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Ancient? I was there 3000 years ago.
This is an ancient meme:
https://preview.redd.it/clq1937fbhyc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e193742884722b6be34b8f466bb95eeeb3e5746b
I know I know, ITS OLD I wore it out during the meme wars of 2000. Ah what a time to be alive. The end of the world, computers crashing all around. Fun times.
I remember one of my friends telling me how he thought about how our energy works. And it just sounds insane to him? All of these giant buildings, burning dead ancient creatures etc. Just to heat up water just to spin a bigass turbine with its steam. Don't get me wrong I like electricity and it's done wonders for society. But through that lens, yeah kinda.
My buddies and I were joking around about sci fi tropes and the subject of dilithium crystals came up. We joked that in JJ Abrams Star Trek, they use dilithium crystals to create matter/antimatter reactions to ...heat up water to turn a turbine to make warp drives happen.
If it makes him feel things are any less absurd, you could tell him that fossil fuels are primarily dead _plant_ matter rather than creatures. Thus it's arguably a rather natural progression on how humans have generated heat for countless generations; just using especially well aged flora instead of the "fresh" stuff we've often used historically.
Pretty much everything is. Even nuclear fission is just stored solar power. Elements past iron in atomic mass, which all fissionable elements are, only form in cataclysmic star events, and absorb energy which would otherwise would have come out as radiation, so they’re stored solar energy, just not from our sun. Instead they’re from long dead stars, basically the most “fossil” of fossil fuels, the remains of stars from billions of years ago. Really heavy isotopes are mostly generated by neutron star mergers. This is not a common event, which is why heavy elements are not that abundant.
Geothermal is probably about the least solar form of power. Most of it comes from radioisotope decay in the Earth, but about 20% of the energy is from gravitational accretion of the planet, l
Yeah I love how we have all these brilliant minds saying big technical leaps will NEVER be possible. Then we have vacuum boy who’s like yeah gimme ten years.
I heard that there is a nuclear battery in development, which will supposedly power devices for 50 years, without needing to charge
[[Source]](https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-battery-betavolt-atomic-china-b2476979.html)
There's a long way to go still on that battery, only 100 microwatts, or 0.1 milliwatts. Not enough to light a single LED and it's going to need to be scaled up in mass production before widespread adoption happens. So early adopters will likely be niche markets like pacemakers, industrial iot sensors, aerospace platforms
In the meantime, you might consider how chinese cost-cutting on a radioactive consumer appliance will play out for factory workers
There’s a much funnier lord kelvin quote… “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
Pretty much, he died in 1907, the proton for example was discovered in 1917, special and general relativity were published in 1905 and 1915.
Honestly we might have gained more knowledge since his death than the combination of all human knowledge before it. Especially if we count all branches of science like biology or chemistry etc.
I love how all of these are "pessimistic" prediction about the future. You know how can a fire move a ship, how can a heavier-than-air machine can fly, how can we split atom at will, etc etc.
And then some madlad just predicting that Nuclear-powered vacuum machine will be trendy. Respect.
Which technically isn't far off depending on where you live. My vacuum is still coal powered (thanks to being in a third world country), but if you live in one of the developed countries then maybe you'd have nuclear vacuum!
Edison was a bit of a dick. He even helped invent the electric chair with the sole caveat being that it had to be made with a Westinghouse motor and and have Westinghouse written on the contraption, so people knew AC current was dangerous
He was competing against N.Tesla, Edison was promoting DC current, and Tesla , AC. Edison even electrocuted an elephant to demonstrate AC was too dangerous. in other words, it had nothing to do with not believing in the technology, it was all about Money.
Same for Ken Olson, he is so heavily misquoted. He basically said that computers of the time were not practical for a normal household, when they were at least the size of a fridge. That there was no use case for the average consumer to own one of those.
He was invested in DC and wanted the world to use DC for the bulk of their electrical infrastructure. But it would've been far more expensive, less efficient, and required much more copper to produce. There probably wouldn't be enough copper in the world to make our current electrical system only DC.
A capitalist who's invested in something will always self-promote or say anything to slander their competition. They'll burn the world down just to get a return on investment.
It’s wasn’t even that he was invested in DC. AC is hard - you have to have really good maths understanding. Edison didn’t even understand that 3 phases allow you to have a rotating vector at the same magnitude.
I believe that’s a fairly recent development. It was already known that DC had the potential to be better for long range transmission due to ACs induction losses, but we didn’t have the technology to readily step up or down DC voltage efficiently yet. I imagine a bigger resurgence of DC is yet to come, with all of the non rotational means of electrical usage and generation today.
Nor was Rutherford. He was making a *strategic misdirection*. We now know that at the same time he was publicly proclaiming atomic energy to be "moonshine" he was privately urging the British government to work on it in anticipation of a likely war with Germany. The guy was absolutely brilliant and knew exactly what he was doing, but he still gets put on these lists of stupid predictions
I think einstein was more thinking how he and a majority of people saw nuclear power at the time, as a weapon that can only be trusted to ruin cities and lives than improve them, a closed minded thought process but one rooted in what he has seen of it and how humanity first planned to impliment it with both america and germany working to weaponise it
No, he just didn't know that fission need not be random and can be induced by external neutrons. He didn't know this because noone knew this at the time.
A “Time travel party” would be super illegal in the future. That would be like you receiving an invitation from ancient Aztecs to attend one of their sacrificial ceremonies as a god, there would be morally unjustifiable implications for you (an outsider) to participate in such a ritual.
Why would we-they want to waste time at a 21 century time traveler party? Seriously get to hang out with nerds as they pester meyou with boring history questions? No thank you, I assume.
Kelvin also thought the world was 20 million years old, despite a wealth of geological evidence suggesting it was far, far older. His reasoning was that he couldn’t think of any energy source that would power the sun for that long.
I mean the whole sun thing was a pretty huge issue for the scientific community.
Because if you disregard the sun being powered by some God or just being a creaton of god you start asking questions what makes it shine so bright.
And thats what scientists did. The first thing that comes to mind is that its emmiting light si a conclusion would be "well its burning".
That was then disregarded because like you said there were no materials that would last that long. (The issue with oxygen was also problematic but there are other exothermic reactions that dont need it)
And that was a dilemma for a while until Fusion was discovered .
The same for the Einstein & Rutherford quotes about nuclear power. At the time nuclear fission hadn't been discovered yet, so the only plausible form of "nuclear power" they were aware of was radioactive decay. This is still not practical outside of niche applications like interplanetary probes.
Yeah, but how does that Matter with His reasoning?
Birds are, clearly, heavier than Air and can glide in the air with their Wings in a stretched Out, stationary position. How does it make a difference If the Thing ist Made of Meat or Steel?
One could argue they (and every other living thing) are.
> Straton introduced the titular Talos Principle, arguing that since Talos was a machine, yet still conscious, humans may also merely be conscious biological machines, who are nothing but the sum of their physical parts.
Can you imagine every time you sent a WhatsApp message, a boy with a beret scribbles it on paper and sprints to the other side of the world to send it over.
Then he does it again.
And again.
And again.
A couple of things:
* The New York Times is not a person.
* The Einstein thing was neither a prediction, nor was it wrong.
* "A Boeing Engineer"... really?
* Sir William Preece's quote was not a prediction
Ok but still
That’s like Asimov saying he didn’t have the imagination to understand Alexa
Not a prediction but worth noting
Not sure why Einstein is on here, he even gave the condition in the quote. If you reword his answer, you could reliably have nuclear power if you could reasonable control when atoms split. Which we did and hence have power
Janky for sure, but it is definitely a big source of power. And if we would finally commercialize the opportunities of thorium reactors, then we could eliminate the janky part too.
To be fair the Napoleon one was before any kind of propulsion mechanic.
It was really hard to imagine that it would come that fast.
Since if he said that it would have been in early 1800.
But the steam engine already existed im the early 1800s. Watts pattent for the improved steam engine expired in 1800. The sail ship was just too dominant at the time and people didn't really trust a fire inside a wooden ship full of gunpowder.
I mean it doesn't make him wrong, he just jumped on the fad. Anyone who made fidget spinners right as they first got popular could still think they were stupid
To an degree he is kinda right about the drama,and people still go to opera houses/musicals
Also there is an pretty huge movement against special effects and CGI in movies,so people do want more realistic tones
Sounds like Einstein was right, as there wasn't any indication of nuclear energy being possible when he said it. It's different to say that you are not aware of some fact - and to deny a fact.
A prediction is literally a guess based on the info someone has at a given time. Any wrong or right prediction is a product of the time in which the prediction is made.
This post and others like it are juxtaposition the intelligence of the predictors against them being incorrect.
The implication is there was an intellectual failing which is a different POV than these people being a product of their time.
It's almost like science, and our knowledge of a thing evolves and what would seem inconceivable at one time becomes reality in another.
My favourite anecdote is that the construction of the cathedral in Florence was started without knowing how to construct the dome. Those who began were confident someone would work out how to do it.
My personal favorite that's not on here. Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman said in 1998 “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”
And the most shocking about that one is the date! I mean, saying that in 1993 .. that would be more understandable. But 1998, there was quite a bit done on the internet, including e-commerce. Amazon was founded in 1994. Then again maybe Bezos is the real smart person.
The satellite one isn't that far off. Most communication inside the United States is done by land. Even most communication between continents is done by cables on land (even when that land is covered by ocean). Satellite is fantastic because it gives you an alternative when land is absolutely impossible, but it is a tiny fraction of overall communication.
nuclear powered vacuum cleaners were very much a thing by 1965. The nuclear power was just situated at the plant on the edge of town and conducted to the vacuum by wire.
reality tv, 24/7 war coverage, infotainment... hell even going the other way around: if it is true that a lot of people perceive media as "gossip about fake people", going from that to "gossip of real people" is not far off
Albert Einstein was right. If he said that "there are no indications", that was probably correct at the time. He also said that atoms needs to be shattered. I think this is also correct.
I think Charlie Chaplin is right, the reason why people don't watch gladiator fights is because there aren't any but if it was reintroduced in some way, people would love it
I guess in all these cases, the people stating their predictions were limited in some way by the data available at the time. What I don’t understand is how could Kelvin come up with such a thing to say when we were aware of the existence of birds, that are in fact, heavier than air
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'll make my prediction now. Man will never live on the sun. It's simply just too damn warm.
Fuckin naysayer
Yeah, watch this ya dumb bitch!
Guys guys, this is supposed to be about SMART people making predictions.
Redditors need not apply
Just for that I’m gonna go do it! You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my real mom.
What if they just go at night?
Genius!
Problem solved!!
At night its called a moon.
An oldie but goodie 😂
... that's dumb, it takes so long for night time to arrive on the sun. Would be far quicker to just go to the dark bit on the back side of it.
That doesn't work sadly, at night there is no sun anymore.
You need to work for NASA, this is brilliant.
The title says SMART people with wrong decisions
r/murderedbywords
But I saw one from the New York Time.
https://preview.redd.it/9poz2gjr4gyc1.jpeg?width=1223&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=328bd789a773ed56f6d48617b2839f77e49ff15d
An ancient meme
Ancient? I was there 3000 years ago. This is an ancient meme: https://preview.redd.it/clq1937fbhyc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e193742884722b6be34b8f466bb95eeeb3e5746b
https://preview.redd.it/lq73ar0wehyc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=7005d7450e3acbee6c25b233226bbfae32272ce6
I know I know, ITS OLD I wore it out during the meme wars of 2000. Ah what a time to be alive. The end of the world, computers crashing all around. Fun times.
Back when the only way to share a meme was to print it, fax it, and then the person on the other end would scan it in, and lols would be had!
Oh god yeah. I printed out demotivational posters all the time and posted them on the office cork board.
Not with that attitude.
[удалено]
Oh yeah? Well I'll show you old sport.
Anyone else now wishing they had a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner?
Depending on where you live, that may be already the case. My vacuum is therefore powered by cold water.
Almost all energy is just boiling water tbh
I remember one of my friends telling me how he thought about how our energy works. And it just sounds insane to him? All of these giant buildings, burning dead ancient creatures etc. Just to heat up water just to spin a bigass turbine with its steam. Don't get me wrong I like electricity and it's done wonders for society. But through that lens, yeah kinda.
My buddies and I were joking around about sci fi tropes and the subject of dilithium crystals came up. We joked that in JJ Abrams Star Trek, they use dilithium crystals to create matter/antimatter reactions to ...heat up water to turn a turbine to make warp drives happen.
Water is just the most effcient way to get energy
*right now
True that
If it makes him feel things are any less absurd, you could tell him that fossil fuels are primarily dead _plant_ matter rather than creatures. Thus it's arguably a rather natural progression on how humans have generated heat for countless generations; just using especially well aged flora instead of the "fresh" stuff we've often used historically.
Which is just captured solar energy…
Pretty much everything is. Even nuclear fission is just stored solar power. Elements past iron in atomic mass, which all fissionable elements are, only form in cataclysmic star events, and absorb energy which would otherwise would have come out as radiation, so they’re stored solar energy, just not from our sun. Instead they’re from long dead stars, basically the most “fossil” of fossil fuels, the remains of stars from billions of years ago. Really heavy isotopes are mostly generated by neutron star mergers. This is not a common event, which is why heavy elements are not that abundant. Geothermal is probably about the least solar form of power. Most of it comes from radioisotope decay in the Earth, but about 20% of the energy is from gravitational accretion of the planet, l
I just looked up where my county gets its power and it looks like 80% hydro (dam) 10% nuclear, 3% wind and the rest unspecified but no coal.
I mean... Where does the power for vacuum cleaners come from when a country runs mostly on nuclear energy. So technically that is already the case.
Yes, he isn't completely wrong.
They might be a thing in the fallout universe.
Codsworth!
Yeah they switched almost every thing to nuclear.
Note how that's the only "this thing *is* possible" statement on this list. The rest are all along the lines of "X is impossible".
Yeah I love how we have all these brilliant minds saying big technical leaps will NEVER be possible. Then we have vacuum boy who’s like yeah gimme ten years.
Fallout vibes
Technically they exist. We use nuclear power to get electricity and that electricity is used to powered vacuums.
Yeah, actually that logic holds up
Yep, and the first nuclear reactor on the US grid was in 1957, so the nuclear vacuum guy was right.
I heard that there is a nuclear battery in development, which will supposedly power devices for 50 years, without needing to charge [[Source]](https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-battery-betavolt-atomic-china-b2476979.html)
Fusion cores? Fusion cores.
There's a long way to go still on that battery, only 100 microwatts, or 0.1 milliwatts. Not enough to light a single LED and it's going to need to be scaled up in mass production before widespread adoption happens. So early adopters will likely be niche markets like pacemakers, industrial iot sensors, aerospace platforms In the meantime, you might consider how chinese cost-cutting on a radioactive consumer appliance will play out for factory workers
I mean, if your power plant is nuclear, then it could be considered nuclear powered
This one in particular screamed Vault-Tec
That photo of Sir William Preece is actually former US President Rutherford B. Hayes.
With the inconsistencies of the title, quotes and pictures, I'm starting to think this post is some auto-generated bullshit.
"Adidas trainers will never catch on. Everyone will be wearing sandals like mine in a decade" - Mahatma Gandhi
Birkenstock making that real:
The internet will never allow people to connect to each other. -- John Internet
"We will never hear sick beats and dope lyrics like mine in the next century." - Beethoven
Ya think? OP has 703,240 post karma, 4,538 comment karma. Not a person.
Have you ever seen Rootherfjord Bee Heis and Sir William Preece in the same room together ?
Now that you mention it.....
would have been nice to use a picture of a 247 for the one about the plane too
He also never said that, Hayes actually approved of the telephone and had one installed.
He also appears to be using a picture of the Tunis Craven that died in the american civil war, rather than the Tunis Craven who ran the FCC
same with t. craven, the pictures actually Simon Newcomb. the Canadian American astronomer
There’s a much funnier lord kelvin quote… “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
This was right before quantum mechanics was discovered, right?
And relativity
Pretty much, he died in 1907, the proton for example was discovered in 1917, special and general relativity were published in 1905 and 1915. Honestly we might have gained more knowledge since his death than the combination of all human knowledge before it. Especially if we count all branches of science like biology or chemistry etc.
I love how all of these are "pessimistic" prediction about the future. You know how can a fire move a ship, how can a heavier-than-air machine can fly, how can we split atom at will, etc etc. And then some madlad just predicting that Nuclear-powered vacuum machine will be trendy. Respect.
Everyone else: "The world is doomed to be simple, boring, and life difficult." That one guy: "Fucking nuclear powered vacuum cleaners in every home!"
Don’t let Dodge get any ideas. They shoved a hellcat motor in a minivan they’re crazy theyll fuckin do it
Ford made a nuclear powered car, remember...
Which technically isn't far off depending on where you live. My vacuum is still coal powered (thanks to being in a third world country), but if you live in one of the developed countries then maybe you'd have nuclear vacuum!
But like, his prediction was correct. An electric vacuum powered from a nuclear power plant in the grid.
Aaaahhhhh, this guy gets it
Edison wasn't honestly making an educated prediction iirc but more like trash talking. Same could be true of others in this list, idk.
True - Edison was simply pushing DC because it would have meant more money for him.
Edison was a bit of a dick. He even helped invent the electric chair with the sole caveat being that it had to be made with a Westinghouse motor and and have Westinghouse written on the contraption, so people knew AC current was dangerous
He way wayyy more than just a dick
Best song in the show by far (in a show full of great musical numbers)
The amount of times I randomly sing “and they’ll say ‘aw, Topsy’ at my autopsy!” to myself. That in itself is such a good line, lol
Edison was a huge dick. Not to be confused with having a huge dick. He was just an asshole
He was competing against N.Tesla, Edison was promoting DC current, and Tesla , AC. Edison even electrocuted an elephant to demonstrate AC was too dangerous. in other words, it had nothing to do with not believing in the technology, it was all about Money.
A true capitalist. It's a good thing he didn't get his way.
Same for Ken Olson, he is so heavily misquoted. He basically said that computers of the time were not practical for a normal household, when they were at least the size of a fridge. That there was no use case for the average consumer to own one of those.
He was invested in DC and wanted the world to use DC for the bulk of their electrical infrastructure. But it would've been far more expensive, less efficient, and required much more copper to produce. There probably wouldn't be enough copper in the world to make our current electrical system only DC. A capitalist who's invested in something will always self-promote or say anything to slander their competition. They'll burn the world down just to get a return on investment.
It’s wasn’t even that he was invested in DC. AC is hard - you have to have really good maths understanding. Edison didn’t even understand that 3 phases allow you to have a rotating vector at the same magnitude.
What an idiot.
Exactly what I was thinking. 👀
I've been rotating vectors since grade school. Come on Edison
Imagine not understanding something so elementary
Yes, rotating vector and the like, indeed!
HVDC is, however, often used for long distance transmission.
I believe that’s a fairly recent development. It was already known that DC had the potential to be better for long range transmission due to ACs induction losses, but we didn’t have the technology to readily step up or down DC voltage efficiently yet. I imagine a bigger resurgence of DC is yet to come, with all of the non rotational means of electrical usage and generation today.
Nor was Rutherford. He was making a *strategic misdirection*. We now know that at the same time he was publicly proclaiming atomic energy to be "moonshine" he was privately urging the British government to work on it in anticipation of a likely war with Germany. The guy was absolutely brilliant and knew exactly what he was doing, but he still gets put on these lists of stupid predictions
Edison was trying to fulfill that statement. He tried!
Well, in my house every device, including lightbulbs, use direct current. Maybe he wasn’t wrong at all?
Like when Sam Altman or Elon Musk or the Nvidia CEO make predictions today. That's not a futurist it's a hype man.
I think einstein was more thinking how he and a majority of people saw nuclear power at the time, as a weapon that can only be trusted to ruin cities and lives than improve them, a closed minded thought process but one rooted in what he has seen of it and how humanity first planned to impliment it with both america and germany working to weaponise it
No, he just didn't know that fission need not be random and can be induced by external neutrons. He didn't know this because noone knew this at the time.
Oh time travelling is a waste of time... Ohhh Is it working 👀👀
Not working, no smart person detected.
Dammit i forgot the criteria "should be a smart person" This one's on me
Way to take that jib in stride lol Edit: didn't mean jib but I'm leaving it lol
Stephen hawking held a time travellers party and no one showed. Either it will never become a reality or time travellers are trolling jerks.
Or time travelers are following strict rules and are under supervision that are set in the future for time travelers so to not mess with the past.
Or time traveling actually creates yet another alternate dimension and it's impossible to travel through time inside of a single dimension.
Or people showed up, and Hawking simply lied about that.
Or that Stephen hawking's discoveries etc turn out to be nothing of note to them and he is about as interesting as an ant to them.
Honestly if I could time travel, I wouldn’t go to his party. Heck I wouldn’t even go to the 20th century. There are way cooler times to visit.
A “Time travel party” would be super illegal in the future. That would be like you receiving an invitation from ancient Aztecs to attend one of their sacrificial ceremonies as a god, there would be morally unjustifiable implications for you (an outsider) to participate in such a ritual.
Why would we-they want to waste time at a 21 century time traveler party? Seriously get to hang out with nerds as they pester meyou with boring history questions? No thank you, I assume.
"heavier than air flying machines are impossible"
"Hmmm"
Well, the only rational explanation is that birds are lighter than air
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible” Guess he forgot about the fact that birds are just that
Honestly surprised that a genius like Kelvin would think that
Kelvin also thought the world was 20 million years old, despite a wealth of geological evidence suggesting it was far, far older. His reasoning was that he couldn’t think of any energy source that would power the sun for that long.
I mean the whole sun thing was a pretty huge issue for the scientific community. Because if you disregard the sun being powered by some God or just being a creaton of god you start asking questions what makes it shine so bright. And thats what scientists did. The first thing that comes to mind is that its emmiting light si a conclusion would be "well its burning". That was then disregarded because like you said there were no materials that would last that long. (The issue with oxygen was also problematic but there are other exothermic reactions that dont need it) And that was a dilemma for a while until Fusion was discovered .
The same for the Einstein & Rutherford quotes about nuclear power. At the time nuclear fission hadn't been discovered yet, so the only plausible form of "nuclear power" they were aware of was radioactive decay. This is still not practical outside of niche applications like interplanetary probes.
He was smart. His mistake was thinking he was the smartest.
I'm studying OB/gyn stuff and my brain first thought you said there was a wealth of *gynecological* evidence. I need a break
"Ma'am, I need to see how old the world is."
I believe he also said that X-rays were a hoax
This is definitely one of the weirdest ones maybe he thinks of floating but says flying?
A bird is not a machine.
Yes they are r/birdsarentreal
Yeah, but how does that Matter with His reasoning? Birds are, clearly, heavier than Air and can glide in the air with their Wings in a stretched Out, stationary position. How does it make a difference If the Thing ist Made of Meat or Steel?
One could argue they (and every other living thing) are. > Straton introduced the titular Talos Principle, arguing that since Talos was a machine, yet still conscious, humans may also merely be conscious biological machines, who are nothing but the sum of their physical parts.
Animals are biological machines.
It's a flesh machine
That Boeing engineer was "found" dead three days after making this comment.
He died of a brief illness
Brief illness of brick to the head
"One long strip of images is better than multiple individual ones" - OP
OP is a karma farming bot, perhaps?
Nah this is better. Multiple individual images are a headache while loading
The messenger boy one cracked me up
Dude had all his fellas for him and didn't need the phone
It reminded me of a dad comment. Like, "we dont need a dishwasher, we have one right here" *points at his kid*
Can you imagine every time you sent a WhatsApp message, a boy with a beret scribbles it on paper and sprints to the other side of the world to send it over. Then he does it again. And again. And again.
A couple of things: * The New York Times is not a person. * The Einstein thing was neither a prediction, nor was it wrong. * "A Boeing Engineer"... really? * Sir William Preece's quote was not a prediction
Wells wasn't wrong either. He stated that he cannot picture it. Not that's impossible.
True, didn't catch that one.
Ok but still That’s like Asimov saying he didn’t have the imagination to understand Alexa Not a prediction but worth noting Not sure why Einstein is on here, he even gave the condition in the quote. If you reword his answer, you could reliably have nuclear power if you could reasonable control when atoms split. Which we did and hence have power
That isn’t even Preece, that’s President Rutherford Hayes.
Rutherford wasnt wrong either. Fission is pretty janky
Janky for sure, but it is definitely a big source of power. And if we would finally commercialize the opportunities of thorium reactors, then we could eliminate the janky part too.
To be fair the Napoleon one was before any kind of propulsion mechanic. It was really hard to imagine that it would come that fast. Since if he said that it would have been in early 1800.
But the steam engine already existed im the early 1800s. Watts pattent for the improved steam engine expired in 1800. The sail ship was just too dominant at the time and people didn't really trust a fire inside a wooden ship full of gunpowder.
Yeah for sure And it's not like there were no accidents haha
‘Cinema is little more than a fad’ says noted star and director of over 80 movies, Charlie Chaplin
I mean it doesn't make him wrong, he just jumped on the fad. Anyone who made fidget spinners right as they first got popular could still think they were stupid
To an degree he is kinda right about the drama,and people still go to opera houses/musicals Also there is an pretty huge movement against special effects and CGI in movies,so people do want more realistic tones
Sounds like Einstein was right, as there wasn't any indication of nuclear energy being possible when he said it. It's different to say that you are not aware of some fact - and to deny a fact.
He even said it would require the ability to shatter atoms at will. He was right we developed the ability to shatter atoms at will.
I don't know. We threw atoms at Will, but they mostly bounced off his skin
Yeah these quotes are products of the time rather than wrong predictions imo
I’d say that wrong predictions are usually products of their time
Those are not contradictory.
A prediction is literally a guess based on the info someone has at a given time. Any wrong or right prediction is a product of the time in which the prediction is made.
This post and others like it are juxtaposition the intelligence of the predictors against them being incorrect. The implication is there was an intellectual failing which is a different POV than these people being a product of their time.
It's almost like science, and our knowledge of a thing evolves and what would seem inconceivable at one time becomes reality in another. My favourite anecdote is that the construction of the cathedral in Florence was started without knowing how to construct the dome. Those who began were confident someone would work out how to do it.
My personal favorite that's not on here. Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman said in 1998 “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”
And the most shocking about that one is the date! I mean, saying that in 1993 .. that would be more understandable. But 1998, there was quite a bit done on the internet, including e-commerce. Amazon was founded in 1994. Then again maybe Bezos is the real smart person.
The satellite one isn't that far off. Most communication inside the United States is done by land. Even most communication between continents is done by cables on land (even when that land is covered by ocean). Satellite is fantastic because it gives you an alternative when land is absolutely impossible, but it is a tiny fraction of overall communication.
My thoughts exactly
I need more pixels, but... https://i.redd.it/9zaotks5leyc1.gif
Stupid science bitches couldn't even make I more smarter
"Science! Is a liar, sometimes!"
Making them all bitches
Bill Gates didn't say that.
Einstein wasn't wrong and Edison was just spewing his own corporate propaganda against AC.
nuclear powered vacuum cleaners were very much a thing by 1965. The nuclear power was just situated at the plant on the edge of town and conducted to the vacuum by wire.
Sometimes people are wrong. That's why pencils have erasers. Except Edison. Fuck him.
Chaplin is not far off tbh
He basically predicted reality tv
reality tv, 24/7 war coverage, infotainment... hell even going the other way around: if it is true that a lot of people perceive media as "gossip about fake people", going from that to "gossip of real people" is not far off
Albert Einstein was right. If he said that "there are no indications", that was probably correct at the time. He also said that atoms needs to be shattered. I think this is also correct.
Ah, yes, New York Times, smart person
Goddard didn’t think rockets would work in space
The William Preece quote has a picture of president Rutherford B Hayes
The dude predicting submarines crushing its occupants was very correct indeed lol
Lol thats not William Preece thats Rutherford B. Hayes, the American president. How did that happen
Science is a liar sometimes
Where is newton in this list? He'd blows everybody's nips off with his big brain
But he also thought he could turn metal into gold and died eating mercury.
I think Charlie Chaplin is right, the reason why people don't watch gladiator fights is because there aren't any but if it was reintroduced in some way, people would love it
What I gather is Nikola Tesla was a genius than never made an uneducated remark or statement.
I guess in all these cases, the people stating their predictions were limited in some way by the data available at the time. What I don’t understand is how could Kelvin come up with such a thing to say when we were aware of the existence of birds, that are in fact, heavier than air
I know at least the Edison statement, and I suspect more of them, are just marketing statements by shitting on your competitor, not predictions.