[AKN #54] Conformity doesn't create genius
also Americans are very confident of our ability to fight animals and some weird ass fossils show up in the Appalachian mountains
Sup homies?
I had a relatively boring week last week.
During the week, I went to work every day and finally utilized my health insurance by going to the doctor for the first time in literal years.
Over the weekend, I stayed in SF. Went to some local bars and parks. Saw friends. Built a closet.
Good time overall.
Not every week needs to be a magical fantasy world.
Sometimes it is OK to live in boring reality.
Looking at you, Gen Z.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: Conformity does not produce genius
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein, probably
Every revolutionary discovery started out as a hypothesis that rubbed the established order the wrong way.
An incomplete list of examples of this phenomenon includes:
Nicolaus Copernicus’s discovery that the sun rather than the Earth was at the center of the universe
Reception by established order at the time:
Mild interest to indifference by the scientific leaders while he was alive.
Religious powers launched a disinformation campaign to discredit idea and bolster geocentrism (featuring Martin Luther of 95 Theses fame!)
In February 1616, Copernicanism was banned, and Galileo (who become a big proponent of teaching the theory after the death of Copernicus) was "to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it... to abandon completely... the opinion that the Sun stands still at the centre of the world and the Earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing."
In 1633, Galileo was convicted of heresy and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Of course, we now know that heliocentrism was a much more accurate model of the universe than geocentrism.
Alfred Wegener’s proposal that Earth's continents had once been a single landmass that had drifted apart
Reception by established order at the time:
He was accused of having contracted "moving crust disease and wandering pole plague," his work dismissed as "delirious ravings," according to the Smithsonian.
The idea was roundly scorned as geologists clung to the notion that the continents had been connected by land bridges, and the mountains created by a shrinking Earth.
Of course, we now consider the idea that all continents used to be one enormous mega land mass called Pangaea an accepted truth.
And we tragically stopped accusing people of contracting “moving crust disease.”
Robert H. Goddard’s desire to send a rocket into space
Reception by established order at the time:
In 1920, a New York Times editorial excoriated him.
"That Professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution," it read, "does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.''
Of course we now not only launch people into space, but we land the rocket back on the ground and re-fucking-launch it.
Hear enough of these stories and it becomes clear that scientific breakthroughs rarely occur from someone following a structured path and encountering zero resistance.
You don’t get breakthroughs by following an established path
More often than not, breakthroughs are made by people who believed in their idea enough that they withstood decades of bullying and sometimes even died without being recognized for their brilliance.
This is where we have to come to terms with something: the people who would stake their entire lives on an idea they believe to be true and no one else believes to be true are weird.
These are weirdos. And I don’t say that in a pejorative sense. I say that in the Merriam Webster dictionary definition of weirdo sense.
“Normal” people want to be loved by everyone else. They want to emulate the people around them.
Weirdos are willing to risk their lives to say “the Sun is the center of the solar system.” They are not wedded to the way things are.
In fact, they might be obsessed with the idea that the world could be different than what is custom today.
Which as Jeremy Giffon explains may actually be their super power:
So before you discount someone who disagrees with you, have you considered that in the words of the great Kanye West:
If you guys want these crazy ideas, these crazy stages, this crazy music, this crazy way of thinking there’s a chance it might come from a crazy person
LAUGH: American confidence when fighting animals
According to a poll on YouGov, Americans are baseline more confident in our ability to beat up animals than people from England.
Few observations:
People from Britain are hilariously intimidated by Geese.
Is there something I don’t know about kangaroos that everyone else does? Like how are people more confident in their ability to beat up a fucking King Cobra than a kangaroo?
The prompt of this survey was “what animals would you be able to beat unarmed?” And 6% of Americans said “Grizzly bear.” Astounding.
LOVE: Fossils in the Appalachian Mountains
I never think about the land I stand on.
How did it get here? Why is there a hill or body of water there?
But when you dig into it, the answers are fascinating.
For example, when you look into the history of the Appalachian mountains, you discover several mind blowing facts as highlighted from this thread:
1. The Appalachian Mountains are astoundingly old
How old? 480 million years old.
Quick context builder, 480 million years is:
100 million years before the first animals walked on land.
Predates The Atlantic Ocean! How can a mountain range be older than a body of water? Answer: Plate tectonics.
2.The vast majority of fossils found in the Appalachian Mountains are from when all life lived in the oceans
Because the mountains are older than animals capacity to walk on land, fossils found in the area are a bit all over the place.
So there are records of coral:
And trilobites:
But even more astounding are finding fossils from times when “life” didn’t even exist!
3. How mountains are made is a fucking wild process
Mountains are made when two enormous chunks of land crash into each other and force a land mass upwards. This is somehow both obvious and mind-blowing.
The Appalachian mountains were made during three separate land crashing into land events.
Here is a look at the third:
Love how Gondwana used this moment to get rid of Florida. Makes sense.
Read the rest of this thread here:
Love how the Internet exposes me to things like this which have just never even crossed my mind.
Now the Internet needs to do its thing and surface a rebuttal thread from a religious fundamentalist.
I think it would read something like this:
TWEET 1: Actually the Appalachian Mountains are roughly 2000 years old. A thread: 1/n
TWEET 2: Basically says so in the Bible /end
Closing time
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?