The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla | Hacker News Reader

The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

smithsonianmag.com

222 pointsHooke105 comments

These days it's fashionable to venerate Tesla and denigrate Edison. Tesla's contributions to AC motors and power are great and beyond dispute. The others, not so much.

For those who like to denigrate Edison by comparison, I challenge to read "Edison" by Josephson and maintain that opinion.

I.e. Tesla transformed AC power, Edison transformed multiple foundational industries.

Edison was an asshole - but he was a brilliant polymath asshole - I can draw a line, an almost direct line between the methods of Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.

Edison can be an asshole, without denigrating any of his brilliance, or suppressing any of Teslas.

It's interesting though - Edison was often the disruptor of industries - but he was not the man who turned Electrical Power, the Phonograph, or the Motion Picture industries into what they were - but he still invented the v1, and sometimes v2 version of these technologies.

The historical record indicates Edison treated people dramatically better than Jobs did. The factual record to support that is overwhelming and covered in about a dozen books. Read about the enjoyment his fellow inventors had in working with him in the early busy days. Read about the praise he received from his fellow workers before he became famous. He was not known as an asshole.

The only thing Edison appears to have acted like an asshole in regards to, is some of his business dealings. Some of which is more attributable to the people that were actually operating the numerous business ventures (which he was not in most of the cases).

The case for Edison being like Jobs in terms of the asshole quality, is barely existent. It's mostly a modern myth popularized to attack Edison for Tesla's benefit.

Eh..

He was a somewhat distant father, until his children were old enough to join him in the business - he was a good man - but generally contemptuous with convention, and conventional thinking (often seen in people regarded as 'visionaries') - in business dealings, he certainly was an asshole, but thats not unheard of in his time.

Tesla by modern standards was.. somewhat crazy - out of the two I consider Edison to have a greater vision, and to be a far more transformative figure - and honestly someone who left a larger lasting impact on the world.

I've been to Edisons home, and his final lab in West Orange NJ - I think very very highly of the man - but I also think he was an asshole.

Did you meet him? How would you know he was an ahole? Just asking, as I see this far too much. Is Elon an ahole? Is Gates an ahole?

In the AC/DC wars Edison fought with Tesla, he'd electrocute animals to show how dangerous AC was.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/thomas-edison-histo...

That's more of an indication of how our modern sensibilities have changed.

When I was a kid I was taken to the local zoo, where lions were displayed in small, bare concrete cages. I felt sorry for them, and did not enjoy the trip. But that doesn't mean the zookeepers were bad people, people just thought differently about animals in those days.

You're right, it really is too difficult to live and let live. It's really too difficult to think, is everyone benefitting all that much from the pain I'm inflecting on whatever I'm hurting. Please, these are adults that knew what they were doing and that the pain they were causing didn't satisfy some need, but some want. If you don't want to go down in history as an asshole, don't be a dick when you or your tribe are only benefitting beyond basic needs and necessities.

A lot of people are okay with testing things like drugs on animals. You can at least imagine a scenario where Edison was driven by concern for public welfare, thinking the higher voltage used by Tesla was going to cause disasters and trying to make people aware of the danger.

> these are adults that knew what they were doing

Not so. Mainstream attitudes on whether animal are even capable of suffering, have changed radically.

> that the pain they were causing didn't satisfy some need, but some want

It seems more likely that the poor conditions were because of underfunding, than sadism.

And electrocution is seen currently as the method of choice in all modern slaughterhouses of the planet to kill humanely animals for meat, instantly and saving a lot of this nervous excitation called pain. Edison has saved more animal pain than the whole Peta team probably.

How would you respond if I electrocuted you, saying my intention was to save you from pain?

I've seen this thinking before: So the moral question is, 'if we can give animals (1) artificial/unnatural, but (2) reasonably enjoyable, and (3) relatively pain free,' for (4) some benefit to the machine of society, is that just? Interestingly, many modern liberal thinkers say no, but when this same moral questioning is applied to humans, you run into what the anti-liberal terrorist Ted Kraczynski was arguing about.

In other words, as of now you and I both live and probably work in society, sacrificing our natural freedom and state in nature to enjoy comforts and safety of our technological civilization; and yes, to die in a hospital rather than in nature.

Anyways I'm not suggesting any answers, just juxtaposing the same ideas applied unequally, which suggests an implicit collective answer of 'yes'to your question; or at least a tolerance to that answer.

And it's unfortunately partially unworldly thinking about these social contracts anyways: in the real world, farms are still grossly mistreating animals, as does civilization to people, where outcomes stem too often from money and violence; not always from social contracts / commitments to morals--which brings us full circle to the life of Tesla and his struggles with bullying.

I would be fuming if somebody electrocute me, that's for sure; but much better than if they kill me with a rusty axe. That would be very impolite and unforgeivable.

I’d be fuming as well, though not from anger but rather as charred remains.

I thought it was elegant and civilized to chop somebody up with a light sabre. Have I been misinformed?

You might as well have asked "how would you respond if I gave you lethal injection while you were sleeping?" What's the point of the question?

It's usually a mistake to judge people from another time using modern sensibilities.

It's like thinking people from the 1800's were all grim because they look grim in photographs. But that was just an artifact of them having to hold still for the long exposure times.

I bet those people would think people of our time are horribly ill-mannered and rude.

I'm by no means judging the man by modern sensibilities - his own contemporaries spoke about his personality, and unwillingness to follow convention.

Bear in mind, you can be an asshole and be an okay person - its not a value judgement, its a statement of fact.

And they would be right!

Slavery

I don't need to meet him - his contemporaries speak enough about his manner, and way of doing business for me to feel okay making the pronouncement - bear in mind, many of my closest friends are an asshole much the way, edison, gates and jobs are/were - being an asshole does not make you a bad person - it just means you may have little patience for convention.

Keep in mind that Edison was constantly being sued by his rivals (Edison nearly always won). Any successful businessman is going to have legions of detractors.

Those that denigrate Edison in favour of Tesla often ignore or aren’t aware of Tesla’s own dark side.

Here’s an article, a few years ago and also from Smithsonian Magazine, telling of some of Tesla’s disturbing opinions.

For example, advocating forced eugenics to weed out ‘undesirables’ from the human race. He felt that the forced sterilisation of criminals and mentally ill in Nazi Germany didn’t go far enough.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikola-tesla-the-euge...

I'll play devil's advocate, since there's more truth to Tesla's words than you're giving him credit for. The comforts of modern society allow the proliferation of dysgenic traits. The system rewards reckless breeding of people who don't have the means to support children. Genetic selection happens whether we talk about it or not. We meddled with better pets, livestock and crops. Why not give improved humans a try? You don't need compulsory programs: abortion clinics are very efficient and completely voluntary.

Ill respond by simply pointing out that eugenics doesn’t work to remove “dysgenic” traits Nazi Germany eliminated 70-100% of their schizophrenics and just a generation or two later Germany has levels of schizophrenic patients same as everyone else. It even had higher than normal levels after the eradication. Killing off people with shitty genetic traits simply doesn’t work to reduce it in your population.

https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/36/1/...

Surely there must be some traits we could improve by selective breeding. Strength, intelligence, better digestion. Applying that study to anything other than schizophrenia is a faulty generalization. My post was not meant to promote any violent resolution. Your comment was fascinating and I'll take a deeper look at that paper.

So you're saying we should give eugenics a try?

Why not really? It doesn’t affect anyone currently alive and only helps promote better genes, which is what the human race is doing now anyway, but very inefficiently.

I’d like to see it happen. The only thing that gives me pause is what if we accidentally make humans with critical genetic flaws we did not see coming, or low genetic diversity.

Because it leads to human rights atrocities, and there is no way to define “better” genes objectively.

Eugenics doesn’t inherently lead to human rights violations.

You can define better genes objectively by looking at genes of people that live the longest and with the least health issues. Natural selection is poor at selecting for traits that lead to longevity.

Because longevity isn't essential to our survival. You're suggesting that diverting energy away from other traits in favour of longevity would have no negative impact.

IMO there are all sorts of possible negative side effects that might emerge. Like a longer life making us more cautious, individualistic, and short sighted (not personally but on a species scale). You could argue this is already happening due to environmental comforts and medical advances. In fact dramatically tweaking a trait like longevity for a new generation would likely have a massive impact on their personality and culture... talk about a generation gap.

> Eugenics doesn’t inherently lead to human rights violations

Right, but it does in practice.

What if we found that Japanese people lived the longest? Would we only allow Japanese to breed? Or bias towards them? How would you qualify how “Japanese” someone’s genes are?

Can you not see how this leads to a toxic culture of racism?

I can't believe this person is honestly advocating for eugenics. That should have died in 1945.

Theoretically, maybe it doesn't but practically, it has terrible consequences, especially in countries where human rights aren't a thing anyway, it will lead to dystopian concepts. I would suggest to read up on eugenics a bitZ

You might feel differently if the state decided you don’t meet the minimum requirements for permission to breed.

Your comment doesn't contain an argument, and it is even attacking a strawman as the GP did explicitly call out non-compulsory as an aspect of it. But I will bite anyway.

Taken GP's reasoning to the extreme, what do you think if the state prohibit someone from having children if (hypothetically) it is known at 100% certainty that their offsprings will inherit a horrible genetic diseases that causes pain and suffering their whole lives, and their life expectancy is 15 years?

Bit too big brother for me... and very short sighted. Diversity in both genetics and environment have been essential to survival and evolution. Haven't we already proven that monoculture is a bad thing in the long term? I'm reminded of the bananas from the 60s...

We're not nearly competent enough yet to play god at this level. It's scary knowing there are egos chomping at the bit to do it.

To be fair to Tesla, and to history, this was pretty normal at the time. The Supreme Court even endorsed it: in fact, they didn't even just endorse it, it was appatently so important that they ruled in 1927 in Buck vs Bell that sterilization of the unfit did not violated due process (what!?).[1]

It took generations of education, whatever you want to call it, to change our collective minds.

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

To add to that, California was still force sterilizing people as recently as the 1960s.

It's ironic this comment is attempting to eliminate comparisons between the two, when it was actually fashionable to let Tesla's story languish in obscurity for nearly 70 years while beautifying Edison towards some sainthood.

As a kid really into science I was a little appaled when I learned how little Tesla was included in curriculum, despite his enormous impact on today's age.

The recent attention on Tesla barely existed 10-12 years ago. I remember reading random websites wondering why he wasn't better known.

Beginning to give him his due has nothing to do with Edison for me, only that Tesla easily has a place right next to Edison and anyone else, which he was denied at the cost of folks like Edison.

In the eyes of some, part of the smell test Edison didn't pass was Tesla appeared genuinely an order of magnitude higher in some cases in innovating entirely new areas and received very little long term recognition for it. Tesla's didn't just make AC, he invented radio, xrays, transmitting electricity wirelessly, and using the ionosphere in new ways. It was straight up mad science perhaps a little like Einstein or Da Vinci.

Edison was a great business man. He did appear to take a prolific spitball approach to innovation in the eyes of some.

Edisons treatment of his contemporaries, can't be explained away when it wasn't held against him ultimately. It's fine to defend one's self, if one is that talented.. why proactively trash others? It didn't seem the same about Tesla, maybe because he wasn't American?

I don't know how Edison's top 10 inventions might compare to Tesla's top 10 innovations.

This is about giving Tesla his due for a society that was focused instead on a cult of personality towards others instead of recognizing things on their merit.

Interesting titbit (from In The Plex IIRC), one of the big motivators for Page and Brin to found Google, after failing to sell PageRank to existing search engines, was the story of Tesla. Page apparently read about him as a teen and was haunted by how much more Tesla could have achieved if he had been more business savvy.

Fair enough. One can respect both of them without denigrating either. I'm something of a Tesla fan-boy, but I have no problem saying that Edison was a great inventor who did a lot to make the world a better place.

I wonder if it's similar to the popular perception of Jobs and Woz. Steve Jobs is often regarded (for the right reasons) as an arrogant, unforgiving CEO who excelled by exploiting the works of a benign genius. The truth is, however exceptional Woz was, there are far more brilliant hackers than people who transform industries.

If Woz wouldn't have happeded to Steve, he would have been nothing. But if Steve wouldn't have happened to Woz, he still would have had a great career at HP.

I was thinking about the same thing reading the comments here. Both may have innovated in their own ways but the overlap between their worlds may have helped propel certain innovations forward.

funfact: though Elon Musk has a company named after Tesla, in an interview, he has said Edison is the better role model.

e.g. It's not that Edison invented a light bulb - he created the first power grid. It's like inventing an internet client, and the internet.

It's also popular to say Edison did not invent the light bulb. It is correct that he was not the first to invent a glowing wire. Edison's key innovation was the thin, high resistance filament which used high voltage and low current. That design was said to be impossible by all the experts of the time, but it is what made the light bulb practical and useful.

Edison's light bulb was attacked on all fronts in patent court for years, and he beat them all.

He invented the light bulb.

Ironically for Elon Musk, early electric cars mostly used Edison batteries.

You're forgetting Joseph Swan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan#Electric_light

No I didn't. From the article you cited:

"Swan's carbon rod lamp and carbon filament lamp, while functional, were still relatively impractical due to low resistance (needing very expensive thick copper wiring) and short running life."

It also mentions the high current.

As I remarked, Edison's breakthrough was the thin-filament high voltage, low current lamp, which made it practical.

Actually, Tesla was not founded and named by Musk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#History

Had he founded it, he would have named it Edison, not Tesla.

Edison invented the first corporate R&D lab that spun inventions out into companies:

Light bulb and wiring - GE

phonograph - National Phonograph Company

Don't forget the audio recording industry, electric car batteries, mining advancements, the carbon telephone microphone, innumerable major advances in telegraphy, the electric power utility, etc.

Light bulb to electricity is as www to internet.

Internet client?

I have a genuine question about Tesla. I've read some of his speeches/presentations, and he has credited his interest in inductors and electrical fields to, among other things, papers or texts written by William Crookes.

I can't find which texts, though. Does anyone know?

See, the thing about Crookes is, he seems to have veered towards paranormal stuff towards the end of his career and a lot of the literature surrounding him has to do with that. Somewhat ironically, the Crookes Tube was featured in one of H.P. Lovecraft's stories during an attempt to exorcise an eldritch monstrosity of fungal horror.

See "William Crookes and the Commercialisation of Science" by William H. Brock

Crooks is an interesting character. He was one of the few who witnessed the "lost" experiments of David Huges so he had a preview of what was coming in radio technology.

see page 263 at goo.gl/J1fiSA

and https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/20...

and https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/10/22...

Now I know that there needs to be a survival horror game where Nikola Tesla fights eldritch abominations in Gilded Age New York.

Using mathematics... See the Laundry series by Charles Stross.

Of all of the pop culture tributes / references to Tesla, probably my favorite is the band Tesla[1] and their album The Great Radio Controversy[2]. And, of course, the song Edison's Medicine[3] on the Psychotic Supper album.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(band)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Radio_Controversy

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2zwBRa0YhA

I still think my favorite development in the Tesla saga was when a cartoonist (The Oatmeal) got the Internet and then Elon Musk to help him save Wardenclyff from the dozers.

I live only a few miles from the site and drive past it regularly. It's been interesting to watch the progress from an abandoned and overgrown property entirely unrecognizable as the site of anything of interest morphing into a recognition of Tesla. It's not there yet, but it's a work n progress and definitely easy to see the progress.

It was a nice result, but I think the one-sided view that comic painted of Tesla as a misunderstood saint and of Edison as an evil thief (and that the internet largely went along with) is far removed from reality.

It's easier to put a narrative together if you choose to view the world in black and white.

Something most authors don’t mention, but I’ve read in the book by Andy Kessler: (1):

Apparently Tesla not only invented the first electronical wirelessly controlled battery powered device, he also invented the first electronic ligical circuit then, the author claimed, all in year 1899.

1) “How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets”

For more information on that 'device', look hard at the tech used in his 1898 demo of his remote-controlled boat at an expo in Madison Square Garden. The boat and remote combined several amazing innovations. Technically it's on the same level as Englebart's demo.

Some of you here must surely be familiar -- one of the most engaging biographies of Tesla was written by Margaret Cheney: Man Out of Time:

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tesla/Margaret-Cheney/...

(The title might sound a tad clickbait-y, but deservedly so. Also remember that it was written in 2001, about six years before HN was created.)

There is a factual inaccuracy in the article. Although an ethnic Serb, Tesla was not born in Serbia. He was born in Croatia that was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Why does it always have to be someone that involves politics into this? Tesla during his life said he is of Serbian origin and thinks of himself as a Serbian, even though he was born in Croatia. Don't steer it up in here too, I'd like HN to remain what it is.

In fact, born in the territories that are currently inside of the borders of the country now called Croatia which at that time didn’t exist as the independent country, especially not there. As far as I understand, he was born in the “Military Frontier” lands of Austro-Hungarian monarchy (Wikipedia: “Born 10 July 1856 Smiljan, Austrian Empire”), and went to Polytechnic school in Graz, today Austria:

https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/timeline/1875-tesla-a...

Present Croatia exists for less than 30 years, it’s important not being anachronistic in historical statements. At the time Tesla was born his birthplace was not even administratively “Croatia”:

“By the Basic Law of the Frontier from 1850, the administration of Military Frontier was split and the land started to look like a state. The Main Command had its headquarters in Zagreb, but remained directly subordinate to the Ministry of War in Vienna.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Frontier

Of course, pedantry isn't easy: I was also anachronistic by mentioning “Austro-Hungarian” which also didn't exist at the time Tesla was born, but at least I've quoted Wikipedia correctly. Wikipedia must be right, it was just Austrian Empire in 1856 as Tesla was born:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary

Austro-Hungarian Empire came into existence in 1867, 11 years later.

Even if Croatia did not exist at the time of Tesla's birth, it does not change the fact that he was not born in Serbia.

I never claimed he was. ‘trodemode’s claim was Croatia, and that’s what isn’t historical.

However if you’d actually want to visit Tesla’s birthplace, you would need to buy a ticket to Croatia. The place is in Croatia now.

Ethnically Tesla was a Serb, his birthplace was then Austrian Military Frontier and now in Croatia, that’s the background to different attempts of ignoring the history.

For the downvoters - you obviously have zero idea how much of an issue this presents on the Balkan. Embrace Tesla's work, not origin or nationality, it really does not matter.

Facts are not politics.

When out of the whole article you point out something that is not the focus of the article and introduce a true and undeniable fact that is (unfortunately) most often used as a way of scoring political points on the Balkan from both sides, that fact does in fact become political.

And sometimes pointing out a factual error is just that. You are now the one bringing politics into the discussion. You are making it worse.

Truth can be (often is) politically incorrect.

That doesn't make any sense.

Edit: Serious question, is that rhetoric, platitude, bromide, something else?

Truth isn't just fact, it's also narrative. Trying to separate the two is impossible, therefore truth can often be political.

Perhaps one of my favorite people of all time, you can find some decent documentaries on YouTube as well. It's hard to sum him up in an article so if you're interested in any of the things he accomplished, check out some videos and books about him, truly an extraordinary man that had so much taken from him with no credit given.

I recommend his autobiography, My Inventions, it is very excellent. Apart from everything else, the man has a way with words.

A short title, freely available here: * http://www.teslasautobiography.com * https://freeditorial.com/en/books/my-inventions--2

Tesla had many great ideas, but was lazy and had a bad habit of disappearing off down on a tangent that his investors had not been told about, and had not agreed to invest in.

I recommend this book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/494.Wizard) to anyone who wants to know the full story.

I read that book as well... one of the tangents was (paraphrasing from memory) when he secured financing from J. P. Morgan for a proof-of-concept wireless transmission tower (the Wardenclyffe tower). He then dramatically scaled up his plans without consulting with Morgan and tried to motivate this by picturing the project as a reflection of Morgans position in society -- surely you can see that only the best will do! After running out of money, he kept asking J. P. Morgan for more money for the rest of Morgan's life... and a large part of Morgan's sons life!

Tesla was lazy? Can you call a man lazy, as an extreme example, who slept 16 hours a day and output half of what Tesla did?

Da Vinci did the same shit with tangents/investors, and slept multiple times a day. Was he lazy too?

BBC radio programme about Tesla: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv

His Colorado Springs lab notes are a good read. One of the things he struggled with was RF detection (rectification). Don’t think he figured it out, but tried many experiments.

How do you explain the boom of the scientist/inventor/businessman profile in that period? Are there any references on the subject?

Too bad he died alone and poor. Would he have given up some if his intellectual ability for companionship?

No, he would not. As mentioned in the article he was reputedly celibate by choice for this reason.

amazing thanks for sharing

Never fails to make me quite emotional reading about his story.

the magnetic field strength of MRI scanners is measured in Teslas

Interesting

May I ask why this comment gets downvoted... without getting downvoted?

Speculation, but likely because it doesn't add much to the conversation. For questions like this, it's useful to review other comments that have been downvoted and appraise them with the guidelines at hand. It won't be perfect, as members may downvote for any number of reasons not mentioned in the guidelines (or for no reason at all).

Enough with Tesla already. Jesus Christ.

My tinfoil hat tells me that either neither Tesla nor Einstein were humans, OR both were in some sort of communication with aliens.

I know on its face it sounds like horseshit... but with over 100 billion people ever lived on earth... how come we have so few geniuses that truly push the whole human kind forward 10x faster than all people combined thru a previous ten centuries?

Even more - if we assume its just a coincident or that they had such good DNA, or their parents were geniuses before... then how come it doesn't happen again? How come we don't have such huge brains like Tesla or Einstein today? Sure there are many super smart humans among us... but not a single one sticks out like Tesla or Einstein did in their old days.

There are probably many geniouses that came and went through the ages, the problem is that of “financial stability / partnerships”. If I’m too busy making Widgets for a company in order to feed my family, I dont have any energy left to do Creative stuff. Isaac Newton was wealthy so could devote time to pursue the sciences, the rest of us are preparing TPG reports for the bean counters. The person who can cure cancer is too busy taking his kids to KungFu/Soccer practice, hogged by a demanding socialite wife who doesn’t allow him to steal time from domestic chores.

Of all the renaissance era scientists you could have picked, Newton is probably the single worst example. Read his early life [1] on Wiki. Father, a "wild and extravagant man" died shortly after he was born. His mother remarried a reverend and left him with with the grandparents. He wasn't fond of his parents, having threatened to burn the house to the ground - them along with it. Then he went to high school, where he did poorly until he was 'removed' to a new school. His mother, now widowed a second time, tried to make him a farmer.. and so on, and so forth. When studying law at Cambridge he even worked as a servant to make ends meet.

His young life is like something out of Jerry Springer.

Though I think it offers a good moral. Life is what you make of it. This is far more true today than during Newton's life. The big difference is that somehow we, collectively, seem to have lost our willingness to do what it takes to leave us in the sort of position your envision Newton as somehow having been warped into. Remember his 'magnum opus' would not come until he was 43 years old in 1685 - most of his life prior spent in complete disregard.

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

The clear solutions to these problems then, are to become wealthy, and remain celibate.

MGTOW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way

Do the startup thing. Tesla worked as a ditch digger for $2 a day after his startup went belly up. He was 30, I think. That must have been depressing. A then a year later he confounded another company and developed the AC induction motor.

You might end up as MGTOW because your socialite wife probably won't be on the same page, but hey... No balls, no glory.

I've also thought about this, though not your conclusions.

Pushing society forward tends to require society's help. And a big issue is we've become far less tolerant and more cynical of change. We certainly consider ourselves tolerant but that's mostly on a small subset of all issues - primarily just social stuff like sexuality. By contrast imagine we did not have electric poles up today and somebody suggested we string up these poles all around the country. And they also suggested we wire them up with enough juice flowing through them to kill anything that happened to touch them and something else at the same time - and that these wires could also easily start fires and more. Society wouldn't even consider it - preposterous, unsafe, won't anybody think of the children, blah blah blah. A solar farm frying some birds gets headlines today. I mean... really? Society used to be more tolerant to risk, challenge, and capable of dealing with uncertainty. That opens up the doors of possibility.

Another big change is that I think many peoples' goals in life have changed from moving society forward, to just earning a lot of money. Revolutionary invention is not really the best way to make lots of money in society. In the pure sciences, like physics, it's positively fruitless. Even in the more monetizable fields, it's extremely high risk and the rewards are are wildly variable. 20 years from now Elon Musk could easily be the richest person in history, but he could also just as easily be bankrupt or approaching it. Getting back to the first point, what happens when the first person dies on a SpaceX mission? What if the two people SpaceX plans to send around the moon end up dying catastrophically? It really shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but society would flip a lid, government would try to regulate, and it would be a catastrophe far greater than the loss of life. Dangerous calculus if your life's purpose is money.

Ultimately we have a conservative society that's risk averse and driven by money more than by invention. It's not a good recipe for cooking up revolutionary change.

There are maybe four people alive I would class alongside Einstein and Tesla in terms of sheer cognitive power:

Murray Gell-Mann

Grigori Perelman

Ed Witten

Saul Kripke

Oh but we have them. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were such people.

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