Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbracketdash | Hacker News Reader

A particular point Tesla repeats throughout the short essay is how he would spend lots of time visually imagining his inventions to each particular part. This small point is worth considering and I quite frankly enjoy doing too (I stayed up for hours last night visualizing and "editing" structures in my brain !)

View on HN

I literally cannot think of anything more visually complicated than a chair in my head before the image becomes disproportionate and inconsistent. Is having a robust, precise internal visual imagination a requirement for being a good engineer? I often think about the specific mental faculties that make certain technical tasks a breeze for some and near impossible for others.

Considering how many professional chess players can play chess blindfolded/in their head, I suspect there's a lot of intuition building/chunking that happens throughout the years before such facilities can emerge in one's mind.

Nah man. You know how to set up the board. Its just a static file in your head but you know what it looks like, you know how the pieces move, you know the alphabet, you can count to 8. Now all you need is someone of equal skill to play against and write down the moves. The one to make an illegal move first loses.

Very interesting point. It does make sense that Tesla who primarily worked in the field of electricity & magnetism would develop a faster intuition of inventions related the forces.

When I come up with something new and complex (either something that qualifies as an invention or just trying to solve a complex data analysis problem using a single SQL statement), I tend to first have a big blur in my brain... And then it may feel promising... and then individual structural components of the final solution start to emerge non-visually (like where to apply recursion in SQL that generates data for the remaining layers)... it's more like that I feel that there are some solid parts (vs entropy?) in that blob... the whole thing doesn't fully make sense until the last important component has "manifested" itself. Nothing visual though and often I have to "roll back" to the blurry blob from half an hour ago and wait until something better manifests itself from there. Doesn't always work and sleep helps! :-)

> ... and sleep helps!

I would have agreed with this statement every day of my life until yesterday because Nikola Tesla has pulled apart many of my presumptions.

For example, sleep. Tesla slept 4 hours/night in his first year in college and would sleep 2-3 hours in adulthood. (wikipedia). There are some explanations of short amounts of sleep for sustained periods as demonstrated by those that practice polyphasic sleep [1]. Yet these polyphasic sleepers, obtain "bodily rest" because of hours of sitting at a desk. Yet even this seems to defy Tesla's life where he would walk 8-10 miles PER DAY (wkipedia).

Despite very little brain rest or bodily rest, he was one of the brightest minds AND lived to age 86.

So yeah, I really don't know.

[1] https://polyphasic.net

Tesla was pretty healthy, as far as I can tell, despite being in abject poverty in his later decades. However, he did suffer several mental episodes in his life, and I think he probably over worked himself and experienced some emotional trauma, which could have been exacerbated by lack of sleep. He was also not overly shy regarding his talents, and despite likely being well above average intelligence and a very hard worker, he probably exaggerated many things.

Tesla is forever one of the most interesting people to me. He was truly not a man of his time in many ways and ultimately a tragic figure.

Not at all! You can improve like any other faculty of the mind! Even Tesla described that initially the images he would see would be a big blur but after "practice" they became significantly sharper. He could then even visualize motion of objects.

It is funny. Until I read Tesla's stuff I had no idea that not everyone does this. I visualize and tear down machines and designs in my head. Design in my sleep...etc.

Sometimes when I am describing a machine and how it works my hands move as if I am positioning the machine...because in my vision..it is really there. It blocks out the "real world" if I let it.

I was always criticized in school for daydreaming...I suspect this is why.

I always love hearing about how people visualize. I have almost zero visualization abilities. Instead I seem to get by on intuition. I can sort of just sense the direction i need to go, technically, and then try it out and iterate on it. There is never a clear picture until its done. Iterating is probably way less effective than good visualization, but its all I got.

There are iterations...the design isn't usually done. But they evolve as I work on the idea.

Taking off parts and swapping out others.

It was really nice learning CAD design for this reason...being able to properly get the designs into the real world.

Did you teach yourself CAD? What was your path?

Do you remember a time before you visualized effectively? (Is it something practiced?)

Yes. I learned CAD on my own...not saying "self taught" since I used other people's videos and guides sometimes...but more "self guided" which is how I would probably describe most of my learning. I was also the "C" student who aced the standardized tests. Never enjoyed school...read ahead a lot...told "we don't care if you get the right answer...do it our way".

I don't recall any time where I couldn't visualize. I can remember back to when I was 3-4 fairly well and I always remember this being part of how I am.

For the most part I remember everything I read also...which can be bad since at times misinformation that has also been memorized makes me second guess.

As far as designing in my sleep...I mainly just focus on the problem as I am falling asleep. I find that when I wake typically there will be progress on the design which I can go mechanically work on. This is mostly during the assembly phase that I use this though...when I am actually assembling the machine and debugging the last minute "gotchas".

> Instead I seem to get by on intuition

This is also something Tesla would do! - "But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile."

I suppose, for me, I've never spent time working on physical problems until now. Most of my life I've worked on programming problems or mathematical problems or other abstract problems which didn't require the highest level of visualization.

I do clearly remember daydreaming in AP Spanish about projects too lol.

I certainly do this with code. Sometimes I am working well at the computer, but sometimes I go walk in the woods for a few hours and go over architectures in my head, probing for details I might have missed that would change the design.

What kind of inventions have you come up with? What ideas are you modeling in your brain?

all kinds! Thinking of a good example: An ally with a vending machine at the end and a conveyor belt as the floor of the alley. If you try to smash or damage the machine the conveyor belt will prevent you from walking away.

Maybe we could go for a telephone booth style machine that would lock the door (and the vandal) inside, and then https://youtu.be/EbmQxZkSswI?t=57

nahhh man just kick the door down ;)

What specific purpose would this serve? Also what would prevent someone from just sprinting off the belt?

well, you cant have the machine harm a person (however much fun that seems) but you can give them the impression they can just run away and have them run against an algo that will only just prevent it. It should be crafted perfectly to keep the test subject under the impression they almost made it. If they want to fall down and hurt themselves that is entirely up to then. There is the calm voice instructing to wait for the authorities, that is the best we can do.

If they some how run to fast or if someone comes to help them with a rope sudden stops and reversal should make the adventure more adventurous.

The goal is to convince the test subject it isn't worth damaging the machine. People like that have a hard time remembering what not to do.

I'm not a sadist, the machine will feed them however long they are stuck there.

Well I can't delve into too much detail yet but it includes a bunch of moving gears that aren't trivial to keep in place. So I'm trying to figure out some casings for the motor.

When I first read Tesla's writing last night, I began by just simply allowing my imagination to do a test run of building something. I first began by imagining a cylinder. I rotated the cylinder and observed the sharp edges. I didn't like that so I smoothed it out. Then I imagined a hollowed out cylinder with its edges smoothed out. How about adding a horizontal beam through it. Or maybe two? And what if they intersect. All of this I would imagine in my head.

Overall, it felt like a more versatile approach then spending hours tinkering with Freecad. I spent a bit more time coming up with models for my specific project before realizing it was 1:30 AM. WARNING: THIS METHOD WILL KEEP YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT FOR HOURS.

Thanks for sharing, I also enjoy staring at a blank wall and letting my mind think about various inventions and projects. Usually they are kinetic art ideas with novel movements. I probably have 20 good ideas that I keep iterating on. The other night I had a dream about a kinetic art piece and was able to wake up with full details on how it could work - this was a first for me. Now I just need to build them!

I do that in my garden. I can stare for hours imaging and imagining new projects and plants.

I feel one thing isnt mentioned often enough, or actually 2: If you invent something, start looking at the previous art sooner. 2) Limit creative insanity or genius to one thing and keep everything else as boring as possible. When the garage explodes you know why and you have at most 1 biohazard at a time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com