Reviving an almost 3 years old thread?
Its new to me and very interesting. I wonder what the "inventor" is doing now. TED talks about how all engineers are linear thinkers and how they told him it wouldn't work and raising VC money? Remember they told the Wright brothers it wouldn't work... and also told the Jones brothers ... and the Smith brothers and 1000 other idiots who tried to make bird wings attached to a bicycle.
You know, the explanations how it works and what he has really "invented" are on the first page of the thread.
And there is also a difference between claiming that something isn't gonna work only because nobody has done it before or people don't believe it can be made to work based on the state of technology or past experience (your examples above) and something that is physically impossible to make to work because it violates the known laws of nature (all the "free energy" BS).
When talking about "engineers being linear thinkers" - are you citing Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of Theranos that tried so hard to be the next Steve Jobs that she even dressed like him, black turtlenecks and all? I believe she has said that in one of her (many) TED talks. Now she is being sued for scamming her investors because it so happened that those "linear thinker" engineers were right and all her miraculous innovation was only hot air. If she avoids prison she can consider herself lucky.
Oh no, I think I am wrong - that was Meredith Perry, the CEO of uBeam, the famous ultrasonic phone charging company. Another investor darling, blonde girl that single-handedly solved a problem that others are unable to.
She said that in 2012:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2012/05/02/ubeam-founder-and-ceo-meredith-perry-on-how-to-be-a-technology-innovator-tedx-video-talk/#b8bf735777d0Unfortunately, I have yet to see an ultrasonic charger from this company. (uBeam has been analyzed to death on this forum). They haven't been even able to show an actually working demonstration, despite all the tall claims and millions of USD spent.
And those two example didn't even go against the laws of nature, they were just scams (the former) or totally impractical because of the physics involved (the latter). Go figure ...
This "engineers being unable-to-think-out-of-the-box idiots" argument is really tiring (and insulting), especially when no evidence of the gizmo being promoted actually working is given (an obviously faked Youtube video is not evidence). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In most cases it only shows that the person making that arrogant argument has absolultely no clue what they are talking about. I have met many arrogant fools like that - they rarely made it far in life.