[zeven7]

Some people make round wheels better. Some people try to create a better wheel than a round one. Both types are usually good for society. The former is most likely to yield any results at all; the latter, when it yields any results, is most likely to produce massive steps forward.

Where would we be if Einstein had spent all his time trying to improve Newton's gravity rather than reinventing it?

[valarauca1]

    Where would we be if Einstein had spent all his time
    trying to improve Newton's gravity rather than
    reinventing it?

Einstein did just set out to improve Newtonian Mechanics. Special Relativity is just Newtonian Mechanics over the Lorentz Transform.

General Relativity is the implication of Special Relativity being true, generalized for all observers.

Einstein's approach was very much step 1, just repeated 2-3 times.

Special Relativity didn't necessarily destroy Newton's gravity. To be generalized in GR gravity had to stop being force. It was just a natural implication of a prior step.

The idea you can chase a total alien solution nobody supports and pull complete magic out of thin air is rarely true. Normally it is just a myth created by people who don't actually understand the solution or process that attained it.

[zeven7]

General relativity was seen as a huge leap forward at the time, and it still is today. I offer two quotes in support of this:

"As an older frield I must advise you against [generalizing relativity to incorporate gravity] for in the first place you will not succeed, and even if you succeed, no one will believe you." - Max Planck to Einstein, 2 years before Einstein succeeded. It was a big deal to even attempt to do this, and people tried to talk Einstein out of it.

And why did Planck say no one would believe Einstein? Because Einstein was trying to do something fundamentally different; he was trying to create a new kind of wheel.

"Newton, forgive me." - Albert Einstein -- why ask for forgiveness?

Einstein's role was something quite different from the role that most physicists play. Most physicists add small refinements to existing theories. Einstein upended quite a lot of existing physics and replaced it with something new. Newton saw gravity as action at a distance. Einstein showed that it was something quite different.

[cookiecaper]

Einstein got there by starting with the conventional models and knowing it didn't fit, and working on a way to make it fit.

Einstein didn't start out in left field, he didn't set out to invent a new wheel. He just saw some problems in the old one, and suggested an updated wheel that would resolve them. That's the difference. One is being contrarian or experimenting on their own, which is not necessarily wrong and can certainly be useful experience to draw on, but it's just not likely to yield large advancements on its own.

Large advancements occur when someone is current with the cutting edge, accepting of the established truths, and still striving to solve the larger puzzle (which may involve rotating the puzzle pieces that make up parts of the "established truths" -- but you can't get there if you don't have the pieces at your disposal).

Do you suggest that these people set out to make a great terminal emulator, and were eventually driven into the arms of JavaScript as the one true answer to the fundamental problem?

I think it's more likely that they said "Let's try to do this thing that's been done hundreds of times ... IN JAVASCRIPT!!!" And again, there's not anything wrong with that per se. It just doesn't make a good value proposition when you're trying to convince users to use your product.

[valarauca1]

You offer vague platitude where I offer mathematics.

I'll repeat this quote

The idea you can chase a total alien solution nobody supports and pull complete magic out of thin air is rarely true. Normally it is just a myth created by people who don't actually understand the solution or process that attained it.