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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Lets quit talking about this bunkum artist who's only talent was self-promotion. Folks eulogizing him often mention this, and never explain why they go on to repeat his hoaxes and bragging.

Let him go. He did nothing of note.

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Fiction is often more inspiring than reality. There are many ideas he swept into his personal reputation that inspired me when I was younger, and Fuller operating as a locus lead me from one popular idea (the architectural geodesic dome) to others, including things like sustainable architecture, the optimistic marriage of industrial efficiency with social good, the so-called "dymaxion projection" in cartography and on. I might not have been exposed to those ideas at that time - perhaps I still could have found those ideas if Fuller was generous with credit, and that would have been the more virtuous thing, but here I am nonetheless.

So as an adult I can sit here and stoically accept that cynicism has (rightly) claimed another public figure, but simpler stories worked well when I was younger. Fuller's reputation inspired me to be multifaceted/multidisciplinary and creative within the realms of STEM, and made it seem possible in our ever more complicated era.

Careful there. Buckminster Fuller is on the list of "people HN readers irrationally worship, any criticism of whom will make your comment hit -4 in about ten minutes." Fuller had a lot of brilliant ideas but like any human he also had some idiotic ones, but around here people will bend over backwards and tie his words into knots trying to justify all of his opinions.

Even the brightest minds are not immune to the human tendency to force everything through a black/white filter. Buckminster, like Elon, and like many other people/topics, must be either a demon or a saint. Tribalism ensues.

> criticism

Though in this case no criticism seems detectable. I would not confuse that with sentencing.

Other relentless self-promoters, Edison, Jobs, Musk. If you don't have the talent to get many people to listen to you, then you can't change the world (Or, at least have no control over how you change the world which is kind of worse).

Worrisome example: you mentioned there a guy who died around the same day of Dennis Ritchie. Changed the world. Measured self-promoter.

> If you don't have the talent to get many people to listen to you, then you can't change the world (Or, at least have no control over how you change the world which is kind of worse).

And/or the change you caused will be attributed to whoever can get people to listen.

Some choice quotes from the article:

> This gave him a reputation early on for being a jack of all trades but master of none. The notable exception, perhaps, was his knack for self-promotion

> Fuller claimed it was the first streamlined automobile in history, which the author points out is simply not true

> Hubris is a constant theme in Nevala-Lee’s portrait of Fuller

> Nonetheless, Inventor of the Future is a welcome reassessment of Fuller’s contributions to design, science, and mathematics

Clifford A. Pickover, for example, seems to be of a different opinion, as he includes Buckminster Fuller's tensegrity systems in the milestones of Physics.

Edit: I will make the comment clearer:

these should not be polls. It is bewildering that one can think of just sharing "I have a bad opinion of Tamerlan". Then you find somebody who declared having a good opinion of Tamerlan. And no progress is made. It does not matter that for the specific point Clifford Pickover was ill informed - that is not the point. There is no sense in making this a "Ok, all those who have a good idea of Tamerlan raise your hand... Ok, now all of those who have a _bad opinion_, of Tamerlan... Good. Back to business now. We meet tomorrow for Gengis Khan".

Regarding tensegrity:

> He shamelessly stole ideas from talented students too: Fuller claimed for decades that he invented the principles of “tensegrity,” which was another specialized term he coined to describe structural systems of isolated components under compression held within a matrix of continuous tension. In reality, he observed and copied this idea from the work of then-student Kenneth Snelson, who went on to have a successful career in his own right as a sculptor. Yet Snelson never fully forgave his mentor for claiming authorship of his discovery

FTA: "He shamelessly stole ideas from talented students too: Fuller claimed for decades that he invented the principles of “tensegrity,” which was another specialized term he coined to describe structural systems of isolated components under compression held within a matrix of continuous tension. In reality, he observed and copied this idea from the work of then-student Kenneth Snelson, who went on to have a successful career in his own right as a sculptor."

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