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Can I pick 2 and have them talk to each other instead? Would love to watch Hawking get Newton up to speed on some stuff.
Are they time traveling to see me, or am I time traveling to see them?
Because if it’s the latter, Hawking on June 28, 2009.
Was that his famous time travel party?
Yes. Would be rude to turn down an invitation.
Lol
To make it fair you should get extra time with hawking
To ask him what he saw on the island
I am by no means excusing anything. In fact, Feynman, Einstein and Edison have their issues too.
Bohr, was Dutch…
Leonardo was left handed?
Anyway Marie Curie would be at least as interesting to talk to as any of them, just maybe bring personal dosimeter for peace of mind.
“So, did you ever have any plans to build that helicopter thing you drew?”
“Chi sei? Dove sono? Come sono arrivato qui?”
“Sorry, what?”
You could use a phone to translate what people who speak in modern languages are saying, but I don’t know how well it would translate to and from 15th century Italian.
my hovercraft is full of eels
“hovercraft for fishing? i must see this!”
Tesla. I feel there’s so much we don’t know, let alone understand, about his ideas. Have we overly sane/crazy washed him?
He was probably a bit crazy.
True, but probably more interesting than Newton, who would just keep talking about god the whole time.
and apples
Apparently he didn’t trust patents etc. He would come up with fanciful ideas, that sounded vaguely plausible, as cover for what he was actually working on.
At this point picking apart the Good, the bad and the cover is an …interesting exercise.
Look what Edison did. I don’t blame him for not trusting how the business world works.
Fully agree with that. Tesla got thoroughly screwed over.
i feel like the covers have ended up like star trek tech, made up nonsense but it gave people ideas that turned out to be good
None. I give my spot to someone who wouldn’t waste it.
I can’t speak on their level, and I’m okay with that. I’ve worked around some absolutely amazing geniuses in my career and I’m happy to be the worker bees in the arrangement. I’m no slouch, and I’ve done my own share of really cool stuff, but I wouldn’t waste such an opportunity on me.
Give it to the Steve Baumels, the Tomas Bartas and the Jeff Linds of the world, the unsung bright spots in our tech march forward.
I’ll save everyone a spot at lunch and try to get in on the group photo.
This was my first thought as well, sadly I’m probably not clever enough to fully appreciate and understand any of these people. If I’m not allowed to transfer my place then at least I can have some fun telling Da Vinci about planes and stuff
I spoke with Mr Baumel, socially for instance, on a few occasions.
He carries on two conversations actively, about completely unrelated subjects, and can speak with authority on any of them in turn. And he’s listening to another conversation so if economics of late Sumeria or gauges of railways in Europe vs China get boring to him, he can ditch one and talk about artwork of early Iceland as vikings adapted their style with the change in local materials; or something.
It’s dizzying to hear. He’s just not on our level.
Edison. For 3 hours, in a padded room, where no-one can hear his screams.
The irony is at least three of these people would make you want to do this to them by the end while Edison was able to do what he did because he could hold a conversation
Very true.
Feynman, over a beer, at a strip club.
I’ll be the dancer. Just make sure I can hear your conversation.
Can I be the bartender also in earshot?
Probably Edison but only to tell him how much of a fuckhead he will be remembered as.
Hawking was probably way more familiar with the works, achievements and maybe even personal anecdotes of everyone in this post than I could ever hope to be. Thus, sitting down with him feels like the best deal.
He could give lectures, but the computer massively slowed conversations. He also apparently had a bit of a temper. Some of his colleagues took to wearing steel toe cap shoes because of him (electric wheelchairs are heavy).
Exactly what I was thinking. Plus he seemed to have a good sense of humor too. But on the other hand, it would take him much longer to respond to questions on the spot (usually he’d prepare answers ahead of time for interviews and such).
He had a good sense of humour when it was about how great he was. A bit of a notorious asshole in other regards.
Feynman, mainly because he was an amazing professor and knows how to talk to people.
Einstein and Newton disliked people, so they would be terrible conversationslists outside their areas of expertise. I think that was true of Leonardo as well. Edison is also out because he was a dick.
I was going to say Feynman for the same reason. Outside his classes it sounds like the guy was a lot of fun to be around.
I liked the part from his autobio where he recounts cracking safes open. Pretty fun stuff indeed. Less so the ones where he invents modern plastic and helps with the atom bomb
Yeah I was just reading a book that mentioned something Feynman said and it’s something I feel is true for me as well.
Don’t remember word for word but it was something like “Any subject is interesting if you look deep enough.”
I feel like Feynman and I could have a riveting conversation about knitting for 3 hours even though neither of us are passionate about it.
Those are the people I want to talk to.
Interesting that he supposedly said that, given how much he dunks on philosophers.
You could absolutely blow leonardo’s mind away with modern knowledge such as “washing hands before performing surgery is good actually”
Feynman’s way overrated, though. Sure, he was a smart enough guy to land a job on Manhattan project and university prof afterwards, but the only reason people know him are the books written by batshit crazy groupies (he didn’t write any) and based on his elderly ramblings, so none of the stories in those are even remotely true.
While not exactly on par with Einstein, Newton or Tesla, he did win a Nobel prize and is considered a luminary quantum physicist.
einstein was an outspoken socialist though, so he clearly liked people on some level
Yep, this is the guy who might be able to teach me something. The rest of then would be used to talking to their peers, which I am not.
Marie Curie three times and Imma sit real close to her so I can check out early and miss a whole lot of what’s currently going on.
“I have spare pockets if you want me to help carry your tubes”
sounds like 10/10 workplace harassment
Edison but instead of talking to him, I Rick Roll him for three hours.
Same, but it’d be 3 hours of punching him in the dick.
I would need like a decade of prep to have any meaningful discussion with any of them 😅
See, I’d pick Feynman, and have him teach me bongos.
He’d teach you sex, the man was a walking hardon.
wanna see my large hardon collider mmmmm
“Hey, I just raised you from the dead to talk to you. Fuck your physics, who’s the smart one now, huh??”
Einstein.
He was a generally great guy and had very progressive social views, so it would be fun to talk to him about the current state of the world.
Also a lot of his theories around relativity and theories of quantum physics have been proven recently. It would be amazing to see his mind be blown when he realises both sides were right and what that means for how a theory of everything needs to look like.
To say he was a generally great guy really overlooks how awful he was to women. He was no doubt brilliant, but he had some very serious character flaws. And unfortunately, he had an echo chamber of peers and a rockstar celebrity status that only worked to reinforce his shitty behavior and backwards views. It’s not super uncommon for brilliant people to be absolutely nightmares on a personal level. Imagine being an absolutely brilliant scientist that gets married only to be completely forbidden from science and the things you love, and then reduced to being a maid for a madman with tons of insanely particular demands.
Yeah I’d love to discuss just the world and life with him.
Curie would be fun too.
Keep Newton away from me. And wasn’t hawking on the epstein island?
As far as ones who actually did things there I’m not sure that Hawking would have even been physically capable at a point where he was famous.
Hawking left his wife for his much younger nurse. Then, 20 years later, he left her for another much younger nurse. Proving that not only does nature abhor a vacuum, but that some people are only happy when someone else is doing the sucking.
Hawking was such a feminist he didn’t want to see women get on their knees.
And he was so smart he figured out kids don’t have to!
