Tesla was brilliant and highly knowledgeable; he spoke a number of languages, was a ceaseless worker, and was inventive. His abilities and skills did not translate into inordinate wealth, but rather into a reliable electrical system and into motors that billions of people rely on today. Cars worthy of his name should be as reliable as the man whose memory they supposedly honor.
Tesla would turn over in his grave. Self-driving cars named after him have crashed. So far, crashes by such self-driving cars reveal that perfecting a machine’s behavior isn’t just a matter of deduction and science as one might think. That seems ironic. All machines work according to basic Newtonian mechanics, and such mechanics are the product of deductive reasoning. If the actions of a machine are still at least slightly unpredictable, how much more so are the actions of humans?
When he was student, Nikola Tesla was challenged by Professor Pöschl who, in response to Tesla’s ideas about eliminating sparking from DC devices, said that Tesla would “accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this [eliminate sparking].” In his account of that classroom encounter, Tesla wrote, “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.”
Deduction serves us well, of course, and Tesla, a true scientist at heart, did not discount it. He knew his math, and he used it to solve electrical problems. But he was chiefly an inventor, and inventors rely on their Muses. It was during a walk with his friend Szigeti that his muse gave him the solution to Professor Pöschl’s sparking problem. Tesla wrote, “The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.” He had an “Aha!” or “Eureka!” revelation.
You might not be an inventor, but you have had your share of such moments, times when insight flashes through your brain like a branching bolt of lightning. True, you might deceive yourself: Some of those “insights” might not conform to reality. We all have conflicting Muses pulling us in different directions. But occasionally, one clear and truthful Muse gets her message to you.
Cultural mores and patterns are the auto-drive mechanisms of any society. Most of us wander through social settings under complex influences to which we simply react: There are stimuli and responses, and many of the latter are learned. But every so often, you have your own special moment of revelation when some aspect of your life becomes instantly clearer. Such is the experience of people who abruptly cease harmful addictions or reject their previously harmful behaviors. Such is the experience of people who suddenly “see” a truth previously masked by their acquiescence to some autopilot’s control.
The personal value of your eureka insights lies in how they divert you from a collision toward which you are heading on some seemingly logical and automatic setting.
Tesla would turn over in his grave. Self-driving cars named after him have crashed. So far, crashes by such self-driving cars reveal that perfecting a machine’s behavior isn’t just a matter of deduction and science as one might think. That seems ironic. All machines work according to basic Newtonian mechanics, and such mechanics are the product of deductive reasoning. If the actions of a machine are still at least slightly unpredictable, how much more so are the actions of humans?
When he was student, Nikola Tesla was challenged by Professor Pöschl who, in response to Tesla’s ideas about eliminating sparking from DC devices, said that Tesla would “accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this [eliminate sparking].” In his account of that classroom encounter, Tesla wrote, “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.”
Deduction serves us well, of course, and Tesla, a true scientist at heart, did not discount it. He knew his math, and he used it to solve electrical problems. But he was chiefly an inventor, and inventors rely on their Muses. It was during a walk with his friend Szigeti that his muse gave him the solution to Professor Pöschl’s sparking problem. Tesla wrote, “The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.” He had an “Aha!” or “Eureka!” revelation.
You might not be an inventor, but you have had your share of such moments, times when insight flashes through your brain like a branching bolt of lightning. True, you might deceive yourself: Some of those “insights” might not conform to reality. We all have conflicting Muses pulling us in different directions. But occasionally, one clear and truthful Muse gets her message to you.
Cultural mores and patterns are the auto-drive mechanisms of any society. Most of us wander through social settings under complex influences to which we simply react: There are stimuli and responses, and many of the latter are learned. But every so often, you have your own special moment of revelation when some aspect of your life becomes instantly clearer. Such is the experience of people who abruptly cease harmful addictions or reject their previously harmful behaviors. Such is the experience of people who suddenly “see” a truth previously masked by their acquiescence to some autopilot’s control.
The personal value of your eureka insights lies in how they divert you from a collision toward which you are heading on some seemingly logical and automatic setting.
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