Does Innovation Increase with Population? No, but Noise Does

A common assumption in society, especially in economics and futurism, is simple: More people mean more potential inventors, therefore more innovation. The first premise is almost certainly true. The conclusion does not follow. Innovation requires not merely the creation of an idea, but its recognition. Every additional person can produce useful ideas, useless ideas, mistakes, frauds, repetition, and everything in between. Production can scale, while evaluation needs not scale proportionally. This creates a simple asymmetry: More people → potentially more signal. More people → necessarily more noise.