That's the issue. No one can really systematize "discovery".
How many "group thinkers", "creatives", "non-group thinkers", "nihilists", "anarchists", "contemplatives" in the last - say, 500 years, 5000 years, whatever - have been occasioned by the fall of an Apple? Or the fall of a branch? Or a leaf? Or what have you?
Why did it spark a new flame in the mind of Newton? Science can't explain. If we could, we'd teach everyone to be that sort of contemplative.
In the age of AI, human super-intelligence, is extremely valuable. But yeah, just being intelligent? Not so much.
Just to illustrate, many have complained that big AI labs "buy" startups only because they want to acqui-hire the Stanford/CalTech/MIT PhDs who started it. Then they pretty much $#!t-can the rest of the people who were, to be fair, mostly just run of the mill UTexas/Umichigan/UofwhateverState TF/PyTorch monkeys. But the point is that in the old days, the second tier guys would have made out like bandits as well.
I think that was, kind of, the start of human intelligence becoming a winner take all game. The AI's only need to learn the latest and greatest from one person before they can leverage that value everywhere. And business is not likely to care too much about who that person is. They will care even less about the people who are not that person.
We're not discussing geological or cosmic eras, just shorter biological processes. Systems can persist for enormous (but still human bound) periods of time.
This is the real answer. Nature only cares that the old already mixed their genes. So, from an evolutionary biology perspective, it's good to clear out the old stock at the end of every generation. Nature already got whatever it was gonna get out of us at that point. To allow that set of genes to stick around actually yields negative returns, ie - less chance of producing improvements, at that point. (Again, just from the perspective of "Mother Nature" so to speak. Obviously the animals themselves would rather not die.)
Mother nature has no perspective. There are no improvements either, only things that are and are not. Everything is dependent on local context at the present point in time and framing whether it is "good" or "bad" (e.g. one could frame our intelligence as good or bad given how it resulted in anthropocentric climate change that may doom us in time, while 'dumber' species have existed for millions of years without wiping themselves out).
What works today may not work tomorrow. What didn't work yesterday may work today. Evolution is not linear. It tends to happen in bursts almost like a dam busting loose. A constant cycling between periods of genetic diversity (i.e. big resetting just happened, no winners taking all quite yet), and what is known as allele fixation (a winner emerged, oh god no...).
>What works today may not work tomorrow. What didn't work yesterday may work today.
All the more reason for variety. Which stops happening when only one set of genes is mixing. (Assuming that set of eternal genes would have any motivation to mix at all.) If you want a higher chance at producing the genes most resilient in a given context, aging and death are a necessary part of that process if you're stuck with sexual reproduction. You need motivation, and you need maximum mixing.
Yes the Chinese have better infrastructure. Probably even better technology out in production available to them at this point. But so what? I mean it's great for the rest of the world. And that's awesome. But how are we plebes in the US ever gonna get access to those vehicles?
It's not as simple an issue as people make it out to be here in the US.
But yes. Good on Europe and China for pushing these technologies forward.
>Assuming everyone in public is a suspect and continually investigating them, is a big change in how society works.
Well that's not exactly how it would work.
Everyone is tracked, but only certain people are watched. That added to the fact that any nation with a sufficiently complex legal system has no law abiding residents. You've always broken some law, somewhere.
So it would be more like:
>[Pick any person from] everyone in public [and the system has the capacity to list the reasons why that person] is a [criminal]
These systems aren't perfect recognition oracles - there are lots of errors, especially as you scale up the technology. At the end of the day, it's a probabilistic identification correlated to a stream with a mix of of reported or suspected crimes. Your framing completely misses the reality. I'd argue that the OP's language is a much better fit.
I loathe surveillance networks. As much as I loathe them, I'm sadly forced to concede that probably citizens setting up a trivially join-able, anonymous, open source surveillance network is probably the only way to get the powerful to think about what they're doing.
Every door man, every hotel employee, every uber driver, every concert-goer, every grocery shopper, every student, and on and on and on. Anonymously streaming their encrypted feeds. Have them turn their cameras onto the street. Especially, say, in front of hotels or at certain restaurants and resorts. Ohhh, and at convention centers as well. Just to show it can pick out subjects at busy places and track them around any city reliably.
Naturally, we'd need some sample facial recognition queries just to show how to use the system. We could start with, say, public figures like Representatives, and Senators? And just to prove it works for less famous people, maybe we could have some example names of regular, everyday employees. Like employees at, I don't know?? Palantir, Flock and Clearview maybe? Just to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of public surveillance networks.
It's a new world. He who has the biggest guns makes the rules.
I don't like it, but in the Caribbean [probably throughout the world] these days, you really are dealing with the raw realities of power in a way you didn't have to previously.
I doubt the EU has the stomach to confront Trump. And French Guiana is not Africa, there will be no China coming to save them.
On the same day, more soldiers together with the Chief of the Royal Danish Army, General Peter Harling Boysen, started arriving in Greenland, and Denmark announced that a "substantial contribution" of its armed forces would be sent there
On 14 January 2026, Denmark started to send military reinforcements to Greenland[186] to strengthen its military presence.[187] Later that day, it became known that both Sweden[188] and Norway sent military forces to support the Danish Defence in protecting Greenland.[189] The Ministry of Defence on 14 January 2026 announced "an increased military presence in and around Greenland, comprising aircraft, vessels and soldiers, including from NATO allies".[190] After consultations between a group of European countries,[191] Germany announced it was sending a small contingent to Greenland on a reconnaissance mission with other European nations.[192] On 15 January 2026, a French military contingent arrived in Greenland.[26]
- ibid.
Several European leaders including France's Emmanuel Macron advocated using the EU's Anti-Coercion Instrument, a security and trade policy tool known as the "trade bazooka", to target the US in retaliation.[258][259][260][29][261] Under the not-previously-used instrument, the EU may adopt countermeasures, sometimes described as sanctions, including tariffs, restrictions on public procurement, and measures affecting trade and investment.[252][262] Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament Committee on International Trade, supported its activation.[263] By 21 January EU countries were described as being increasingly open to using the ACI against the US, with Germany stating it will ask the Commission to explore its use.[264]
This is the actual answer. Things like this need to be a criminal offense.
Monetary fines have a tendency to simply be modeled in as a cost of doing business. Going to prison is far more effective when the goal is to concentrate minds.
That's the issue. No one can really systematize "discovery".
How many "group thinkers", "creatives", "non-group thinkers", "nihilists", "anarchists", "contemplatives" in the last - say, 500 years, 5000 years, whatever - have been occasioned by the fall of an Apple? Or the fall of a branch? Or a leaf? Or what have you?
Why did it spark a new flame in the mind of Newton? Science can't explain. If we could, we'd teach everyone to be that sort of contemplative.
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