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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14978 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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Diversity is our Strength. Us being whites

At the top of Marginal Revolution today: "How Cultural Diversity Drives Innovation"

I'm a tech development and "innovation" nerd. There's a small, but growing, especially in recent years, online commmunity of people who read organizational histories of places like Bell Labs and the original Lockheed Skunkwords to try and figure out the best ways to do real tech development. Not academic science projects and not VC backed bullshit which is mostly business model innovation (that even more often fails).

You don't have to read the whole study. The abstract itself is either a hilarious self-own or and even more hilarious playing-dumb post.

We show that innovation in U.S. counties from 1850 to 1940 was propelled by shifts in the local social structure, as captured using the diversity of surnames. Leveraging quasi-random variation in counties’ surnames—stemming from the interplay between historical fluctuations in immigration and local factors that attract immigrants—we find that more diverse social structures increased both the quantity and quality of patents, likely because they spurred interactions among individuals with different skills and perspectives. The results suggest that the free flow of information between diverse minds drives innovation and contributed to the emergence of the U.S. as a global innovation hub.

1850 to 1940. Bruh.

This paper shows that having big time diversity - you know, mixing all those crazy Poles, Irish, French, Germans, English, Welsh, Czech, Slovak, Greek, hell even a few Italians and Spanish in there - was a massive reason the USA was such a technologically innovative place!

The HBDers are going to love this one.

Side note on the hard tech angle: patent issuance used to be a decent enough and standardized enough measure for "innovation." Since the rise of legalism post WW2, however, it's so much more noisy now that it's questionable if it remains a valid "fungible currency" for studying innovation and tech development.

Number of patents has become fairly untethered from actual innovation, just speaking as a patent lawyer. Maybe at sometime it was true, or maybe it was always the case that most are basically a minor modification or a dreaded methods patent relating to software.

Of the many reforms I would make to the constitution if I ever become dictator for a day. One would be we hand your patent application to a relevant tradesman with any material he requests. If he does not emerge from the room with the object you intend to sell, your patent is denied.

For software parents, if your patent doesn't compile using what ever compiler you submitted in the application your patent is denied.

If he does not emerge from the room with the object you intend to sell, your patent is denied.

You would not allow a patent on part of a large industrial process?

For software parents, if your patent doesn't compile using what ever compiler you submitted in the application your patent is denied.

That's not a bad idea (since that part does get gamed) but that's not the real problem with software patents. The actual problem is that people can patent things that are obvious by ordinary standards, but either so obvious that nobody would bother documenting prior art, or only useful when computer technology reaches a certain point, so there is a first person to do it even though it's obvious.

One would be we hand your patent application to a relevant tradesman with any material he requests. If he does not emerge from the room with the object you intend to sell, your patent is denied.

This would prevent the majority of the patents that significantly advanced technology starting from the 19th or even 18th century. How does a "relevant tradesman" build an integrated circuit for example? Or a method for industrial production of some material?

Tradesman meaning in this case semiconductor fab technician and materials including rented space at a foundry, If we need it. The thing must be clear enough that once the patent expires any competitor can duplicate it if it's relevant.

For an industrial process we just need to replicate the process. Not do it at cost or volume that makes business sense. I don't mind spending the budget needed to make a bunch of small samples of hideously expensive stuff once.

For example, Nilered's video on purple gold is sufficiently detailed. The original patent applications are not:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=d6Pcp944sRI?si=vgAo6MrObRV3nloa

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