You've Probably Never Had an Original Idea

I’ve never liked the word “invention”; instead, I prefer the term discovery. Nobody has ever truly invented anything—rather, we come upon discoveries, and some people are fortunate enough to figure out how to monetize them.

Every time I think I’ve had a brilliant, original insight, a quick internet search reveals dozens of people who’ve already explored the same concept, often more thoroughly than I have. It’s a humbling experience that repeats itself with remarkable consistency.

Consider the history of major inventions—calculus was developed independently by Newton and Leibniz. Evolution was proposed by both Darwin and Wallace. The telephone patent was filed by both Bell and Gray on the same day. This pattern of simultaneous discovery appears throughout history, suggesting ideas emerge not from individual genius but from the collective progression of human knowledge reaching certain thresholds.

For any so-called “invention,” what makes it truly new? Everything in our universe is merely an arrangement of particles: atoms, electrons, protons, and various subatomic particles. The telephone, the computer, the wheel—all just particular arrangements of these same building blocks that already existed.

Given enough time, couldn’t these arrangements be discovered by chance? The concept of “genius” might simply describe someone who’s particularly efficient at finding useful arrangements of matter—perhaps through skill, perhaps through luck, often through a combination of both.

This perspective makes the concept of “intellectual property” curious. We live in a society where people can claim ownership over specific arrangements of matter because they documented that arrangement before others. We’ve built entire systems to enforce these claims through legal frameworks.

Digital content makes this even more apparent. When we can create perfect copies of information with virtually zero cost, the artificial scarcity created by copyright laws seems increasingly disconnected from physical reality. A digital song or software program is just an arrangement of bits that could theoretically be discovered by anyone.

Private property itself—the idea that certain people should have exclusive access to resources—isn’t found in nature. A wolf doesn’t check for property markers before hunting; rivers don’t verify ownership before flowing through land. These are human constructs that we’ve created to organize society.

Does this make private property inherently problematic? Not necessarily. These systems can reduce certain types of conflict by establishing clear rules. But they also create new conflicts—consider how nations wage war over resources like oil or land, essentially fighting over who gets to decide the rules of ownership in a given territory.

I don’t fundamentally object to private property or intellectual property protections. I simply find it fascinating how deeply we’ve internalized these constructed systems, often forgetting they’re human inventions rather than natural laws.

So the next time you think you’ve had a truly original idea, do some research first. You’ll likely discover you’re part of a larger conversation that’s been ongoing for some time. And that’s okay—there’s something beautiful about the way human creativity builds upon itself collectively rather than emerging in isolated bursts of genius.