Jason Crawford

But these are fairly small, isolated experiments.

I don't feel like there are major efforts going on anywhere.

Yeah, and I don't really like the term tinkering for this very reason, especially when it is contrasted with science.

I think that's a little silly.

Science does lots of tinkering.

There's lots of just trying things and experimenting and not really knowing where you're going or what you're doing with it, right?

I think the real contrast here is between being guided by theory

versus just sort of pure ad hoc bottom-up experimentation unguided by theory.

And yes, there's a lot of very ad hoc trying things out in science, and there's a lot of very ad hoc trying things out in invention, and you can call both of those tinkering.

Yeah, I don't know.

Aside from intelligence.

You know, I haven't made a systematic study of this, so I can only give you my biases.

I think that a... I mean, certainly a degree of persistence is necessary because...

Innovation requires a lot of messing around, a lot of failures and setbacks.

And a degree of independent thinking is necessary because nobody thinks that your stuff's going to work, right?

Most people think you have no idea what you're doing.

You're going to, you know, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Your stuff's never going to work.

And you're a little ridiculous and you don't, and you just, you have no idea what you're doing.

And you have to be very independent-minded and persist despite all of that.