I recently attended a large event where each of a hundred business ideas was briefly presented.
Some ideas seemed really…
Some ideas seemed bad.
Many presentations were so incoherent that I couldn’t tell whether the idea was good, bad, or existed at all.
Perhaps they were proposed raincoats for dinosaurs, or maybe it was tetrahedral-shaped edible ball bearings, or something else entirely; I didn’t have any better guesses.
None of that surprised me.
Two things did surprise me.
First, the small surprise. Several separate companies were proposing perpetual motion machines.
Second, the big surprise. The moderator said that it was an exciting area, and when they had an independent test showing one running under load for a month then, he’d love to talk to them.
It is so much better and more graceful than trying to explain the second law.
And potentially pushes them in a good direction.
Moving them to take real measurements will get them to see that it doesn’t work.
Or will give them something that is useful and, of course, doesn’t match their talk.
But fixing their talk is much easier than fixing a business and much, much, much easier than having a loophole in thermodynamics.
Makes me realize just how graceless I’ve been in similar situations.
