General > General Technical Chat

Why do the big "guns" get more credits for their technical skills?

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wraper:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on September 21, 2022, 01:58:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 21, 2022, 01:39:30 pm ---But will also state that Edison and Musk are prime examples of people who are victims of another kind of cult, those deriding them as mere thief's of others work.  Obviously their products depend on the creative work of a great many people.  While I don't personally know, I doubt if Musk is the actual creator of most of the innovations in the Falcon 9 or the Tesla car.  But he is the one with the product vision, and the one with the commitment to carrying it through.  Same with Edison.  People of that sort deserve respect.

--- End quote ---

Yes, it works both ways when you are in the spotlights. I would not want to walk in their shoes. That kind of being known and having money also brings a lot of problems.

--- End quote ---

Stray Electron:

--- Quote from: magic on September 21, 2022, 07:44:28 am ---Because in the world as it exists today their marketing skills are more valuable than your technical skills, of which they had next to none by the way ;)

--- End quote ---


   EXACTLY.  This is why Westinghouse is a giant company today and Nick Tesla died a pauper.  Also why Winchester is a giant company company and Benjamin T Henry is almost unknown.  Colt firearms is another large company but their fundamental breakthrough was developed by Elisha Root. 

  Oliver Winchester (originally a shirt manufacturer), George Westinghouse and others had the vision to see the potential of the inventions made by other people such as N. Tesla.   The only inventor that I can readily think of that was able to commercially develop their own invention and profit from it was Edison. 

   Like him or hate him, Elon Musk is in the same position today.  He is leveraging the work of others. 

Stray Electron:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on September 21, 2022, 01:54:37 pm ---

Unfortunately that is something we will never know to be true or not. Because it is not like an experiment that can be done over and over with different sets of parameters.

--- End quote ---


  Actually that's not true.  There are a large number of inventions or discoveries that have been made by more than one person sometimes almost simultaneously and other times centuries apart, but for various reasons that person or that country failed to develop that idea.  The "Connections" TV series featuring James Burke went into the history of many of those and often talked about why one failed and the other succeeded.  A couple of things that I recall, Charles Babbages' Analytical Engine failed as a commercial product because it was too complex to be built in quantity by the mechanical production methods of it's day.  2nd The Chinese invented a large number of items long before the west but they remained novelties in China whereas the west produced them in large quantities and it became an everyday item that was available to enough people so that it often changed history.  Paper, books, and mass printing and magnetic compasses are a good examples of that.  You could even argue that the simplicity of written characters in European languages was a great advancement over the complex characters of Egypt, mid-eastern, China and Japan and that beginning in about the 14th century that lead to many more books become available and more readership and all of that in turn lead to more rapid technical, social, religious and economic  development of the west over the east.

  The social history of gunpowder and the development of effective rockets, cannon and hand guns is a great example of being invented in the east but developed in the west. 

wraper:
I see a lot marketing vs technical skills talk. Which is false dichotomy. What are you supposed to market if you have nothing to sell? You need way more skills than that to get breakthrough things done, especially if you are not some rich inheritor but need to start from zero. You need vision, will to take the risk (most startups fail), skill to attract investors, skill to make/manage a functional team that gets the job done, persistence and much much more. And what Musk have chosen to pursue after Paypal are some of the hardest industries, and certainly not not a way how to make an easy money. For example compare SpaceX and Blue Origin. Latter was funded a two years earlier, had way much richer funder (Jeff Bezos), received way larger investment. SpaceX was funded with money that could be considered a joke in the industry, while Bezos invests $1 billion into Blue Origin each year. SpaceX was on brink of failure, the same as Tesla, while Musk could become bankrupt together with them since he invested all of his remaining money for a chance to save them. So what these two companies have achieved? SpaceX lifts astronauts to ISS, F9 lifts more mass to the orbit than all other rockets combined. Made first reusable orbital class rocket boosters, most used of which has flown 14 times already, has largest satellite constellation by far and actually more that the rest of satellites combined. So what was achieved by Blue origin after all of those years and funding... A small penis rocket https://www.google.com/search?q=penis+rocket which cannot reach the orbit and is only good as a few minute microgravity attraction.

pcprogrammer:

--- Quote from: Stray Electron on September 21, 2022, 03:03:00 pm ---There are a large number of inventions or discoveries that have been made by more than one person sometimes almost simultaneously and other times centuries apart, but for various reasons that person or that country failed to develop that idea.  The "Connections" TV series featuring James Burke went into the history of many of those and often talked about why one failed and the other succeeded.  A couple of things that I recall, Charles Babbages' Analytical Engine failed as a commercial product because it was too complex to be built in quantity by the mechanical production methods of it's day.  2nd The Chinese invented a large number of items long before the west but they remained novelties in China whereas the west produced them in large quantities and it became an everyday item that was available to enough people so that it often changed history.  Paper, books, and mass printing and magnetic compasses are a good examples of that.  You could even argue that the simplicity of written characters in European languages was a great advancement over the complex characters of Egypt, mid-eastern, China and Japan and that beginning in about the 14th century that lead to many more books become available and more readership and all of that in turn lead to more rapid technical, social, religious and economic  development of the west over the east.

--- End quote ---

You somewhat stretched what I wrote, and at the same time proofed the rest of my post.

I was referring to it being impossible to repeat the exact same time frame/location setup, with a different set of parameters as to see if it would bring a different outcome or not.

Your history lesson shows that computers and the software for them would still have evolved to what they are today with or without a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs, and that is what I also think. Because it is not a single person who determines the path taken.

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