The Uncomfortable Truth About Brilliance and Blunder
Dear Magicians,
How much room do we give brilliant people to be wrong? This is a question worth thinking about.
Let’s look at Einstein. The guy who redefined our understanding of space and time also made some spectacular mistakes.
Not small ones. Huge ones.
He rejected quantum mechanics completely. He dismissed gravitational waves. He invented a cosmological constant just to keep the universe static when it was actually expanding.
These weren’t careless errors. They were the mistakes of someone who understood physics so deeply that he could be wrong in ways nobody else could even imagine.
Think about that.
The depth of Einstein’s understanding allowed him to make deeper mistakes. A first-year physics student couldn’t make Einstein’s errors. You need to really know what you’re doing to be that wrong.
Which brings us to Elon Musk.
Musk makes big, public mistakes. He sets impossible timelines. He crashes rockets. He tweets things that crash markets.
But these aren’t ordinary failures. They’re the failures of someone working at the edge of possibility.
The pattern looks familiar, doesn’t it?
Great achievements and spectacular errors seem to come from the same source. Both Einstein and Musk show us that meaningful progress might require a certain amount of being wrong along the way.
Einstein’s rejection of quantum mechanics came from his deep understanding of causality. Musk’s wildly optimistic timelines come from a comprehensive vision most people can’t see.
Their domains differ, though.
Einstein worked with equations and thought experiments. Musk deals with physical rockets and cars that either work or explode. But both operate at scales where conventional mistakes aren’t possible. Their errors look different because they’re pushing beyond what most people can even imagine.
Maybe we need a new way to think about errors.
Einstein’s “biggest blunder” — that cosmological constant — turned out to foreshadow dark energy. Musk’s exploding rockets were necessary steps toward landing orbital boosters, something previously thought impossible.
Interesting.
The world has changed since Einstein’s time. His mistakes played out in academic journals that few people read. Musk’s unfold on Twitter for billions to watch in real-time.
How do we make space for productive failure when everyone’s watching?
Maybe we need to ask better questions.
Instead of asking if someone is right or wrong, we should ask if their errors move us forward. Some mistakes teach us more than easy successes ever could.
Think about it this way: There are errors that come from pushing boundaries and errors that come from carelessness.
Einstein adding a cosmological constant was a boundary-pushing error. Each SpaceX rocket that exploded was a data point that made the next launch better.
Productive errors.
This gives us a better way to evaluate innovation. We shouldn’t count how often someone is wrong. We should ask what their mistakes teach us.
At the frontiers of human achievement, the potential for error grows with the potential for breakthroughs.
That’s the deal.
The people who change the world aren’t those who make the fewest mistakes. They’re the ones whose mistakes are stepping stones to places we couldn’t otherwise reach.
Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week,
Brian
Appearance
My friend and collaborator Richard Behiel does some amazing work on physics animations. He featured my video [featuring his animations] on his channel recently.
Make sure to check out his latest magnum opus — how the universe is like a giant superconductor. Beware — it’s not safe for work. Not because of the content. But because it’s 5 hours long and you might get fired if you watch at work 😂.
Genius
Most of my selfies are self-indulgent narcissistic claptrap. But this week, NASA scientists turned their camera to take a selfie of JWST and it came out wonderfully.
As my genius friend Cathrin Machin(married to Ian Lauer) points out, NASA uses these images to:
Image
Check out Galileo’s image of the Pleiades (a.k.a. Subaru, The Seven Sisters) made in 1610 vs the incredible 40 hour image by @ianlauerastro this week.
Ian is married to Cathrin Machin — talk about a brilliant family!
What do you think the difference between the “open” stars vs closed stars was meant to represent in Galileo’s sketch? (No cheating! Answer before you read the next post)
Conversation
In this video, I sit down with Neil Turok to explore his groundbreaking hypothesis that the Big Bang was a mirror image of itself. We dive into how this idea could reshape our understanding of the universe, from the origin of space to dark matter and dark energy — without relying on inflation or the multiverse. Learn more about the future of cosmology!
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Upcoming Episode
Avi Loeb will be on The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast soon. As Harvard University’s distinguished astrophysicist and former chair of the Department of Astronomy, Loeb has pioneered groundbreaking research on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the early universe. Beyond his impressive academic achievements, including over 700 published papers, Loeb has courageously ventured into controversial territory by suggesting the possibility of alien spacecraft in our Solar System and claiming to have recovered potential evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
His recent declaration that the Messiah will be an alien arriving from outer space showcases his boldness in challenging conventional scientific thinking. What questions do you have for this visionary scientist who’s not afraid to push the boundaries of traditional astrophysics?
