[chrneu]

the internet really needs to stfu about tesla and get over that oatmeal comic that spawned a billion internet myths. dude was a decent inventor but suffered from chronic mental health issues and, in his lifetime, wasted so much time/energy/money and burned so many bridges with his horrible attitude. there's a reason most people didnt like him in his day, he was a depressed asshole who alienated everyone around him, and yes I know he was likely gay in a time when that wasn't cool. the fact still remains; his inventions are massively overblown by internet nerds.

the podcaster Sebastian Major from "Our Fake History" did a looonnngg patreon episode on tesla and debunked most of the weird myths around tesla. Sebastian doesn't have a vendetta or anything, it's just amazing how much of the Tesla stuff is just nonsense or is viewed through a very weird bias nowadays. Major also briefly touches on the weird Edison stuff and how the internet has twisted Edison into a villain.

[throw4847285]

Software engineers idolize Tesla because they see themselves as the Tesla (a selfless devotee of the abstract idea of technology) against evil Edisons (businessmen who only care about money and steal other people's ideas). They've basically projected the Jobs/Woz divide back onto two historical figures who, in reality, barely interacted.

The funniest part is that The Oatmeal comic didn't invent this concept, but drew on pre-Internet narratives put forward by The Tesla Society, who were mailing busts of Tesla to universities around the country since the 70s at least. And that organization is explicitly nationalistic and religious, tied to other Serbian-American heritage organizations, and doing events with the Orthodox church.

[balamatom]

> And that organization is explicitly nationalistic and religious

So are many Serbs (more so if emigrants from atheist-socialist Yugoslavia, or descendants of folks who moved before WW2) as well as many other nations and organizations (America itself lol). So are many Something-Or-Other-American individuals and communities.

I presume that the organization(s) sending Tesla busts, being American-rooted, have had no illusions about which matters will forever remain impossible to communicate to Americans. (Such as anything not reducible to paperclip optimization.)

Instead, I consider it more likely that the point of promoting Tesla was not to impress anyone in America, but to uplift Serbia and generally the South Slavs of the Balkans who'd only gained national sovereignty in Tesla's day: "look, our heritage has already produced an honest-to-god American inventor half a jebani vek ago, so you guys have zero excuse to act as if you're stuck in the middle ages - do join the cargo cult of mordorn civilization instead, will ya - we got value to extract from ya!"

>They've basically projected the Jobs/Woz divide back onto two historical figures who, in reality, barely interacted.

I'd rather say this has been projected for them, but by whom is anyone's guess; not like there's a shadowy cabal operating. Besides said Serbian-American heritage promoters and whatever their game is, I guess - but here we're not talking mid-XX century Serbian diaspora any more, but a "culturally nonspecific" audience.

Much safer to call it "a hivemind situation" when nobody knows where some idea comes from, and nobody is accountable for rebroadcasting it either, since it comes pre-tagged as Good and True and Useful and it is wrongthink to doubt those. Especially when the idea is so obviously Useful for excusing nonaction. ("I can't be bothered to learn the first thing about electricity, even the history of why I have access to it in the first place - but now that Tesla guy I've vaguely heard of, he was the great genius of the people! What better reason to Experience a Positive Emotion!")

[elar_verole]

People need heroes. It's like the Keanu Reeves or Musk era, all the ""badass"" stories about this or that soldier / local hero / w/e that are very often overblown and get further and further away from the initial facts every time they resurface. No hate here, just noticing there is a weird visceral need to distill stories to their most essential, good vs evil, and the Tesla v Edison thing embodies this perfectly I think.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Keanu Reeves and Nikola Tesla to a degree as well, are decent figures.

Aside from all the cult classics Keanu is part of like john wick and the matrix, even discounting that, he is a good person in it of itself who is genuinely humble and might be one of the best persons within hollywood.

What I feel pissed about is that people like Andrew Tate and others like them took the concept of Matrix and the contributions Keanu did within that movie and tried to capitalize on that cult classic decades after in the most toxic form that might be the issue if we are talking about an era

To be honest, Nikola tesla is also a great person within the context of his time. GGP's comment is still true but Tesla's contributions can hardly be reinstated and I'd much rather people believe these to be the heros (Keanu/Tesla) rather than Tate/Musk etc.

If I take anything from Keanu, I would like to take his humility/humbleness.

[giancarlostoro]

Tate is just attention hungry. It’s pretty obvious. If you feed no attention to him, he will go back to where he crawled from.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Whilst I agree that Keanu is a most excellent human, he was hardly responsible for the concept of the Matrix. In my opinion, Philip K Dick was a major influence (I'm a fan and consider him the prophet of the modern age), though Gibson's Neuromancer was likely a big influence too. (Also, there's the old Doctor Who episode "The Deadly Assassin" which features the Matrix).

It always seems to me that the far right are bereft of original ideas and always co-opt other pre-existing concepts. There's exceptions, but I always find that right wing works are always lacking humour or irony (c.f. Ayn Rand's works).

[something765478]

> the far right are bereft of original ideas and always co-opt other pre-existing concepts.

That's not unique to them: Good artists copy; great artists steal.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Yes, but I'd have difficulty in pronouncing Andrew Tate as a good or great artist. Maybe con-artist would be the highest that I'd go.

[tomtomtom777]

"It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes. And he annexes everything."

- Oscar Wilde

[ngvrnd]

Except for Keith Moon. All the stories about him are true and if anything underplay the truth. :-)

[boomskats]

I mean yeah, but it's not like the guy's 'horrible attitude' came from nowhere. He naiively romanticised migrating to the US thinking the game was about scientific progress rather than capital, and so he got repeatedly screwed over by almost everyone around him for decades.

If I was in his position I'm not sure I'd have taken it as well as he did.

[wil421]

There’s no way he suddenly developed autism or whatever mental illness plagued him upon arrival to American. Like most absolute geniuses he struggled in other areas. He said he had visions as a child.

[balamatom]

But there is: his neurotype suddenly became considered "whatever mental illness" upon arrival in Eugenicsland.

[KaiserPro]

> he was a depressed asshole who alienated everyone around him,

enough Edison bashing!

Look, Tesla was a weirdo, but, he was a very good inventor who actually invented shit.

Edison was an industrialist, who knew the price of everything, and wasn't above spending a lot of money to destroy a rival.

Do I idolise Tesla? no, but I respect his understanding of high frequency electronics with really primitive tooling.

Do I despise Edison? also no, but he is a massive prick. Excellent buisness man, but an abrasive prick never the less.

[anonymousiam]

Tesla was an outstanding technologist, but a poor businessman. He had a "vision" (actually more than one) about how his ideas could transform the world. Some of his ideas were amazing, but he was swindled out of his patents because the investors knew he had a passion and wanted to see them in use. The polyphase AC motor or fluorescent light bulb could have made him millions.

IMHO, the vision he had about universal free electricity (transmitted wirelessly) was the dumbest. It was a novel idea, and he invested a lot (his time and other people's money) in it. The problem with his idea is that there was no way to monetize it (and profit from it). (There were also the technical issues of the power loss over distance (1/R^2), the harm to the environment, and the interference with radio communications.)

Edison was quite a villain. He stole many of his "inventions", and orchestrated a PR campaign against Tesla touting the "evils" of AC power. AFAIK, the electric chair was either invented or inspired by him.

I know these things because I've read many books on various topics related to Tesla, and all of this knowledge predates the Internet.

[fsh]

Essentially none of this is true. The war of the currents was between Edison and Westinghouse, not Tesla. Tesla's downfall was that he turned into a crackpot who rejected modern science, such as Maxwell's equations, and started defrauding investors. Edison was an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, and the electric chair used AC simply because it is much more deadly.

[anonymousiam]

Westinghouse was using Tesla's patents. Get your facts right.

Every so often, I see or hear a new narrative of history that does not align with reality. I used to wonder how this could happen, but one of my sons explained to me that in his college history courses (in multiple accredited universities), the professors would teach their version of history, using their notes as the course material. They circularly cite other like-minded revisionist material, and most of their students just accept what the professor says as fact. He has seen this again and again in both lower and upper division courses.

This is a disturbing trend, and aside from "woke culture" indoctrination, I don't know what's behind it, or why these professors are not held to basic academic standards.

https://geekhistory.com/content/george-westinghouse-used-tes...

[chipster_f00]

> The war of the currents was between Edison and Westinghouse [...]

Thank you for quashing the gross misinformation. I was going to post this, but searched and found your comment. `\m/`

(I learned of the "Current War" in the 70's, since the Edison Museum was in my "backyard" -- and was a common destination of local school field trips.)

[HWR_14]

Edison did not invent the electric chair. When the inventors were trying to choose between using AC or DC he helped them decide on AC as part of his PR campaign.

[anonymousiam]

These (and many other) sources cite Edison funding a campaign to use AC to electrocute animals, to show that it was more dangerous than DC.

https://www.energy.gov/articles/war-currents-ac-vs-dc-power

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-cruel-animal-testing-be...

[tibbydudeza]

Did he also not fall in love with a pigeon ?.

[aaronbrethorst]

We’re talking about Nikola Tesla, not Elon Musk, and I don’t think Musk is gay.

[beAbU]

I think you need to read the post you are responding to again.