A bit of a tangent, regarding innovation. It's interesting to think about counterfactuals in history. There are questions like what if solar panels became widespread 100 years earlier? Could we have avoided global warming and all the wars over coal and oil? (Not possible because lack of purity technology in materials and understanding of matter.) But are there other things where some easy discovery was waiting just around the corner but it wasn't discovered for some reason? Or something was discovered in one society but not in another for a long time, from similar starting conditions. Washing hands certainly is something that one could go back with, probably thousands of years, to bring immediate benefits. Some cultures have done it but some have absolutely refused it for a long time.

And then applying that kind of thinking to today. Looking back to 2026 from 2126, what would a historian facepalm over? Or what is already being done in one field or social scene but not in another, that would be greatly beneficial? The classic recent example of success is applying airline pilots' checklists to surgery. Airline pilots probably are a little bit like aliens, from surgeon point of view. How many people had already tried similar things, but failed with the institutions and people's inability to receive innovation? Maybe with AI tooling we can facilitate better innovation diffusion. It's not without its dangers of course.