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Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

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Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#71

Post by slg »

davesque wrote: post #48
NicoJuicy wrote: post #40

Everytime i read something about Nikola Tesla, i go back reading: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

This is also why I usually ignore news I hear about Nikola Tesla. That Oatmeal comic, aside from the fact that it's just immature and nasty, I believe kicked off a weird kind of Tesla fanboy-ism which just seems useless.

I believe The Oatmeal comic was a symptom and not necessarily the cause. It certainly kicked it up another level, but the fanboyism started building a few years earlier with the growing success of the car company followed by the movie The Prestige and the Drunk History episode on Tesla.

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#72

Post by jstarfish »

nulagrithom wrote: post #63
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're cherrypicking the part of the document that addresses the comic and I do agree the tone could be more professional, but it a fairly serious rebuke of some pretty terrible claims. Ironically, when Hawkings, Linus, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc use the same tone, the tech community seems to not have any problems with it. The factual aspects of this page are pretty good and I'm hard pressed to find any issue here histor…

> A cartoonist (a guy with no engineering, legal or historian background) born in 1982 on the wrong side of the continent > cynical style typically demonstrated by the worst of US-born Millennials > Disclaimer: The works below are the opinion of the author and not the official viewpoint of the Edison Tech Center That's enough for me to forget this whole article. I'm not buying all the "facts" in The Oatmeal's comic e…

Why not? A wide and impressionable audience now understands this part of history as interpreted by an internet celebrity.

The ability to publish misinformation on the internet far outscales the ability of anybody to refute it. At some point you have to filter out the noise by appraising the source. If that means dismissing inflammatory history lessons from young cartoonists in Seattle, or dismissing medical advice from has-been Playboy models on the basis that neither group knows what the hell they're talking about, then so be it.

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#74

Post by readhn »

Sangermaine wrote: post #64
mabbo wrote: post #50

It's important to keep in mind that near the end of his days, Tesla sure seemed to be experiencing some mental illness. He made wild claims that were never quite backed up by proof, claims that even now no one seems to believe were actually possible. It's a sad end to a brilliant mind. But then, when you're the FBI and WW2 is ongoing, you pay attention when a famous and brilliant inventor claims to have death rays an…

>It's important to keep in mind that near the end of his days, Tesla sure seemed to be experiencing some mental illness. Not just towards the end of his life, he likely had mental issues throughout his entire life. He himself reported experiencing incidents of hallucinations/strange visions of light, and had a number of very strange and exact habits that sound like some kind of OCD (including an extreme aversion to w…

how do you know that "hallucinations/strange visions of light" are not real effects that he did observe?

if one person is more receptive to certain things than the other .. it does not make him or her crazy...

"The mathematics of string theory suggests that the world we know is not complete. In addition to our four familiar dimensions - three-dimensional space and time - string theory predicts the existence of six extra spatial dimensions, "hidden" dimensions curled in tiny geometric shapes at every single point in our universe. "

"Don't worry if you can't picture a 10-dimensional world. Our minds are accustomed to only three spatial dimensions and lack a frame of reference for the other six, says UW-Madison physicist Gary Shiu, who led the new study. Though scientists use computers to visualize what these six-dimensional geometries could look like (see image), no one really knows for sure what shape they take."

"According to string theory mathematics, the extra dimensions could adopt any of tens of thousands of possible shapes, each shape theoretically corresponding to its own universe with its own set of physical laws. "

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070203103355.h...

The new work was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Research Corp.

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#75

Post by readhn »

QAPereo wrote: post #60
readhn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made wild claims that were never quite backed up by proof, claims that even now no one seems to believe were actually possible ------- when Leonardo da vinci sketched out a parachute or a helicopter-looking self propelling device prototypes that took 500 years to actually build - what did contemporaries think of him? who are we to judge a great mind? we simply cant. yes he might have gone mad, but there is a very…

when Leonardo da vinci sketched out a parachute or a helicopter-looking self propelling device prototypes that took 500 years to actually build - what did contemporaries think of him? A lot; he was widely recognized as a genius in his own time. Sadly, his helicopter wouldn't have worked, and he never sketched an ICE.

as well as Tesla was recognized during his lifetime. Plenty of folks thought da vinci was crazy too.

helicopter prototype was off (just needed different shape propeller, additional stabilizing propeller and proper weight distribution), but it was on a correct development path. parachute design was correct as was demonstrated in 2000. (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bgE0_zA9lEU/U29iF1bk9QI/AAAAAAAAEu...)

what if tesla's highly speculated work is even 50% close?

we had thousands of electric cars manufactured and sold in USA 100 years ago (stop and think about it for a second: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/80/34/c5/8034...). wireless transmission of electricity/energy could put us on a completely different path as a humanity (as well as completely change political and business landscape worldwide).

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#76

Post by davesque »

slg wrote: post #71
davesque wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also why I usually ignore news I hear about Nikola Tesla. That Oatmeal comic, aside from the fact that it's just immature and nasty, I believe kicked off a weird kind of Tesla fanboy-ism which just seems useless.

I believe The Oatmeal comic was a symptom and not necessarily the cause. It certainly kicked it up another level, but the fanboyism started building a few years earlier with the growing success of the car company followed by the movie The Prestige and the Drunk History episode on Tesla.

Thanks for pointing all of that out. I forgot that those things predated the comic.

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#77

Post by baobrien »

readhn wrote: post #74
Sangermaine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's important to keep in mind that near the end of his days, Tesla sure seemed to be experiencing some mental illness. Not just towards the end of his life, he likely had mental issues throughout his entire life. He himself reported experiencing incidents of hallucinations/strange visions of light, and had a number of very strange and exact habits that sound like some kind of OCD (including an extreme aversion to w…

how do you know that "hallucinations/strange visions of light" are not real effects that he did observe? if one person is more receptive to certain things than the other .. it does not make him or her crazy... "The mathematics of string theory suggests that the world we know is not complete. In addition to our four familiar dimensions - three-dimensional space and time - string theory predicts the existence of six ex…

Ockham's razor, maybe? Mental illness is a thing we have observed; magic 10 dimensional eyeballs aren't.

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#78

Post by readhn »

saiya-jin wrote: post #65
readhn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made wild claims that were never quite backed up by proof, claims that even now no one seems to believe were actually possible ------- when Leonardo da vinci sketched out a parachute or a helicopter-looking self propelling device prototypes that took 500 years to actually build - what did contemporaries think of him? who are we to judge a great mind? we simply cant. yes he might have gone mad, but there is a very…

he was genius, but also properly crazy (at least at the end of his life). falling in love with a pigeon, pearl detestion, obsession with nr 3 etc. this is not about not being appreciated at the given time. unless you think in 500 years it will be fashionable "to love that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life."

the theory that we might at some point in time love a pigeon (or any other living creature) as much as we love each other (humans) is not that far off ... if you think about it.

we are all the same, all part of one. if you love yourself and you love "one" you automatically love pigeons and all the other living creatures.

perhaps its our next evolutionary step and he was many years ahead of all of us...

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#79

Post by [deleted] »

telotortium wrote: post #61
freyir wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Very few children of billionaires become notable people themselves" First, billionaires represent an extremely small minority of the human population. And second, notable people also represent a small minority of the human population. So it seems reasonable that there are few notable children of billionaires, and this alone doesn't imply that billionaire offspring are less likely to be notable than the person. It…

Yes, that's exactly what dmix is implying by "very clear human and biological reasons why" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean .

[deleted]

Re: Freedom of Information Release on Nikola Tesla (2011)

#80

Post by nulagrithom »

jstarfish wrote: post #72
nulagrithom wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A cartoonist (a guy with no engineering, legal or historian background) born in 1982 on the wrong side of the continent > cynical style typically demonstrated by the worst of US-born Millennials > Disclaimer: The works below are the opinion of the author and not the official viewpoint of the Edison Tech Center That's enough for me to forget this whole article. I'm not buying all the "facts" in The Oatmeal's comic e…

Why not? A wide and impressionable audience now understands this part of history as interpreted by an internet celebrity. The ability to publish misinformation on the internet far outscales the ability of anybody to refute it. At some point you have to filter out the noise by appraising the source. If that means dismissing inflammatory history lessons from young cartoonists in Seattle, or dismissing medical advice fr…

So we should take the word of a random "author" who didn't even bother to publish his name and credentials over Inman simply because this guy blasted Inman for being a Millennial? That's just as wrong as accepting some dumb comic as the authority on history.

This guy, whoever he is, goes on about "crap on the Internet" then cites a 3rd of his sources from the Internet, four of those being Wikipedia. Even better, half his non-Internet based sources are museums -- no further information provided. His sources are mostly unverifiable crap, then he stoops to an ad hominem. It's garbage.

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