Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

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colechristensen

For example: the discovery of the structure and function of DNA was absolutely going to happen in the decade or so when it did happen. Somebody had to go and do it, but the environment of tools, techniques, and general motivation were all there making it possible.

You find all sorts of examples of people independently discovering things at the same time, and this isn't just coincidence. Maybe most famously is Leibniz vs Newton creating calculus. The pieces were all in place for the mathematical study of change. The outcome wasn't predestined, each man's creation was quite different in ways, but they accomplished something that was ready to be accomplished.

Whether it's physics or technology, nature abhors a vacuum. Unexploited niches get filled. Sometimes in significantly different directions, but very often the outcome is strongly influenced by the opportunity.

In biology, this is a bit like convergent evolution. The implementation details aren't predestined, but general solutions to environmental problems _are_. Eyes and legs are very useful things to have, and they're nearly ubiquitous.

With Tesla, the deal is that we know we're going to run out of oil, and pollution sucks. Developing an alternative has been a big talking point since the 90s, and there are a whole lot of players in the game. Lots of companies are making lots of attempts and have been trying many different technologies. Lithium batteries are winning the technology race, they developed because of other consumer electronics and the environment is best for them. It's just evolution. Many other companies are trying different things and the same thing, it's not driven by copying Tesla (the competition helps though) it's driven by the niche need for a solution expanding and becoming more and more possible.

The variables are implementation details (fuel cells? lithium batteries? something else?) and timing. There can be quite a lot of uncertainty with "how" and "when" but quite a lot less with "if".

Fair enough, I can see your argument. However, I'm not persuaded.

Let's assume your hypothesis is correct, then given the population of practitioners for a given technological space, we should be able to find examples of catalyzing change in the technology space that was initiated by what would otherwise be an 'average' practitioner in that space right? Given that I would expect to be able to identify people that are considered 'average' by their peers prior to their making some large catalyzing change.

That is hard looking back as most biographers will call out all sorts of details that made someone special with the benefit of hindsight, but I'm looking for people more current who were considered 'ordinary' and yet they were the catalyst for a huge change.

Finding such examples would help me with your argument.

In case either of you aren't aware of it, you're rehashing a 150 year old argument called the great man theory.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

"I'm aware" as my daughter would say. However I'm not a fan of 'imbued with greatness' aspect, rather my thoughts are that there are a set of characteristics, which I believe are learned rather than inherited, that give someone a more likely role as a change agent.Further those people have to be in the right environment in order to activate their change, much like platinum does nothing at room temperature to long chain hydrocarbons.

It is not that exceptional people don't exist, quite the opposite in fact. There are many many exceptional people made exceptional both by circumstance and talent in different proportions.

The best illustration of this I think could be learned from studying the development of physics between ~1850 to 1950. It becomes more and more difficult to think that each step wasn't inevitable as you learn about the sheer number of exceptional people and catalyzing changes. Each set of questions led to a new breakthrough and each breakthrough led to a new set of questions. It's hard to imagine the whole web falling apart for the loss of a single person. It was a great network of people and accomplishments influencing each other both average and exceptional.

A key that might make the big picture difficult to see is focusing on biographies which by name are focused on individuals instead of systems of people.

Excellent. I think we completely agree that there are many exceptional people, and the more there are looking a problem, the more likely a new and exceptional insight/change will occur.

I also agree physics is a good example as it draws in many exceptional people and each provide pieces of the puzzles.

Using physics as a metaphor, I also believe that there is a sort of "activation energy" which grows, perhaps exponentially higher, the further away an idea is from the common set of ideas that are considered 'canon' in the space. So the idea that private companies can build rockets profitably without government subsidy is a 'small' distance away from the canon that without the government's help the "business" of building and launching rockets is a money losing proposition. And the idea that you could 'land' a rocket after launching it in some way was clearly identified as a workable, not necessarily practical, idea back in the 60's. And it was certainly considered in the DC-X days of the 80's and 90's. But the idea that someone was going to make a profitable business out of launching rockets and recovering the boosters by landing them, was an idea that few people in the industry really considered. It had very high 'activation energy'.

My hypothesis is that without an individual or group that has the necessary level of "activation energy" to get an idea from the pool of the possible to make it the new way to do things, those ideas do not happen even if there are people who recognize that they "could" happen.

When I look at the electric car market I see the General Motors EV-1 which was almost exactly the same idea of the Tesla but done with insufficient activation energy to convert the entire auto industry into that mode of thinking. So I ask what did Elon bring to the problem that the CEO of GM didn't? Why did Elon have the runway to prototype, build, redesign, build again, and then build again into a market changing car, when GM already had all the expertise in the world about building electric cars and the connections to do everything Elon did in probably 1/3 the time it took Tesla? Why didn't someone in GM pop out of the woodwork and make Electric cars happen? What was different?

GM has some of the worlds best vehicle designers and engineers. Some of whom left GM to go work at Tesla. I believe Elon was the catalyst, and had he not started what he did I don't think we would be driving GM Model S equivalents today. That is the difference in people who catalyze change and the elements of change being available in my opinion.

This discussion reminds me of the "Everything is a Remix" [1] documentary. We tend to look at the winners to explain history, even though in many cases multiple players were working on the same theories at the same time, and the likely outcome would have been exactly the same if the winners have not existed.

Worth watching.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc

I remember when it came out. Conceptually it is a remix of James Burke's Connections[1] which goes through all sorts of discoveries from their origins to their modern manifestations.

It is an essential element of this discussion that there are ideas that are brought up discarded, used, re-used, and remixed. But a more interesting question is not the origin of a particular idea, but how these implementations are "catalyzed" into the mainstream by different individuals. And much like chemical reactions where the components are already in abundance around the catalyst, the elements of these ideas are already floating around.

My hypothesis is that some individuals have a way of looking at the world and thinking which allows them to live in a world of many possibilities that are not currently possible. And, when given the opportunity, to pull the rest of us into there version of the universe with astonishing results.

The NY Times article reminded me of that when the question of what the world might look like today if Tesla hadn't been started was reminder of that sort of change.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)

You're making a lot of good points IMP but it's hard to get away from the fatalist undertone in everything you're saying.

I think we can all agree there is a time and place for certain technologies but I think those variables are a lot broader than you are giving them credit for.

I think that you are also not including the things that are invisible and could be improved on and yet do not because humanity doesn't see them. We talk about things in the present because we can see them but looking from now into the future is a lot harder than the opposite.

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