A few years later, a graduate student in the then new subject of environmental science explained to me that colour television was a sign of the imminent collapse of our ‘consumer society’. Why? Because, first of all, he said, it served no useful purpose. All the useful functions of television could be performed just as well in monochrome. Adding colour, at several times the cost, was merely ‘conspicuous consumption’. That term had been coined by the economist Thorstein Veblen in 1902, a couple of decades before even monochrome television was invented; it meant wanting new possessions in order to show off to the neighbours. That we had now reached the physical limit of conspicuous consumption could be proved, said my colleague, by analysing the resource constraints scientifically. The cathode-ray tubes in colour televisions depended on the element europium to make the red phosphors on the screen. Europium is one of the rarest elements on Earth. The planet’s total known reserves were only enough to build a few hundred million more colour televisions. After that, it would be back to monochrome. But worse – think what this would mean. From then on there would be two kinds of people: those with colour televisions and those without. And the same would be true of everything else that was being consumed. It would be a world with permanent class distinction, in which the elites would hoard the last of the resources and live lives of gaudy display, while, to sustain that illusory state through its final years, everyone else would be labouring on in drab resentment. And so it went on, nightmare built upon nightmare. I asked him how he knew that no new source of europium would be discovered. He asked how I knew that it would. And, even if it were, what would we do then? I asked how he knew that colour cathode-ray tubes could not be built without europium. He assured me that they could not: it was a miracle that there existed even one element with the necessary properties. After all, why should nature supply elements with properties to suit our convenience? ... He was right in one respect: no alternative red phosphor has been discovered to this day. Yet, as I write this chapter, I see before me a superbly coloured computer display that contains not one atom of europium. Its pixels are liquid crystals consisting entirely of common elements, and it does not require a cathode-ray tube. Nor would it matter if it did, for by now enough europium has been mined to supply every human being on earth with a dozen europium-type screens, and the known reserves of the element comprise several times that amount. Beginning of infinity, David Deutsch
Here's the paradox: those who know a field best often make the worst predictions about its future. They know the current constraints too well. Consider color TV. Industry veterans had a dozen reasons it would fail:
- "The picture quality isn't much better." (They judged prototypes, not potential.)
- "We'll run out of europium." (As if alternatives wouldn't emerge.)
- "It's just a luxury." (Missing how technology spreads.)
- "Only the rich will have it." (Forgetting mass production.)
- "It'll crash the economy." (Really?)
- "We can't control where this goes." (Underestimating human creativity.)
These experts weren't stupid. Their expertise blinded them.
Real breakthroughs don't push against constraints—they destroy them. They rewrite what's possible. But you have to think beyond today's limits to see them coming.
Experts optimize within known boundaries. That works for incremental progress but fails for predicting revolutions. Transformative innovations often come from outsiders or newcomers who ask "Why not?" instead of listing reasons why not.
This doesn't mean ignore physics. But most "impossibilities" aren't laws of nature—they're just today's limits. Experts once declared these impossible:
- Heavier-than-air flight
- Breaking the 4-minute mile
- Reusable rockets
- Practical electric cars
In each case, someone found a way around the "insurmountable" constraints. Not by violating physics, but by approaching the problem differently.
When an expert says something's impossible, ask: Is this physics or just a current limitation? What assumptions make this "impossible"? If those assumptions changed, what becomes possible?
The future belongs to those who imagine beyond today's constraints. Don't let expertise cage your imagination. The best innovations are always impossible—until they aren't.
... But all triumphs are temporary. So to use this fact to reinterpret progress as ‘so-called progress’ is bad philosophy. The fact that reliance on specific antibiotics is unsustainable is only an indictment from the point of view of someone who expects a sustainable lifestyle. But in reality there is no such thing. Only progress is sustainable. ... Trying to predict what our net effect on the environment will be for the next century and then subordinating all policy decisions to optimizing that prediction cannot work. We cannot know how much to reduce emissions by, nor how much effect that will have, because we cannot know the future discoveries that will make some of our present actions seem wise, some counter-productive and some irrelevant, nor how much our efforts are going to be assisted or impeded by sheer luck. Tactics to delay the onset of foreseeable problems may help. But they cannot replace, and must be subordinate to, increasing our ability to intervene after events turn out as we did not foresee. If that does not happen in regard to carbon-dioxide-induced warming, it will happen with something else. ... Strategies to prevent foreseeable disasters are bound to fail eventually, and cannot even address the unforeseeable. To prepare for those, we need rapid progress in science and technology and as much wealth as possible. Beginning of infinity, David Deutsch