The "mechanical miracle" that ruined Mark Twain's life

(resobscura.substack.com)

29 points | by benbreen 5 days ago

6 comments

  • s3p 13 minutes ago
    I wish it talked more about how the machine actually worked. It seemed pretty simplistic and glossed over most of the details .
  • NopIdoN 1 hour ago
    I thought this was going to be about Nikola Tesla's vibration machine that made Clemens shit himself
    • Mistletoe 56 minutes ago
      That didn’t ruin his life, merely his shorts.
  • edoceo 34 minutes ago
    Classic angel investor mistake, too much allocated to one investment. Gotta diversify. More smaller checks.
  • kazinator 3 minutes ago
    [delayed]
  • Mistletoe 57 minutes ago
  • cubefox 8 minutes ago
    For some reason the author's proposed lessons don't acknowledge the current elephant in the room.

    > 2) Society uptake of transformative inventions is almost always slower than their proponents expect.

    ... except for LLMs.

    > 3) Transformative technologies succeed by redesigning a task, and usually not by simply trying to reproduce the existing forms of human labor.

    ... except for LLMs.