Sciences, the Past & the Future, with Taylor Wilson and Tim Bilyeu
Ideas, Thoughts and Quotes pulled from…
Taylor Wilson on Why Genius Doesn’t Matter ft Taylor Wilson, with Tom Bilyeu – Impact Theory #50
With the little window into the future that research gives him, Taylor Wilson wants to harness the liberating power of providing access to energy and informational technologies with the right messages for a world with more social, gender and racial equality.
Lessons from the Past
The best way to learn about a topic is to learn the history.
Taylor Wilson [00:04:28]
Shifting Paradigms over the Edge to Innovate
Some of the greatest discoveries in science happen from people that weren’t necessarily in their own field but just kind on the edge of their field.
Taylor Wilson [00:07:30]
How and why?
When someone takes kind of a paradigm shift, or takes a little bit of knowledge from an external field and applies it and it’s something no one’s ever thought of before. […] the best scientist, engineers, innovators are one’s that are able to take their knowledge and apply it to other fields or take knowledge from an external field and bring it into an area where it hasn’t really been applied before.
Taylor Wilson [00:08:20]
Bridging the Credibility Gap
Do what it takes to make it happen. […] Partly it’s just being bold enough to do it and once I am in a room with them, I try to convince them that I at least partly now what I am talking about.
Taylor Wilson [00:10:28]
Curiosity for Success
You can have intellect, aptitude, and you have to have a whole lot of luck like it is with all thing. But at the end of the day, what drives […] success is curiosity. […] If you’re truly curious and you’re truly passionate about something it doesn’t feel like work. You’ll do what it takes to become good at something.
Taylor Wilson [00:11:25]
Informational Advantage of Researchers
To predict the future is a very dangerous occupation. […] Especially in the long-term where humans and civilizations are going to be in a few decades. Technologies follow exponential trends; usually branches of from an area that most people or if anybody sees not coming.
Taylor Wilson [00:24:05]
I get this little window into the future; whether it’s research that I’m doing or someone I’m advising, or a group doing work that I have come in and take a look at. I get this very early look at what the next types of technology on the horizon are.
Taylor Wilson [00:24:32]
Energy & Social Justice
Accessibility
Providing electricity at a lower cost and a much lower environmental foot-print than what exists today that’s a very exiting future. Something that goes into that and also kind of comes out of this, is access to information. […]
Taylor Wilson [00:25:20]
Education
Once [people living in isolated areas] have access to energy it’s a very logical step to get them telecommunication, to get them access to that internet of information [Then they] would be able to learn so much, become passionate about a subject, become well versed in a subject, and be able to innovate the next major discovery that is gonna change our lives.
Taylor Wilson [00:26:05]
Productivity
Energy is the currency of our everyday lives – the currency of economy, manufacturing, health care, sustainable food production, water resources. All these things are basically just a function of energy.
Taylor Wilson [00:30:20]
A recommendation for further reading on the topic of energy, also recommended by Bill Gates, is Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smill.
Communicating Sciences
Results
The more that scientists communicate what they do to the public, the better off we are. Unfortunately scientists aren’t typically the greatest communicators. They are great at communicating with other scientists, but as fare as communicating with the general public, they are not great. And if you think about it, that’s probably the one career field on earth that it’s the most important to communicate. Typically scientists funding comes from the public and the work they are doing directly impacts the citizen, the voter, the consumer; things diverse from the environment to health care decisions. The research that scientists are doing directly affects the average person. If there doesn’t exist an ability to communicate that, you are kind of losing that knowledge to the place where it’s most important that it goes.
Taylor Wilson [00:27:25]
Role-Models
It’s a very diverse group of people that do sciences. And the more we communicate that and the more we integrate that into the zeitgeist, into popular media and popular culture, the better of we’re gonna be. Because not only will citizens and the general public be better informed on the issues, but the more will young people be inspired and go and do sciences.
Taylor Wilson [00:28:41]
It’s very hard to be inspired to do something when you can’t really see yourself doing it.
Name [00:38:14]
Depicting non-stereotypical role-models, showing the diversity of people achieving what you’re interested in, to promote science and motivate children/ kids to pursue this occupation as a career-path.
Failing in order to Innovate
Failure being a catalyst for innovation. And nowhere is that more prominent than in science. Science is built on failure. If I knew when I set out for an experiment what the outcome is going to be for 100%, there be no reason to do the experiment. A lot of times in sciences, and engineering too, you’re not going to succeed or proof your intuition, but what you do develop, create, discover, is going to probably be something different, in some cases even cooler, than what you set out to do.
Taylor Wilson [00:42:13]
When you stop being curious that’s the moment you stop being a scientist. To be a scientist is to not know. It’s probably the only profession on earth, where you are rewarded for not knowing what you’re doing.
Taylor Wilson [00:44:06]
Links to follow up on
Books
