If innovators can solve India's problems, they can save the world. Here's why. — Nikhil Malhotra

India is a country of contrasts. It is home to a $160 billion tech services industry, while also buffeted by environmental and social challenges - and this makes it fertile ground for globally scalable, tech-driven solutions....

World Economic Forum
If innovators can solve India's problems, they can save the world. Here's why.

Nikhil Malhotra

Timothy B. Lee — Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem—Lightning could be the solution

Three startups are getting ready to launch one of the most ambitious and important cryptocurrency experiments since the creation of bitcoin itself. Called Lightning, the project aims to build a fast, scalable, and cryptographically secure payment network layered on top of the existing bitcoin network.

Essentially, Lightning aims to solve the big problem that has loomed over bitcoin in recent years: Satoshi Nakamoto's design for bitcoin is comically unscalable. It requires every full node in bitcoin's peer-to-peer network to receive and store a copy of every transaction ever made on the network.

Initially, that design was vital to achieving Nakamoto's vision of a fully decentralized payment network. But as Purdue computer scientist Pedro Moreno-Sanchez told Ars, it creates a big challenge as the network becomes more popular. "We have reached a point where it's not suitable any more to keep growing," he said.…

A big hurdle in innovation is scalability. It's also fundamental to evolutionary theory. A lot of potentially good solutions fail because they are not scalable or as scalable as other solutions.

As an aside, neoliberal globalization is running into a scalability problem that its advocates are determined to overcome by force if necessary. That is increasingly the case as resistance rises from traditionalism

Ars Technica 

Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem—Lightning could be the solution
Timothy B. Lee

Lars P. Syll — Paul Romer — favourite candidate for ‘Nobel prize’ 2016

The astonishing thing about this is that most economists had to be told and some still don't get it — like many other matters that are vital to economics, for example, the relationship of money and banking, and finance to economics, as well as how banking works.

Economics needs a Martin Luther to shake it out of its dogmatic slumbers and institutional rigidity. We are still waiting for the Reformation. The priesthood is deeply entrenched.

BTW, the other issue is that while knowledge is non-rival, it is excludable through intellectual property rights.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Paul Romer — favourite candidate for ‘Nobel prize’ 2016

Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Lars Syll — Paul Romer gets the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics

Must-read.

Congrats to Paul Romer.

Lars P. Syll's Blog
Paul Romer gets the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics
Lars Syll | Professor, Malmo University

The most important understanding here is the difference between diminishing returns in deploying  physical resources and increasing returns in deploying knowledge resources with respect to scalability. Ray Kurzweil develops this in his concept of <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns">accelerating returns</a> 

Also, that which is physically limited and particular is rival, whereas what is not limited physically and is universal is non-rival — unless legislated as rival through intellectual property rights, the current push being toward privatizing new knowledge that can be monetized. This is evoking huge push-back globally and is unlikely to be successful without an extension of imperialism.

This similar to what I have alluded to previously, e.g., Bucky Fuller's distinction between physical and metaphysical resource, the physical being limited and particular, and the second virtually unlimited and universal. The physical is scalable only with significant expenditure of physical energy and transaction cost, whereas the metaphysical is easily scale with low energy requirements and transaction cost. 

Even though rationality is bounded, the boundaries are unknown and, given the present state of human knowledge, unknowable. As Aquinas observed, knowledge is in terms of the mode of knowing of the knower. 

Thus, the question becomes whether it is possible to expand the container of knowledge in addition to the contents. There is reason to believe there is.

 

Primary Challenge of Humanity

Is the primary challenge of humanity the basic circular information flow of evolution >increasing complexity > adaptability > innovation > scalability > increasing complexity >...?

If so, what obstructs that flow, and how can the obstructions be lifted?