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Everything I Know, Section 6
gist
A comprehensivist can plunge in depth without losing the whole, then return. Already-mined copper is a scrap mine when more messages ride the same wire; the Dymaxion map is the only world picture approximately free of size and shape distortion. Topology meets Gibbs's liquid-crystal-gas phases in bonding. Geodesic forms appear in bomb blasts, viruses, and eyes. The standing lesson is to refuse to cheat a child of the right to find out.
ideas
- Dive deep without losing the whole. Start comprehensive, plunge for months or years, then return; competence does not require permanent specialization.
- Installed metal is a scrap mine. Bell Labs could furnish the world telephone service without mining another pound of copper once messages per wire multiplied.
- A distortion-free map is an inventory tool. The Dymaxion projection keeps relative shape and size so resource and population percentages are not mis-informing.
- Topology and Gibbs describe the same bonds. Vertex, edge, and face associability are gas, liquid, and crystal; geodesic least-resistance forms show up in nature.
- Do not cheat a child of discovery. Telling the answer steals the 60-degree convergence the child would have felt by finding it.
quotes
“I never really lose the fundamental comprehensivity, and I can come back really quite rapidly from any subject.”
“the amount of copper they already had was a copper mine, and it would be adequate.”
“It is the only world map that is approximately distortion-free, both as to relative shape and relative size.”
“You cheated that child of the right to find out.”