Hacker News Reader

> You’ll say, “They got lucky, it had to happen, if not them someone else.

Well. If you look at the previous examples of sudden technological breakthroughs, it's kind of amazing how many things were suddenly invented almost simultaneously yet independently.

But then, of course, some things just straight up failed to be invented e.g. Chinese-style wheelbarrow in the West.

View on HN

But then, of course, some things just straight up failed to be invented e.g. Chinese-style wheelbarrow in the West.

Thanks for this remark. This was really interesting: "How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow"

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-...

Excellent link! Thank you.

Yes. The probability of people inventing something seems to vary widely from "everybody can sustain that problem for centuries until somebody has a good idea" to "the moment people know the requirements, everybody will invent this".

And it's very unlikely that we can know where any invention falls on that distribution before it's made. We may not even be certain about some after they are made.

Anybody talking about tech inevitability or some universal version of the Great Men theory (in support or rejection) is wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com