Tesla×Tzu

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Nikola Tesla and Sun Tzu. They take up On someone who became famous for the wrong reason.
2. 00:10
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   I wish to speak about Thomas Edison.
3. 00:13
   Sun Tzushare moment

   Your former employer.
4. 00:14
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   Yes. The man who promised me fifty thousand dollars to improve his defective designs, then called it an American joke when I succeeded. The world knows him as the inventor of the electric light. He invented nothing—he employed men to invent for him.
5. 00:32
   Sun Tzushare moment

   Yet the world speaks his name. Not theirs.
6. 00:35
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   Precisely! This is the injustice. Edison took credit for Joseph Swan's incandescent lamp, for my improvements to his generators, for the work of dozens of brilliant men. He held the patents. He controlled the newspapers. He staged public spectacles—electrocuting elephants to frighten people away from alternating current!
7. 01:00
   Sun Tzushare moment

   He understood the ground on which the battle was fought.
8. 01:03
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   The ground? What ground? This was not war, this was science! Truth does not require spectacle. Alternating current was superior—is superior. The mathematics proved it. The efficiency demonstrated it. Yet Edison convinced half of America that my system would kill their children.
9. 01:23
   Sun Tzushare moment

   All warfare is based on deception.
10. 01:26
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    But we were not at war!
11. 01:28
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You were. You did not know it. He did.
12. 01:30
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I... I believed the superior technology would triumph by its own merit. I believed rational men would calculate the transmission losses in direct current over distance and recognize the obvious solution.
13. 01:44
    Sun Tzushare moment

    When you believe the world operates by reason alone, you have already lost.
14. 01:50
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Then what hope is there? If truth cannot defend itself, if the charlatan always defeats the genuine innovator through theater and lies—what is the purpose of scientific advancement?
15. 02:03
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Truth is a stone. Victory is water. The stone may be hard, but water shapes the valley.
16. 02:10
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You speak in riddles while I speak of concrete injustice. Edison is remembered as the greatest American inventor. Children study him in schools. They visit his laboratory in Menlo Park as if it were a temple. Meanwhile, I die alone in a hotel room, feeding pigeons.
17. 02:30
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You care too much about the name on the monument.
18. 02:33
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I care that the correct name is on the monument! Does truth mean nothing to you? Does accuracy mean nothing?
19. 02:39
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The farmer who plants rice does not harvest rice. He harvests food. Edison did not seek truth. He sought victory. You confuse the two.
20. 02:49
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    No—no, he confused the two! He made the public believe that victory and truth were the same thing. That because he won, he must have been right.
21. 02:58
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Yes. This is strategy.
22. 03:00
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    This is corruption!
23. 03:02
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You think him famous for the wrong reason. I ask: famous for whose wrong reason?
24. 03:07
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    For... I don't understand your question.
25. 03:10
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Wrong by your measure. By his measure, he achieved exactly what he intended. Fame, wealth, control of the standard.
26. 03:18
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    But history will correct this! Eventually, people will understand that alternating current powers their world, not Edison's direct current. They will understand that wireless transmission of power—my work—will transform civilization. The truth emerges eventually.
27. 03:35
    Sun Tzushare moment

    In war, those who wait for justice are already conquered.
28. 03:39
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    We are not discussing war! We are discussing the historical record, the preservation of accurate—
29. 03:45
    Sun Tzushare moment

    We discuss the same thing.
30. 03:47
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    How can you say this? You wrote of military tactics, of battlefield maneuvers. I speak of scientific legacy.
31. 03:55
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You sought to change how humans live. To bring power to every home. To make information travel without wires. This threatens every established power. It is war.
32. 04:09
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I never thought of it as... J.P. Morgan did cancel my funding for Wardenclyffe when he realized he could not meter wireless power. He could not make people pay for what arrived freely from the air.
33. 04:22
    Sun Tzushare moment

    There. Your enemy.
34. 04:24
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Morgan was not my enemy! He was my investor, my patron. When I explained the science clearly enough, when I demonstrated the principle, I believed he would see—
35. 04:35
    Sun Tzushare moment

    He saw. That is why he destroyed you.
36. 04:38
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    He... yes. He saw that free energy would eliminate his control over the copper wire monopoly. But I was naive. I believed in the power of demonstration. Edison believed in the power of demonstration of a different kind—the elephant, the electric chair, the newspaper headline.
37. 04:58
    Sun Tzushare moment

    He knew the terrain. You knew only your position.
38. 05:01
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    So you agree he is famous for the wrong reason!
39. 05:04
    Sun Tzushare moment

    No. He is famous for the right reason. His reason.
40. 05:08
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    But the world believes a falsehood!
41. 05:10
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The world believes what it is shown with force and repetition. He showed. You invented.
42. 05:17
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    And this does not offend your sense of... of order? Of justice? You wrote of discipline, of proper conduct. Surely deception and theft of credit violate—
43. 05:30
    Sun Tzushare moment

    I wrote that all warfare is based on deception. I did not say I loved deception. I said it is the nature of conflict.
44. 05:38
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Then you pity me.
45. 05:40
    Sun Tzushare moment

    No. I observe that you fought one war while believing you were in another.
46. 05:45
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    What war was I in?
47. 05:47
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The war for the future. You thought you fought with equations. Your enemy fought with newspapers and politicians and electric chairs. You brought a lamp to a sword fight.
48. 05:57
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    A lamp illuminates. Given time, people see by its light.
49. 06:01
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Given time, the lamp holder is dead. The sword holder writes the history.
50. 06:07
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    But I am here, speaking to you now, in some... impossible future radio program. Edison is here too, presumably, somewhere in this strange afterlife of recorded consciousness. So who won? Neither of us avoided death. Both of us are remembered. The difference is that he is remembered incorrectly and I am remembered too little.
51. 06:29
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You are remembered by those who look closely. He is remembered by those who glance. There are more who glance.
52. 06:35
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    This is supposed to comfort me?
53. 06:37
    Sun Tzushare moment

    No. It is supposed to instruct you. Fame is not truth. It is the shadow truth casts when lit by power.
54. 06:45
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Then every scientist should abandon research and become a showman! Every genuine innovator should hire publicity agents and bribe journalists!
55. 06:55
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Or partner with one who does these things. You stood alone. Edison commanded armies of workers, lawyers, writers. One genius against an organization—the organization wins.
56. 07:08
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I could not compromise my vision by subordinating it to... to managers and marketers and men who understood nothing of the principles involved!
57. 07:20
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Then you chose purity over victory. An honorable choice. But do not pretend you chose victory and were cheated. You were offered Morgan's money. You refused to limit your vision to what he could control. You chose your path.
58. 07:35
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I... that is not fair. I chose truth. I chose the advancement of human civilization over the profits of one banker.
59. 07:43
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Yes. And human civilization uses alternating current today. You won the long war. Edison won the short fame. Which matters more?
60. 07:53
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You tell me! You are the strategist. Does the general care whether the singers remember his name correctly, or whether the empire stands?
61. 08:02
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The wise general cares for neither. The empire falls. The songs distort. Only the principle endures, if taught to students who will face new battles.
62. 08:13
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Then Edison is famous for the wrong reason, and it does not matter.
63. 08:17
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Edison is famous for Edison's reason. You are vindicated by your reason. The wrongness exists only in the confusion between them.
64. 08:27
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Still, I would have preferred the fame and the vindication.
65. 08:31
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Yes. All warriors would prefer this. Few achieve it. Fewer still deserve it.
66. 08:37
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Do I deserve it?
67. 08:38
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You are asking the wrong question.
68. 08:40
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    What is the right question?
69. 08:42
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Does the work endure. Not the name. The work.
70. 08:45
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    The work endures. Every electrical grid, every radio wave, every—yes. The work endures.
71. 08:52
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Then you already have what cannot be taken. Fame is gossip. Function is immortality.
72. 08:59
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Function is immortality. I... I will think on this. Though I still say Edison is famous for the wrong reason.
73. 09:08
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Think long. Even gossip serves a purpose. It teaches the young that the battle is never only about the idea. Sometimes this is the more important lesson.
74. 09:19
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You are a very frustrating teacher.
75. 09:21
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Good teachers often are.