But what are the good new things? The new part is pretty clear, as in something that wasn't done before. But what does the adjective "good" mean when applied to "new things"?
The author says you should make sure "new things you make don't net harm people or the world."
I'd argue that the world has no meaning without people, so not "net harming people" is what he can mean. But how can one know if things will produce net harm or not? I think we can even quantify after the fact if discovering gunpowder or dynamite is producing net harm or not. We can't decide if discovery of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion is producing a net harm or not.
Of course, for some "things" it's easy to say if they produce a net harm or not, i.e. producing a biological weapon or a vaccine.
And what if the result of our struggle, be it a scientific endeavor or not, while "new" and certainty not harmful doesn't produce any impact whatsoever? Maybe we come up with something that will be usable in a few years, a few decades, e few hundreds of years years or never.
So, should be there an impact? Shouldn't we strive to produce something that is not only not harmful but useful?
I think that we should give some more thought about the "good" part.