Faraday, after demonstrating how moving a magnet through a coiled wire induced a current in the wire was asked by a visiting statesman what was the use of this.
Faraday responded, “In twenty years, you will be taxing it”
Similarly, at a demonstration of hot air balloons in France, Benjamin Franklin was asked “Of what use is this?”
Franklin replied, “Of what use is a newborn baby?”
Everything I’ve ever heard about Franklin makes him a boss. This is a new one.
Here’s a little known fact that is not true, which will bring some nuance to the previous anecdote, Benjamin Franklin ate babies.
Another one that is true but sounds like an onion.
He enjoyed the company of GILFS
Benjamin Franklin fucks
Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (1745)
Its a good read and many points are still valid today.
I feel like there’s a bit of trying to scare the kid off from that life course and get married like a proper person in that letter
Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.
I didn’t need to know Benjamin Franklin fucks old ladies because they can’t have babies, but I appreciate the honor of carrying this information.
also the idea of a genius putting a bucket on the head of a grandma he fucks and telling her to act like she’s 21 is HILARIOUS to me
And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
That’s my favourite part to quote.
When the lights are out. Pussy is pussy. And old pussy is often better. 😉
It’s dangerously close to “In the dark a hole is a hole.”
British children! Maybe a few Prussians too.
The British were John Paul Jones, but Franklin taught him.
Sounds like Faraday understood the… potential.
Funnily enough, Faraday seemingly also understood that the Electric Field only possesses a potential in the absence of changing magnetic fields. Because only in the absence of changing magnetic fields, the rotation of the Electric Field is zero, and only then it has a potential.
That’s a really cool Franklin quote. Visionary.
“Mr. Franklin, of what use is this hot air balloon contraption?”
“You can take ladies up in it with a bottle of wine and a blanket and you know, they can’t refuse, because of the implication. Think about it. She’s floating up in the middle of the sky with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around, and what does she see? Nothing but open air. 'Ahhhh! There’s nowhere for me to run. What am I gonna do, say ‘no?’”
That last bit is me when dealing with people who “aren’t impressed” by today’s AI.
The problem isn’t the “AI”. It is people praising its babbling as the solution for everything.
I’m not impressed by today’s AI and I also fully understand that the tech is going to completely upend society and will eventually be a part of our picture of utopia, or our picture of actual hell on Earth.
The people who are screaming it’s wild wonders and benefits are at least as closed-minded as the people who think we’re going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The actual direction this tech moves is going to be far more like the discovery of radio, in that at the time of it’s discovery and early implementation, the people then had no idea the implications down the road and we’re at the same point. Except the big difference and why this is contentious is that radio was far less dangerous to society broadly.
Radio was a fundamental force that always existed around us, we learned to use it the way our ancestors used rivers and waters to move goods and people. AI is completely human-made and doesn’t exist without human engineering, so it’s not neutral, it’s a tool shaped by man to do whatever a man wants with it.
Ok boomer
Sorry my comment didn’t have Subway Surfers playing in the corner with a popular streamer reacting to it so you could actually read it and understand it.
Apology accepted
I’m unimpressed by the people who use it.
AI tools are pretty good in Photoshop; they’re pretty good in copilot; Ukraine claims they’re good at guiding a drone to a Russian bomber (though they also hit decommissioned aircraft). I think you only see the use of less specialised AI used to generate low quality text and soulless images
I agree. But don’t really care if people use it, I just cannot stand when people wave it around like a new teddy bear that gives them a smug sense of superiority for… checks notes …using a product that someone is selling to let stupid people do easy things.
I’m sure they have trouble sleeping over that
They’re destroying humanity both physically and mentally, so I certainly hope so.
I shake my fist at them!
I feel like I hear about this guy once every second
Whatever you do, love Hertz
which is about the frequency that the heart (german Herz) is beating with.
This post tickles a fond memory of mine. I was talking to a right-wing libertarian, and he said there should be no research done ever if it couldn’t prove beforehand its practical applications. I laughed out loud because I knew how ignorant and ridiculous that statement was. He clearly had never picked up a book on the history of science, on the history of these things:
- quantum mechanics. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have semiconductors in his phone, or if he didn’t have access to lasers for his LASIK surgery (which he actually did have), both of which are technologies built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
- electromagnetism. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian was having his LASIK surgery and the power went out without there being a generator, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
- X-rays. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have x-rays to check the inside of his body in case something went wrong, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
- superconductivity. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have superconductors for an MRI to check the inside of his body in case something went wrong, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
- radio waves. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have radio waves for his phone and computer’s wifi and bluetooth to run his digital business, technologies built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
When talking with libertarians you should keep in mind they have completely different axiomatic values. It is often the case that they understand a certain policy would be on net bad for everyone, they simply don’t care. They are rarely utilitarian about those issues.
I get along much better with libertarians who justify libertarianism with values extrinsic to just “muh freedom” – they are usually much more willing to yield ground in places where I can convince them that a libertarian policy would be net negative, and they have also moved me to be more open minded about some things I thought I would never agree with.
and they have also moved me to be more open minded about some things I thought I would never agree with.
Such as? I’m curious.
Mm for instance, I think in some contexts markets are pretty powerful, like prediction markets are pretty good at predicting things. (Not saying they’re flawless – polymarket likely overpredicted Trump’s victory). Or that benign-looking regulation is frequently detrimental to the public – while not libertarians at all, Abundance makes a good case for repealing a lot of regulation related to construction. Such regulation is often motivated by people who want to preserve the value of their homes, even though on the surface it appears to be about environmental concerns. (Obviously, I think the environment is important, so we shouldn’t just repeal everything. Just that we should be more critical of such regulation.) Another example is how the U.S. banned civilian supersonic aviation in its airspace because of disruptive sonic booms; apparently the technology now exists to keep such booms very quiet, but the regulation persists, because it’s not booms which were banned but instead supersonic speed as a proxy for booms.
Those are much rarev in my opinion.
Bullshit. Lasers have been intended to gain interplanetary superiority since the dawn of time. We just didnt know how to make them or that they could also be used to read music from a circle
Imagine if he had to apply for funding
“these waves have the potential to transform how we communicate and will likely find world wide usage”
He would actually be right unlike all the other funding applications which are largely oversold.
I mean it’s kind of bizarre that he couldn’t think of a practical application. We literally use invisible waves to communicate already, these ones move at light speed, how could that not be useful?
Was he the guy that started that rental car company?
/s
His customers lamented that driving was so boring and they wished there was some magical way for the cars to play music.
Oh well. Nothing to be done there.
Just straight lazy… Shame.
Hertz donut
We stand on the shoulders of giants etc etc. But it seems odd to me that they wouldn’t think about using this for communication at least.
It’s not always immediately obvious to what end you can use a new innovation. For instance, the Romans discovered and built a steam engine. But nobody connected the dots that it could be used to power a train.
To me, it showcases the main reason why we need to collaborate. Only together, we can exponentially increase the potential of everything we build.
Imagine industrial revolution Roman Empire, thank fuck they didn’t connect the dots.
Good for us as we wouldn’t exist without the world going exactly as it has (I guess unless you’re from a culture that didn’t get conquered/settled and has been quite insular), but imagine where technology would be if industrial civilisation had been continuous from so early
Herons steam “engine” had no power whatsoever and was not scalable. And even if it would have been scalable, they had had no fuel to drive it.
I thought they did invent a steam engine at some point. I’m sure I read that somewhere.
The thing is they were never going to invent the steam engine because they didn’t have the technology to produce steel to the quality and strength that would be needed to build rails. And for that matter they didn’t really have the metallurgy necessary to construct reliable boilers either.
No fuel? All you need is something that makes a fire. And it is not like crude oil wasn’t know to people back then.
If the invention had been further explored it is entirely reasonable to assume people could have invented a “practical” steam engine 2.000 years ago. All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
Still, going from a stream powered spinning toy to locomotive is a few orders of magnitude. Heron’s “engine” was a little jet engine. Heated water pushed it’s way out of pipes. It’s a far cry from building steam pressure in a tank, using that pressure to drive a crank shaft, and pushing along a vehicle of any kind.
There are a number of industrial era inventions required before you can even start putting something like a train together.
The Romans didn’t even have replaceable parts yet. Every nail was custom made.
If you haven’t seen it, watch Clickspring’s series on the antikithra mechanism. It’ll give you an idea of how hard it was to produce complicated machinery was at the time.
Also there was no need in Italy and Greece. Britain invented steam engines because they needed a better way to pump water out of their mines, people worked out later that they could use these engines to power a cart, a digging machine, a rail machine. They needed mines for heating fuel due to the cold climate, they needed coal fired heat for their metallurgy
You need reasons to invent stuff (necessity is the mother of invention) and you’re not going to get much reason in a perfect climate with all the food you need coming from the sea and land all year
Britain already had rails for human and horse drawn carts
They did not use coal back then – I’m not sure whether it was even known to the Mediterranean culture. Forests were plundered for shipbuilding. Crude oil was only available as naphtha in the Middle East, barely enough for the local fishermen to pitch there boats and for the Byzantines to use in their flamethrowers. Furthermore, crude oil was not used in steam engines — you cannot shovel a heep of oil under a kettle. Fuel existed, yes, but they had no access to it.
All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
So a completely different machine? Shoveled wheels were invented centuries after Heron. Even if they played with such a setup – an open, non-pressurized turbine has no usable power. To use steam, you’ll have to pressurize it, and the technology to tame high pressure was only developed to build cannons that do not burst.
In the history of the steam engine, the fuel supply was available before the engine. IIRC, Watt’s incentive for the invention of the steam engine was the need to drain coal mines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio
By August 1895, Marconi was field testing his system but even with improvements he was only able to transmit signals up to one-half mile, a distance Oliver Lodge had predicted in 1894 as the maximum transmission distance for radio waves.
I suppose beyond the engineering know how required they were looking at possible transmission ranges and thinking it simply wasn’t practical, square law and all that.
This.
There are often actual limits to what can be done, and there are practical limits. Especially in the early days of a technology it’s really hard to understand which limits are actual limits, practical limits or only short-term limits.
For example, in the 1800s, people thought that going faster than 30km/h would pose permanent health risks and wouldn’t be practical at all. We now know that 30km/h isn’t fast at all, but we do know that 1300km/h is pretty much the hard speed limit for land travel and that 200-300km/h is the practical limit for land travel (above that it becomes so power-inefficient and so dangerous that there’s hardly a point).
So when looking at the technology in an early state, it’s really hard to know what kind of limit you have hit.
Hilariously, light is an electromagnetic wave.
So, yes, we can see electromagnetic waves… Just, only a very small segment of them.
How wrong he was. Now we use EM daily for everything… Communicating via Wi-Fi, listening to music in the car (FM broadcast), or via Bluetooth and using LTE… Even heating our food. Not to mention medical applications like X-rays…
There’s a shitload of stuff we use EM for without even thinking. It’s all around us, all the time, like the matrix. I love EM science.
This goes to show you that, just because someone discovered a thing, doesn’t mean that they have any idea what to do with that discovery, or that the discoveries end there…
Before, reality was just what humans could touch, smell, see, and hear, but after the publication of the charged electromagnetic spectrum, we now know that what we can touch, smell, see, and hear, is less than one-millionth.
I still like the fact that the guy that invented super glue was very annoyed by how sticky it was.
And Mantis Shrimp still continue to baffle me in the amount of EM range they can sense/see.
I think new research says otherwise.
What, jessvj is not baffled? That’s an odd thing to study
I feel like this is a very “scientisty” thing - the theoretical aspect is so fascinating and being able to fit all the pieces into a model that is mathematically accurate is the reward.
Considering the practical application of the model and how it can benefit society (or in other words, be marketed for profit) takes a different set of skills.
I absolutely detest the equivocation of “benefits society” and “marked for profit”.
Plenty of things have been discovered to have practical applications which can benefit society yet are shelved or have its implementation frustrated because it cannot be exploited for profit or threatens the profits of a preexisting application which it would replace.
I LOVE SIGNAL PROCESSING
Half of the field is viable thanks to a single algorithm: FFT
FFT was a DARPA project. It alone probably makes all their funding worth it.
ME TOO!
I feel like the signal processing community is really passionate about their work. It comes out in their books. I know I can talk for hours and hours and hours about signal processing. And my DSP professor was like that too. That was such a fun class.
i would like to hear about it :)
I had that during my second year of master’s. I barely understood it and the rest of the class couldn’t understand it at all. I wrote my exam and forgot 99% of it a week later.
TIL: I’m just like Hertz
Nothing, I guess
Aw, cheer up; someone will apply you in thirty to forty years.
If only he knew his discovery would lead to the worst car rental company he problem wouldn’t have published
The germans are really something else, what innovation hasn’t sprung from their imagination?
Dr Venture type science
Not really, he’s not stealing something his dad made, using modern tech to smooth over the 60s parts and presenting it as his own invention.
It’s why Michael Faraday will always be my fave; a blue collar genius. He designed, created, and built the equipment that eggheads used to test their hypothesis and mathematical equations.
You don’t understand that’s just Hanseatic understatement.
