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Take a step back and look at this for a second... Edison stuck at it long enough that he said "I didn't fail, I found 999 ways not to make a light bulb before I

Take a step back and look at this for a second... Edison stuck at it long enough that he said "I didn't fail, I found 999 ways not to make a light bulb before I found 1 that worked"... that is very telling about the man's character. Those who use the "he had luck on his side" argument undervalue not only his ingenuity, but his dedication to achieving his objective. Perhaps he wasn't born with a passion for inventing - perhaps he was just born with a passion for doing stuff until the goal is reached. Either way, luck had nothing to do with it. His perseverance and passion for finishing the job got him to his goal. What was luck was for the rest of us - we got a light bulb out of the deal. Imagine if he'd had a passion for pottery. We'd have the most amazing dishes right now, but we'd only be able to see them by candlelight...

scintill76 11y ago
I in turn think you undervalue his luck, but obviously we can't know what would have happened if electricity had not been discovered yet. And in turn, one of my points was that if your dream is to invent an affordable light that doesn't need gas or wood, it sure helps a lot (some might call it lucky) if other people already did stuff that helps you. How about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Ore-Milling_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Ore-Milling_Company "I'm going to do something now so different and so much bigger than anything I've ever done before people will forget that my name ever was connected with anything electrical." When it failed, he said "it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it." So how does this reconcile with his "passion for doing stuff until the goal is reached" and "his ingenuity [and] dedication to achieving his objective"? I guess if only he'd tried the 1001st way to mill iron ore, he surely would have succeeded! I almost feel like I've knocked down a strawman by showing somebody wasn't perfect or 100% successful, yet that's another way to phrase my point that you are disagreeing with. There is no way to guarantee success at just any given goal. Sometimes the opportunity to have a good goal fall into your lap, or things to line up in support of the goal you chose, is just luck. If nothing else, there's an element of luck in whether your heart continues beating (even if your goal is within reasonable constraints of life expectancy and health.) Sure, if you care about something, work as hard as you can to find out whether you have that luck. But if you care about other things, maybe be ready to re-prioritize if the luck isn't coming.
studentrob 11y ago
How would you summarize the work that went into making Edison's discoveries possible? Can it be summarized in the same breath while praising his own achievement? Is it possible that some people use the word "luck" here, not as a mechanism to dilute his achievements, but just as a way to simplify what had been done before he started tinkering? Could you be misinterpreting peoples' speech here? Is it reasonable to ask you to attempt to find more than one meaning to peoples' words even if the alternate meanings do not match the exact definition of their words? Would "fortunate" be an acceptable substitute? Could it be that his success was a combination of his own ingenuity and perseverance alongside the work of others?

scintill76 11y ago

I in turn think you undervalue his luck, but obviously we can't know what would have happened if electricity had not been discovered yet. And in turn, one of my points was that if your dream is to invent an affordable light that doesn't need gas or wood, it sure helps a lot (some might call it lucky) if other people already did stuff that helps you. How about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Ore-Milling_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Ore-Milling_Company "I'm going to do something now so different and so much bigger than anything I've ever done before people will forget that my name ever was connected with anything electrical." When it failed, he said "it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it." So how does this reconcile with his "passion for doing stuff until the goal is reached" and "his ingenuity [and] dedication to achieving his objective"? I guess if only he'd tried the 1001st way to mill iron ore, he surely would have succeeded! I almost feel like I've knocked down a strawman by showing somebody wasn't perfect or 100% successful, yet that's another way to phrase my point that you are disagreeing with. There is no way to guarantee success at just any given goal. Sometimes the opportunity to have a good goal fall into your lap, or things to line up in support of the goal you chose, is just luck. If nothing else, there's an element of luck in whether your heart continues beating (even if your goal is within reasonable constraints of life expectancy and health.) Sure, if you care about something, work as hard as you can to find out whether you have that luck. But if you care about other things, maybe be ready to re-prioritize if the luck isn't coming.

studentrob 11y ago

How would you summarize the work that went into making Edison's discoveries possible? Can it be summarized in the same breath while praising his own achievement? Is it possible that some people use the word "luck" here, not as a mechanism to dilute his achievements, but just as a way to simplify what had been done before he started tinkering? Could you be misinterpreting peoples' speech here? Is it reasonable to ask you to attempt to find more than one meaning to peoples' words even if the alternate meanings do not match the exact definition of their words? Would "fortunate" be an acceptable substitute? Could it be that his success was a combination of his own ingenuity and perseverance alongside the work of others?