient hype to gain traction, while pure hype can thrive without delivering substantial value.
Innovation DMZ
An 'innovation demilitarized zone' is a conceptual space where new technologies can be developed and experimented with minimal regulation. The idea is to allow for rapid learning about a technology's risks and benefits before imposing extensive regulatory frameworks, which can stifle progress.
Cryptographic Protocols
These are mathematical systems designed to create fair and secure interactions between parties, serving a similar purpose to traditional regulation but through automated enforcement. They eliminate the need for intermediaries and auditors, enabling instantaneous and cheat-proof transactions.
Shallow Tech
This term describes software-focused innovations, such as social media applications or enterprise apps, which are relatively easy, cheap, and predictable to build and scale. While often useful, they typically do not involve fundamental technological breakthroughs that solve large-scale, foundational problems.
Deep Tech
Deep tech refers to fundamental technological breakthroughs that address large-scale problems, often requiring significant scientific research and difficult invention. Examples include advancements in energy, clean water, disease eradication, or foundational technologies like blockchain consensus mechanisms.
Patent System
A legal framework designed to incentivize invention by granting creators a temporary monopoly (typically 20 years) over their innovations. This allows inventors to profit from selling or licensing their intellectual property, thereby encouraging investment in new solutions.
14 Questions Answered
It involves using powdered, shelf-stable ingredients from cartridges, hydrating them, and cooking them with lasers pixel by pixel to create customized meals with precise flavors and textures.
It could eliminate food waste by printing only what is eaten, as well as enable customized nutrition tailored to an individual's microbiome and dietary needs.
Instead of asking 'What does this do?', hackers and inventors ask 'What can I make this do?', leading them to dismantle, experiment, and discover new possibilities beyond intended uses.
People often celebrate financial success and entrepreneurs, but not the specific individuals who invent the underlying technologies (e.g., display, wireless radios in an iPhone) because these are not typically celebrated.
Stories serve as a powerful learning mechanism, historically crucial for survival by conveying vital information about dangers or social dynamics, but this mechanism can be 'hijacked' by super-stimuli stories (like celebrity gossip) that offer little real value.
Scary stories about meltdowns (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl) led to stringent regulations in the 80s, despite significant safety improvements in modern reactor designs that can prevent meltdowns.
An 'innovation DMZ' is a concept for creating a space where new technologies can be experimented with very little regulation, allowing innovators to discover their capabilities and risks before broad regulatory intervention occurs.
While governments currently attempt to regulate crypto, the speaker believes that cryptographic protocols will eventually regulate governments, as they offer a superior, more efficient, and fair way to manage transactions and contracts without intermediaries.
Cryptography in cryptocurrency eliminates the need for expensive, drag-inducing intermediaries like banks and auditors, allowing for instantaneous, cheat-proof settlement of transactions without external checks and balances.
Beyond currency, crypto can evolve to support a multitude of cryptographically enforced contracts, where each 'token' represents a different type of agreement, providing a more efficient and reliable alternative to traditional, often unenforced, legal contracts.
'Shallow tech' refers to software-focused innovations like apps that are easy to build and scale but don't introduce fundamental technological breakthroughs, whereas 'deep tech' involves creating new, foundational technologies to solve large-scale problems like energy or disease.
The patent system aims to incentivize invention by granting creators a temporary monopoly (typically 20 years) over their innovations, allowing them to profit from selling or licensing their intellectual property, similar to how copyright compensates artists.
Large software companies have successfully argued in courts (e.g., the Alice ruling) that many software innovations are too easy or obvious to be patentable, effectively gutting the enforceability of software patents and disadvantaging smaller inventors.
Mature industries like auto, pharma, and toys have learned to respect inventors' rights by buying or licensing intellectual property, whereas the younger software industry has often disregarded inventors, leading to legal challenges and weakened software patent enforceability.
12 Actionable Insights
1. Apply Computational Modeling
Utilize computational models, powered by sensors and supercomputers, to analyze data, anticipate future outcomes, and test various interventions in software, enabling more efficient and successful problem-solving in areas like disease eradication and engineering design.
2. Invest in Deep Technology
Distinguish between ‘deep tech’ (fundamental technologies solving large-scale problems) and ‘shallow tech’ (software applications or minor variations), and prioritize investment and attention towards deep tech to address critical global challenges effectively.
3. Craft Optimistic Tech Narratives
Actively tell stories about how science and technology can lead to positive outcomes and a better future, as humans are driven by narratives, and optimistic stories are crucial for encouraging the adoption of beneficial innovations.
4. Adopt a Hacker Mindset
Cultivate a ‘what can I make this do?’ mindset by actively taking things apart, experimenting, and pushing the boundaries of existing tools and ideas, as this approach is key to generating new technologies and superpowers.
5. Cross-Pollinate Diverse Ideas
Actively seek to cross-pollinate ideas by learning about different scientific disciplines, knowledge bases, and skill sets, as combining diverse concepts is a primary driver of new inventions and breakthroughs.
6. Prioritize Meaningful Problems
Re-evaluate where attention is directed, shifting focus from trivial matters like celebrity culture and shallow tech to meaningful problems that require deep technological solutions, to drive progress on critical issues.
7. Balance Hype and Value
When creating or promoting projects, strive for a balance of high intrinsic value and sufficient ‘hype’ to gain traction, recognizing that pure value often goes unnoticed without engagement, and pure hype is a waste of human attention.
8. Utilize Cryptographic Protocols
Explore and implement cryptographic protocols to create fair and self-enforcing interactions and contracts, as this technology offers a more efficient and less expensive alternative to traditional regulatory systems for ensuring trust and agreement.
9. Advocate for Innovation DMZs
Advocate for the creation of ‘innovation demilitarized zones’ where new technologies can be experimented with minimal early regulation, allowing for faster learning about their potential and risks, and accelerating breakthroughs.
10. Advocate for Inventor Rights
Support and advocate for reforms in the patent system and greater societal appreciation for inventors, ensuring they are fairly compensated for their novel creations, which is crucial for incentivizing foundational technological development.
11. Support Unconventional Innovators
Cherish and appreciate individuals who violate warranties and don’t follow rules, as these unconventional thinkers are the primary source of new technologies and capabilities, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
12. Optimize Food Production
Consider developing or investing in 3D food printing technology to eliminate food waste by printing only what’s consumed and enable customized meals optimized for individual nutritional needs.
6 Key Quotes
Flavor is solved. That comes in a bottle. You can buy any flavor in the world in a bottle. Flavor is solved. Aroma is solved. Nutrients are solved. The only thing chefs are really doing is managing texture.
Pablos Holman
If you give the same gadget to a hacker, the question is different. The question is, what can I make this do?
Pablos Holman
If you have pure value without any hype, you can't get it off the ground... If you have pure hype without any value, it can do incredibly well. But like, what's the point? It's just a waste.
Spencer Greenberg
On a long enough time horizon, there's absolutely no question crypto will regulate governments.
Pablos Holman
Doing it the second time is really, really, really fucking easy by orders of magnitude for every invention.
Pablos Holman
I don't value the ideas just because they're novel. I value them for their ability to improve things and solve problems and make a difference.
Pablos Holman