Cool name for the concept, and I think making it about dogs helps take the political angle out of it.<p>I think of this in terms of the 'great man' theory of history.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory</a><p>And feel that it's obvious that science works the same way, and we should focus on the "science from below" a lot more than we do.<p>Charles Fort talked about "Steam Engine Time" and it gets referenced in Discworld:<p><a href="https://fancyclopedia.org/Steam_Engine_Time_(concept)" rel="nofollow">https://fancyclopedia.org/Steam_Engine_Time_(concept)</a><p>There's similarly the book that talks about all the 'genius' people that Einstien was surrounded by who we don't generally hear about, but I can't recall the name right now.<p>There's the concept of 'scenius':<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/2008/06/scenius-or-comm/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2008/06/scenius-or-comm/</a><p>And in music/art there's the concept of "The Secret to Creativity Is Knowing How to Hide Your Sources" which (appositely) is often mis-credited to Einstien.<p>Also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy</a><p>Basically, I don't think you can look seriously into anything and come away with thinking that one individual did it all themselves unless you are very prone to that conclusion. And it seems human's generally are prone to that bias.
I've been thinking about something similar. Maybe somebody can shoot it down.<p>For many achievements, most credit belongs to the role, not the person. In other words, the counterfactual of "if we didn't all agree that somebody will do this" would better prevent the achievement than "if one specific person didn't have their talent." We have phrases like "the time is ripe" because we know this. When conditions are in place, things happen.<p>The person in the role is who society has given the permission and the means to do the thing, whose doing of the thing is accepted and even expected, so it's mostly unremarkable when that specific person is the one who does it. That's who we supported in getting it done.<p>No one is surprised when every major fire was put out by firefighters, every touchdown pass was thrown by the quarterback, or every US law was passed by Congress and signed by the President.<p>Maybe Alice is uniquely qualified to be the president, and President Bob is a stooge. He's still the one to sign the law, though, and the law still gets signed. No amount of merit Alice has can change this. Society has still arranged itself to have a person in this role and Bob is just the person.<p>The arrangement (and the unavoidable path-dependence of history) is what magnifies the tiny contribution of the individual's abilities and makes them seem so necessary to the outcome. Given the prerequisites we've hidden in the role are met, the individual is all that's left.<p>Newton was a genius who invented calculus—but so did Leibniz. Einstein was a genius who invented relativity, but arguably so did others whose work we lump in with his; it makes a better story. They all had social institutions to support them achieving whatever they could. Their ability to get it done provided that support was clearly not unique.<p>It's more important that the roles to do the work have people in them, the conditions are in place for <i>someone</i> to do it, than exactly who is in which role.
I think this is one of the least understood elements of technological advancement. We tend to think of it as linear, but often, the major visible breakthroughs are dependent on a whole bunch of less glamorous advancements being brought together.<p>The game Civilization was really great at representing this. Tech advancement is a DAG, rather than a chain or a tree. Reality is like this, but much, much more granular.<p>For instance, I'm acquainted with the inventor of the electret microphone. I'm sure that mic brought together a whole bunch of advancements, and once I was aware that miniaturizing microphones was nontrivial, it became clear that, for example, pocketable cell phones would not exist if not for tiny microphones.<p>I see this disconnect all the time in how we think about technology, and which innovations actually lead to major cultural changes. We get wowed by impressive inventions, like blockchain, but to date, it is largely not penetrating society outside of its own expanding hype bubbles. It's pretty clear to me that blockchain is not, of itself, transformative. Nor is it the final link in enabling a society-changing breakthrough. The question I'd ask is whether that's because other boring adjacent developments are missing? Or is it a relative dead end? I'm picking on blockchain, but a lot of other innovations could be chosen here.<p>In trying to predict the socio-technological future, it is important to become attuned to the boring, enabling technologies. And if I were an investor, I would <i>also</i> have to understand whether the economics of a potential enabling technology are attractive for achieving returns. I think of all the fiber that was laid in the 90s. Investors were right that it would eventually become really important, but they wrong that it would be lucrative for them to invest in.
> I was pretty sure Alfred Wegener (...) is a Balto.<p>> Jasen would go so far as to argue that [some difficult achievements] makes [Wegener] the Togo<p>The more apt conclusion from the article is probably that the Balto/Togo theory simply isn't as good a model for the scientific discovery process as the author was hoping.
Annoying as it may be, this situation is somewhat ubiquitous in the history of human knowledge.<p>Transistors were invented by Lilienfeld, yet everyone knows about the work of Bardeen et al. at Bell Labs. Einstein in relativity is the Balto of Lorentz-Poincare, which is why his Nobel prize mentioned the photoelectric effect and <i>not</i> relativity.<p>Simple formulas of scientific credit tend to stick better; the path of scientific progress is usually anything but. This is ok. The main thing is the knowledge itself, not who came up with it after all.<p>And yet it is very frustrating!
This reminds me of the "second mover advantage". Time after time, it seems that the first company that comes up with a new idea and/or does the most to educate people about it will not be the same one to benefit most from it. Either bigger companies crush them (sometimes followed by showing up first at the resulting fire sale) or other companies of any size lap them by taking advantage of the related second-system effect. Since transistors have already been mentioned, both Shockley/Fairchild and Fairchild/Intel could be considered examples. Others could cite Edison copying ideas from any of Tesla, Swan, or Volta. The Wright Brothers could be put on either side of the equation, at different times.<p>Also, this:<p>> One difficulty is it’s hard to distinguish “ahead of their time beacon shining” from “lucky idiot”<p>The world is <i>full</i> of lucky idiots who are continually attaching themselves to one "contrarian" idea after another, in hopes that they can claim primacy after somebody else does the hard work of developing or popularizing it. No shortage of them here, for example. It's a gamble, betting that others will ignore or forget the more numerous (and sometimes even harmful) misses accumulated in the process. The world could do with a lot less of that, TBH. There are already more <i>credible</i> theories than people with the knowledge and patience to explore them properly.
Since I was completely unaware of the incident:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_serum_run_to_Nome" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_serum_run_to_Nome</a>
This part seemed a little more significant than maybe the author recognized:<p>"Jasen would go so far as to argue that shining a beacon in unknown territory that inspires explorers to look for treasure in the right place makes you the Togo, racing through fractured ice rapids social ridicule and self-doubt to do the real work of getting an idea considered at all."<p>It was in the discussion of Wegener, which muddies the waters a bit, but that "explorer" role leads to a lot of selection bias in science. That is, that "social ridicule" can be extended pretty far to "career ends" or "ostracism" so you end up in a situation where it's not just that people doing that work get less credit, it's that they might be driven out even when they were on the right path.<p>There's lots of examples of this with the pandemic. E.g.:<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/scientists-were-close-coronavirus-vaccine-years-ago-then-money-dried-n1150091" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/scientists-were-c...</a>
Ah, the disrespect of my great-great-uncle's dog Balto! Though to be fair Togo was great, but Balto did amazing as well.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Kaasen#Last_leg_of_the_Great_Race_of_Mercy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Kaasen#Last_leg_of_the_...</a>