Why Genius Doesn't Matter | Taylor Wilson on Impact Theory

the most important thing to me is realizing that you know you can have intellect you can have aptitude and you have to have a whole lot of luck as with all things but at the end of the day what drove my success and continues to drive my success in the success of others just curiosity because if you're not really passionate about it and you're not really curious you'll mate you may learn what it takes to get that next promotion or that next kind of achievement under your belt but if you're truly curious and you're truly passionate about something it doesn't feel like work everybody welcome to impact Theory you were here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it so our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest is the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion at the age of 14 on a unit that he began building in his parent's garage with pieces he cobbled together from discarded parts the internet and uranium he mined by himself he managed to smash together atomic nuclei at such high velocity that he achieved temperatures 40 times greater than the core of the Sun becoming only the 32nd person in human history to do so but the time he was in high school he'd acquired a deep base of knowledge and at least 20 fundamental fields of science and engineering including physics chemistry radiation meteorology and electrical engineering by the time most kids are getting their drivers license he'd invented the world's cheapest Neutron detector designed to stop terrorists from smuggling in a dirty bomb won the Intel Foundation young scientist award won a teal fellowship and developed a medical device that created diagnostic medical isotopes that dramatically lowered the cost of cancer detection and since then he's designed a radically new version of a nuclear power plant that he believes is far cheaper and safer than current plants and if he's right the implications are far-reaching the u.s. Under Secretary of Energy Christina Johnson said that someone Kim comes along only once in a generation as such in 2017 he was named to the Hellenic group a global think-tank aimed at tackling some of the biggest problems that we face as a civilization please help me in welcoming the man Time magazine called the next Einstein vice correspondent and nuclear physicist Taylor Wilson yeah good man thank you for coming on the show researching you as madness so creating nuclear fusion seems out of the realm of possibility I think for certainly for myself and I'm gonna guess for 99.99999% of the people watching this show what's the secret what do you mean possible oh no interesting hobbies I guess I am I just I decided I wanted to do it right and that's kind of always been my personality if I decided I wanted to do something I was gonna do it and so I I mean I got nuclear science when I was 10 years old and decided that there had to be a way for me to kind of access those nuclear reactions and the easiest way to do that seemed to be to build a nuclear fusion reactor so just took a few years of amassing the knowledge that required to actually do it so I can believe and I think most people can believe that they if they set their mind to it that they can achieve it but they don't necessarily know the process to go through to acquire the knowledge what what does that step-by-step process look like for you yeah I mean for me of course like it helped that I was incredibly like passionate about like I was obsessed with this stuff so I was basically sucking up every little ounce of knowledge I could and you know being a child of the internet 10 or 15 years earlier what I did probably wouldn't be impossible right I grew up in Arkansas and they kind of 10 or 15 years earlier information I would have had access to was what is available in the local library so having access the internet being able to email you know physicists kind of in engineers all over the world was very helpful and for me my kind of personal kind of learning experience was studying the history of it I I really believe the best way to learn about a topic is to learn the history because even something as complex as say quantum mechanics which is very like non-intuitive it's counterintuitive can be understood if you understood the motivations of the people who came up with the theory right it was it was a pretty logical stepping process of going from this concept to this concept of this concept and even though you end up with something that's very esoteric and weird and counterintuitive it was just kind of guys that probably weren't that much smarter than you making the logical leap between one theory to another theory and so by studying the history of nuclear science from kind of earliest experiments that demonstrated that there were these fundamental building blocks of nature called atoms to being able to actually break down those atoms into their components the electrons and the nucleus with neutrons and protons those experiments I very kind of closely followed in and what I did in the experiments that I did when I was you know between probably eleven and fourteen RIT so I read the book the boy that played with fusion and which was a book written about you for everybody at home it's so surreal to hear that like because he tells the book out of order right so sometimes he's like flash forward and it sort of you contemporary and then he'll flash back and it's he was a kid and I would lose like for a minute I'd be thinking oh you're making these homemade fireworks but you're probably in your teens and then I'd realize you were like nine yeah so like when did you get comfortable with playing with things that are either radioactive or explosive was that question I became comfortable and I think my parents did it I mean I was always interested in stuff that you know what for better or worse was kind of a little bit volatile like so as far back as I can remember I was interested in science but before nuclear science I was interested in rocketry and space science and I went to build rockets so part of that was studying energetics right energetic materials things like oxidizer fuel mixtures things that go into rocket fuel but you know it can explode and I've always kind of had a personality that's fairly cautious which kind of seems weird because I play around with nuclear material and explosives and dangerous chemicals but I lies pretty early on that if I wasn't incredibly careful I wouldn't be able to do that every day and make it you know as far as I have now going back to the notion of I want to follow the history and I want to figure this out if you were to embark on something new today do you literally go to google and type in the history of whatever you're about to do or well it's a process right so you know for me learning a new topic which I like to do pretty regularly you know I'm really lucky that I get to apply something nuclear science to a lot of different fields so depending on the day of the week I'm working on energy or I'm working on a medical application or I'm working on an engineering project and that way kind of every day I get to learn something new about a different topic and but yeah to go back to that point partly it's it's it's getting the overarching kind of themes of the field and then for me kind of digging into the personalities right so who were the people that made the discoveries what was their training what was their background you know some of the greatest discoveries and science happened from people that weren't necessarily in their own field but just kind of at the edge of their field right so a biologist that was kind of dabbling in material science you talked about how a lot of Nobel Prizes were given to people that were either right at an intersection or actually well outside of their field why do you think that is well I think we all get into a sense of thinking this is the way things are and this is how they've always been and it gives you into a kind of a rigid structure of thinking right and partly that's a consequence of human psychology partly that's a consequence of the way science is taught but if you're a biologist you're taught this is what we know about biology and you might can investigate a new you know probe deeper into a certain area or probe a new area but it's usually when someone takes kind of a paradigm shift or takes a little bit of knowledge from an external field and applies it and it's something no one's ever thought before right because your average biologist doesn't know about the latest discoveries in material science he just doesn't that's not what a biologists job is but if he's able to take that discovery and be like wow I wonder if this effect this force is the reason that you get is binding in this this molecule maybe that's the reason that you know X happens and so III do fundamentally believe that the best scientists the best engineers the best innovators are ones that are able to take their knowledge and apply it to other fields or take knowledge from an external field and bring it into an area where it hasn't really been applied before do you ever feel like your own thinking gets in a rut on a given problem oh absolutely what do you do to address that you can't help but have that happen right and partly for me it's going out and talking to other folks that are doing other things right so I'd say you know in my day job I spend a lot of time meeting nuclear physicists and nuclear engineers and folks with that background but I try to spend you a certain amount of time talking to folks that are just radically different than me right you actually seek them out yeah yeah I go whether it's to an academic institution University Department of Energy National Lab a company you know within industry and try to talk to folks that are doing really different things than what I'm working on in hopes that they might have a solution that I can apply to one of my problems or vice-versa you know that I have developed something that might could apply to their their area or their problem zone I imagine now that's a lot easier for you you've got so much credibility behind you you're really well known in the space take us back to when a you're not known in the space be you probably sound like the nine-year-old that you are like how do you call people convince them like what is that process because people struggle even to get a mentor yeah like how did you how did you find mentors how did you convince people to give you equipment all right well and you're right that was a struggle basically until I achieve nuclear fusion right there's a I guess you call it credibility gap right like people are like well like you know why am I talking to this kid you know what is what does he know but I also have a personality where you know and I said mind I said this before you know if I set out to do something I much do what it takes to make it happen and so and sometimes it's just being bold like I don't think most you know PhD nuclear physicists or nuclear engineers say a professor at a university or director of lab gets very many emails from a ten-year-old and so partly it's just being bold enough to do it and then for me you know if I could get in the room with them I I you know try to convince them that I sort of know what I'm talking about at least and do you prepare like do you if you know you're about to meet somebody do you prepare ahead of time so you go in and like you know who they are and what their hot buttons are or is it just you're so passionate about what you're doing that you want to convey that yeah no I and it's not even maybe that I'm trying to convey anything I'm just I love what I do like I love this stuff I love nuclear science and science in general and so being able to be in the room with someone who has knowledge about something that I'd known is the best feeling in the world being able to you know absorb that knowledge from them you know that transfer that osmosis of knowledge I think that is one of the best experiences in the world so if I have the opportunity to be in the room with someone who knows a whole lot about a subject that's I'm in my element I really enjoy that let's say that a hundred people wanted you to mentor them you obviously can't mentor them all what would you look for like people ask me all the time how to get a mentor so what's your answer to that question yeah I mean there are a few answers I guess I'd have to that but the most important thing to me and something that's been incredibly helpful to me over the years is realizing that you know you can have intellect you can have aptitude and you have to have a whole lot of luck as with all things but at the end of the day what drives I think what drove my success and continues to drive my success in the success of others just curiosity right being passionate passionately curious about a subject right because if you're not really passionate about it and you're not really curious you'll may you may learn what it takes to do something or you may learn what it takes to get that next promotion or that next kind of achievement under your belt but if you're truly curious and you're truly passionate about something it doesn't feel like work right you'll do what it takes to become good at something and so I always get excited when I meet students or people that contact me and they're just incredibly passionate right because with that passion they can when it takes to be you know good at science and good and innovating and good in you know engineering you were gonna give somebody two or three bullet points because I'll assume that the people that are but even know who you are like they're they're gonna have a level of enthusiasm and passion for this so beyond that like what becomes the next filtering criteria like for me I'll tell you right now if the person doesn't have the grit and tenacity that you've talked about yeah like that's huge but now like how do you convey that to somebody right I don't I can't detect it in an interview which means that I have you seen Fight Club oh yeah okay so Fight Club to make them stand outside the door for four days in the rain right so I'm always trying to think like what's my version of that because I want to know is the person gonna stick with it right um well you're completely right about that I mean passion can only take you so far I I do find though that folks that have passion that takes them extra you know the extra distance to become good at something you know for me when I meet someone whether it's someone I'm interviewing to hire them or be a student you know and that kind of mentor relationship aptitude is important but not that important finding if they're passionate finding if they have taken the time to learn about the side they don't have to be an expert in the subject but if they've taken the time to at least get a basis and what they're talking about I think that's important you know there's a lot of people that and to some degree I was that person you know before I found nuclear science I was interested in biology I was interested in Space Science I was interested in rocketry I was interested in all these different fields and there's nothing wrong with that but I think you know you sometimes bump around things until you finally find the things that sticks and maybe it goes to what you're saying about grit and tenacity you know finding someone who's really stuck with something long enough to really you know get a grasp for it maybe not become an expert but at least kind of know what they're talking about that's usually a good kind of dividing line between I think the people that have the you know the right stuff and the people that may still be finding you know what they want to do yeah all right you said something that literally the brakes screech tin my brain aptitude matters but not that much people watching right now I promise they're thinking this guy did nuclear at 14 like he's just a genius do you consider yourself a genius um I don't know I look I think I probably do have some natural aptitude for science just like some people have natural aptitude for you know music musical ability or writing or all these things but that's never been to me what set me apart right there are a lot of smart people in this world to me it was just being profoundly curious right because you know if you're it's kind of the difference between learning something in the classroom or outside the classroom right if you're forced to take a class on philosophy right you have to get that credit to graduate and you sit in that class you're probably not going to become an expert in philosophy right there's just there's not the motivation there to become good at it no matter how much natural aptitude you you may have and in that way you know if you're truly passionate about something like I was a nuclear science it never felt like learning right and so I was able to put in the you know however many you know tens of thousands of hours it took to you know but basically get the knowledge just to form a basis to do science which is a lot I mean it really is a lot but it doesn't feel like work if you're if you're really enjoying it if you're really you know passionate about it one thing I found fascinating reading the book was that your younger brother Joey actually typically outscores you on like aptitude tests yeah but his struggle defined like that thing he cares enough about to have the kind of success you've had yeah I mean I like to tell people that I mean I think Joey is is smarter than me in pretty much every way like Joey is a very smart guy but unlike me he instilled this point I don't think has discovered what he really wants to use that aptitude for I was lucky I found what I wanted to do when I was 10 years old I don't think most people who are 25 or even 30 or 35 have discovered that yet but I was just and and I think every day like I am so lucky to have the parents I had to have the resources I had and to discover that and have that spark when I was 10 years old it's just about you know finding something that you really enjoy boy whether you're ten or you know forty right it happens different points for everyone and what do you do people ask you about like how do I find my passion or how do I develop a passion at all yeah I mean it's hard to say for me people ask me how did I become you know interested in nuclear science and and it's hard to pinpoint you know one specific thing where it's like I read that or I talked to that person and I knew I think more than anything it was just being incredibly curious about the way the world worked sucking in all the information I could about the natural sciences and physics and chemistry and engineering and then stumbling across nuclear science and just for me being like wow this is kind of to me I think a combination of three things one it's really cool it's like really powerful right to me nuclear science is the most interesting thing because it's as humans just about the most energy dense process that we can access right like the amount of energy contained in a gram of uranium relative you know to the massive amounts of fossil fuels that the energy and that uranium represents that's an incredibly powerful thing and that was really compelling to me so that was one pillar if you will the other was aptitude I kind of started to do and I was like hey I'm kind of I kind of got a knack for this right I got a knack for applying equations to you know designing experiments that's the second pillar and then the third pillar would be realizing that it was something I could do that I enjoyed that I thought I could make an impact with right because there are a lot of things we can do as hobbies that are fun right like sports or wide variety of activities but when you feel like you can make an impact know a positive impact on the world using that I think for me that's when it kind of all congealed this is probably what I would be doing you know for at least the next ten years if not longer it's interesting that you bring that up but one of the most fascinating things about your story was the way that you reacted to your grandma getting cancer and then talk to us about that how did that manifest itself in what you pursued and I think everyone when a terminal illness hits feels very helpless right you feel like you know why is this happened there's not really much we can do especially with the disease like cancer with you know the medicine of the time of the day but I kind of realized that nuclear science was a powerful tool and there existed opportunities within nuclear science so this whole field of nuclear medicine to really make an impact on the way we treat and diagnose disease and I think it was in that moment and because of that event that I realized that this was not only something that I could enjoy and have fun doing but could also make an impact with and it kind of gave a mission you know kind of a mission to what I was doing and so that looking back I think that was very formative and why I chose to do you know what I did yeah I have two questions off that one do you do you ever feel helpless haha I don't like feeling helpless you know if you really delve in a psyche and probably my mini neuroses I think feeling helpless is not something I really enjoy I like to have you know it's probably a control thing I don't know but I'm very lucky that as a scientist and engineer that I can really take these tools of knowledge about the way the world works and apply them to solving problems and I think that's the reason I am a very profound optimist like I am very optimistic about the future of humanity about the future of this planet about all the things we do you know is is dark as it seems sometimes and as miserable as this world can be and all the problems that we face I have to remind myself that we are the one species on this planet that has the ability to use this thing you know our brain to overcome problems right you know any other animal on this planet an asteroid is headed for Earth they're gone they're gone but we exist as a species in this unique time in our evolution where we can change that we could launch a rocket carrying nuclear weapons and the course of that asteroid and that makes our species very unique that ability to solve problems and every day I get to meet very very bright very impressive people from all backgrounds in all walks of life who are working on solving these kind of problems and when you do that there's no way you can be pessimistic about the future you've said that you have too many things you're interested in to tackle and one lifetime how much does impact so you talked about that with your grandmother how much does impact factor into that decision-making of how to rank sort of hierarchically the things you care about yeah I mean I'll just have to admit like I don't think I always do a great job of prioritizing what I do right sometimes I do it because it's it's interesting sometimes I do it because I feel like you know it'll inspire someone to do something else I don't do great at prioritizing it but I do try to think about what is the impact of what I'm doing right how does it contribute whether it's engineering whether it's solving a problem like energy or disease or security or whether it's just simply you know doing science and doing science for me is you know the most fun thing I do the reason I ask that is for me a lot of times you know people are so I'll say you need to work hard smart and long hours right that's my like obsession those three things but what's hiding in that always and forever for me is love what you do like once you love what you do I'm not like I'm not saying go and slave yourself to the wheel of pain I'm talking about something that you love doing and there's a lot of stories in the book about where you wouldn't eat people have to bring you food because you would just get so in on something like that yeah no it's true I mean when you do something you love you kind of lose yourself in it sometimes so going back to your profound optimism for the future one what are you working on that you're most excited about that you think is gonna have the biggest impact and then what does our future look like well the future is a very interesting place I'll say that much it's it's exciting you know it's always said that you know and to predict the future is a very dangerous occupation and I agree you know trying to predict especially in the long term humans or civilizations gonna be in two decades or three decades or four decades out bad that's very hard you know technology follows exponential trends and it usually branches off from an area that most people are if anybody sees coming but what excites me and partly why I do what I do is because I get this little window into the future you know whether it's research that I'm doing or someone I'm advising or group doing work that I've come in and kind of taking a look at I get this very like early look at kind of what the next technologies that are on the horizon are and it's very exciting I think as far as what I work on and the biggest part of my day job you know is energy the ability to create energy sources that are non polluting that don't have emissions that don't have harm to the environment while at the same time being able to electrify the you know one in fifth person on earth that doesn't have electricity that's very exciting because there are literally billions of people on earth that don't have access to any electricity and if you can provide that electricity to them at a lower cost and a much lower environmental footprint than what exists today I think that's a very exciting future something that goes into that also comes out of that is access to information right I said this before but what I was able to do at 10 or 14 years old growing up in Arkansas would not have been possible without the internet it just wouldn't I would have been at the mercy of what was available in my local library or if I was at a college campus what was available in the you know libraries of that college or university and you know think about the one in fifth person on the planet it doesn't have access to any electricity once they have access to energy it's a very logical step to get them telecommunications to give them access to that Internet of information and it's exciting to think about the people like me in places like rural India or sub-saharan Africa that don't currently have access to the Internet that would be able to learn so much become passionate about a subject become well-versed in a subject and then able to innovate the next major discovery that's going to change our lives so of course there are downsides to that downsides that'll need to be managed like all new technology but the ability to electrify and integrate into the network of telecommunications we have today those you know probably really several billion people is going to be incredible and that's probably one of the things I'm most excited about so I know that you've been working with vice a lot which is actually how you first got on my radar my wife and I were watching a segment on energy ok and they had you on it and I'm like who is this guy like I was obviously freaking out about the credentials and just how young you were what do you think is media's role in what you're trying to do bringing the youth voice like is that part of why your focus there look I think you know as far as you know some of the stuff like vice that I've done and continue to do I think the more that scientists communicate what they do to the public the better off we are you know unfortunately scientists aren't typically the greatest communicators I mean they're great at communicating with other scientists but as far as communicating with the general public right they're not great and if you think about it that's probably the one career field on earth that it's the most important to communicate I mean typically scientists funding comes from the public and the work they're doing directly impacts the citizen the voter the consumer and we think about things as diverse from you know the environment to to healthcare decisions the research that scientists are doing are directly affecting you know the average person and if there doesn't exist an ability to communicate that you're kind of losing that knowledge to the place where it's it's most important that it goes and and look I think signs are really really cool I mean I think you would agree Sciences is this amazingly cool thing it happens with the biggest coolest toys humans have ever built and some of the coolest places on earth by some of the coolest people and mind you not people that are you know seven-year-old white men with crazy hair in lab coats I mean it's a very diverse group of people that do science and the more we communicate that and the more we enter that into the zeitgeist into popular media and popular culture the better off are gonna be because not only are citizens and the general public gonna be better informed on the issues but the more young people that are gonna be inspired to go and do science and in some ways I kind of hope that's my greatest legacy and I want to do a lot of really big things with my life I'm very ambitious I will try to do as many as as possible or I have the ability to do but I can only do so much but if I can inspire 100 kids or 20 kids to pursue science and technology as a career the amount of innovation they'll be able to do the amount of problems they'll be able to solve and the amount of good they'll be able to do in the world that's a force multiplier on what I'm able to do and so in some ways I'm more excited about that than you know any of the work that I do is being able to be that voice to go out and say science is really flippin cool and we should really do something to promote this so young people realize that all right you said that you're really ambitious there's a lot of things you want to do what are other than energy because I totally get it loud and clear on energy but beyond energy what are a few key things that if you don't accomplish by the time that you leave this earth or if you do me a favor and end Aging which I would really appreciate like what are those key things you're like they just absolutely have to happen energy is kind of the biggest thing I focus on because energy underlies so many things we do I mean energy is the currency of our everyday lives you know the currency of our economy is the currency of manufacturing the currency of healthcare sustainable food production water resources all these things are basically just a function of energy and if we can dramatically like by an order of magnitude lower the cost of energy increase the access to energy all while doing it in a very environmentally responsible and sustainable way I already have that design like why isn't that happening so the reactors are under owned development development in like and now we get the government to buy in on it or development like hey the government's already bought in and now we're actually making them a lot of just basic R&D I mean building a reactor is a hard thing it's not as straightforward as going to Lowe's and picking up PVC pipe and a pump and things like that there are a lot of things with reactor development that require a lot of validation you have to subject materials to an environment for pull long period of time to see how they're going to perform I'm happy with the progress I think it's going to be something that is really gonna come of age soon enough to make a difference especially in the specialty customers you know these reactors have the potential to be a utility-scale solution right but what I'm most excited about are those specialty customers what keeps you up at night what keeps me up at night well that's a good question look I think you know there are a lot of advantages to technology right like we've created these amazing lives that compared to lives a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago are prolonged that are free from a lot of the the problems that you know our early ancestors faced but they haven't been without their downsides you know technology typically is always a two-headed coin right nuclear technology is the the prime example of that right we created the ability to split the atom created the most destructive weapons humans have ever built nuclear weapons and it also created this technology whether it's nuclear power or whether it's nuclear medicine whether it's some of the other applications in nuclear technology that really have made our lives better have made really big advancements in the way we live our lives there are a lot of these so-called dual use technologies that I think going forward in the future we have to keep an eye on biotechnology is one of those the ability to synthesize an organism on command to basically be able to program its genetic code to serve a function is going to have profoundly impactful importance on our lives I mean the ability to synthesize drugs the ability to sighs new materials the ability to treat disease and create a life of abundance is all going to be enabled by those kind of synthetic biology projects but it also creates the possibility that you could create a designer bug right a disease a vector a a pathogen that could target an individual or could target a group or become more pathogenic than something that exists today and that's a scary possibility the same possibility exists with artificial intelligence and we were talking about this earlier but I don't know where I fall in the issue of general artificial intelligence narrow AI narrow artificial intelligence there's relatively you know artificial intelligence applied to a problem you know whether that problems security or that problems health care that's problems food management you know the application of artificial intelligence to that is much easier to not only know where it's going but try to mitigate the risk and mitigate the the negative consequences of it generally I this idea of super intelligence or or a singularity or the ability to create a computer that exceeds the cognitive capacity of the human brain that's something that's much harder to predict where it's going and because it's harder to predict it's harder to mitigate the negative you know consequences of that I don't know where I fall in this you do I think it's a doomsday scenario do I think it's a Ecsta central threat to human existence probably not but I still think it's something that we have to keep an eye on just like you know I we were in 1939 with the dawn of the Manhattan Project and the dawn of the new era and understanding of our universe we embarked on a crash program to develop nuclear weapons and literally in a couple of years we went from a theoretical concept to the ability to create the most destructive weapons humans have ever created and in that way I think we sort of stand like we stood in 1939 with nuclear weapons potentially with computing technology it will have positive outcomes and will transform the way we live our lives in a positive way it may also have negative outcomes so it is it is very important for the scientists doing the research the organization's funding the research and governmental bodies whether those are national or international to keep an eye on it always reevaluating where the technology is going out of curiosity if you have kids what would you do to help them foster the kinds of passions and things that have been such a boon for you look I definitely want to have kids I'm excited to see what they do and a way I hope they don't do at least nuclear science if science at all I don't know I think I think it's important for me and I talked about this before you know I am so incredibly lucky to live the life I did I think in a lot of other circumstances I would have not ended up where I ended up the fact that I had parents that never tried to Shepherd me into any certain area they always kind of looked to me of what my interest was and tried to to fuel that passion and like I said that that changed over the years and then I found nuclear science but that ability to support whatever my passion was and do it wholeheartedly and take me to Space Camp and take me to National Labs to meet nuclear scientists and giving me a little bit of leeway when it came to doing experiments while still you know trying to keep me safe I think if I was born into a lot of other situations I wouldn't have had that so for me you know I if I have kids when I have kids I would hope that they can develop their own passions and I can support that because I think they will be the most successful and they find something that they love and are able to use you know what talents they may have on that and so I'm excited about that future how would you do that though is it like a shotgun approach or just make sure that they encounter a lot of different things or do you have a specific methodology well I'm not a parent yet we'll see when I get to that point what my methodology is and I'm sure I'll have a perfect plan and how actually turns out but yeah look I think partly it's it's making sure an encouraging curiosity right so giving them access to libraries of information giving them the access to the information encouraging that curiosity and then once they found something they were interested in giving them as many resources as was humanly possible to pursue that you know if they're interested space I'm gonna take them to Space Camp I'm gonna make sure that that is priority for me as a parent to get them there and expose them to people that are doing what they're you know what they're interested in I've always believed that it's very hard to be inspired to do something when you can't really see yourself doing it right like if you were a you know young girl of color and the only scientific mentors you have are these old white guys and lab coats it's gonna be very hard to be like you know what I see myself in that person I want to be a scientist this is cool and I think in that way getting young people exposure to science and what science actually is is important so taking him to labs showing them people doing the science and showing them kind of the diversity of the people that are doing science I think that's very important because that's when that spark happens like oh that guy or that girl is kind of like me you know she looks like me and she's having a whole lot of fun doing what she's doing I think that's what I want to spend my life doing I think that is an incredibly powerful and underutilized tool for for inspiration how do you respond when somebody in your lab says that something can't be done I usually question them very very long and hard about that and that happens you know like all whether it's a student whether it's someone that I'm working with whether it's a colleague that that I've engaged in a partnership sometimes people are like Taylor that just that that's not possible and I guess every once in a while especially if it starts but up against the laws of physics that response might be valid but I give them a long hard look a long hard questioning session of is it really not possible or have you just not thought up a solution or have you not given it enough time or is that just the conceived way of thinking about the subject you know it's it's um goes back so so Elon Musk founded SpaceX in the early 2000s because I really only had this idea that you want to send a greenhouse to Mars it's just kind of a crazy idea if you think about it but this idea that streaming back the pictures would inspire people well now fast-forward over a decade and SpaceX his Space Launch company has been able to create a class of reusable orbital booster really for the first time in the history of space flight a fully reusable first stage orbital booster that's something that even maybe six or seven years ago if you went to the Rocket community and asked people would say it's crazy it's not the way things are done it's probably not possible and if it's possible it's going to be way too expensive to be economical and Elon and the team at SpaceX was like this is something that is important this is how we're gonna reduce launch of Kaah the cost of launch it's crazy to be throwing away these boosters after every flight that would be like throwing away jumbo jets after every transatlantic crossing and they said we're gonna do it and we're gonna do it and we're gonna prove it's possible and we're gonna make the economics work and I think it's thinking like that that is not always found within science that's not always found with an industry and the more crazy folks you have that push people like that the more kind of radical innovation like reusable rockets will have because again Elon didn't know what he didn't know right he didn't know that's not the way it's done he didn't spend his career in a rocket company in a propulsion company doing rocket engineering doing aerospace engineering and so he didn't know that reusable orbital class vehicles wasn't the way things were done and because of that was able to create a company that is now doing that and has dramatically dropped the cost of launched orbit and so I try to encourage the people around me just you know if you don't think it's possible just give it another try you sketch it out maybe try a different okay and this you come back to me again or maybe you know three times from Howland don't have a solution then then maybe I'll accept that it's it's just not gonna happen right now all right and how do you I'm guessing in your career you failed a lot like creating some of the things you've created just seems inevitable how do you think about failure how do you deal with failure if I was in the lab today I would probably fail I will have probably profound failures in the future hopefully none that are large and dramatic and end up on the twelve o'clock you know ten o'clock news but inevitably I will have lots more failures but that's what drives innovation I mean some of the coolest things I've done in the lab have been failing to do what I originally set out my original hypothesis or my original experimental design turned out to be just completely worthless I couldn't do it or I screwed it up but the outcome was something that actually was kind of interesting that goes back to some of the greatest scientific discoveries in history came from people that had kind of really bad experimental design but discovered something that they never intended that they never thought of and so in that way you know people talk about you know failure being the catalyst of innovation or failure being you know the way we've learned all this stuff and nowhere is that more prominent than in science I mean science is built on failure if I knew when I set out to conduct an experiment what the outcome was going to be a hundred percent there would be no reason to do the experiment so a lot of times in science and in engineering too you know you're not going to succeed or you're not going to prove your intuition but what you do develop what you do create what you do discover is going to probably be something in some cases even cooler than what you set out to do so yeah failure is integral and I know people say that all the time that's almost become a buzzword like you have to fail to succeed and all this stuff but like that is a core tenet to science is you know we you have to remain curious like if you get convinced that you know everything and that you know you know everything about what you're doing and you stop being curious that's the moment you stop becoming it's not being a scientist I mean to be a scientist is to not know it's the probably only profession on earth where you rewarded for not knowing what you're doing and so maybe it's a good excuse but I think it's a whole lot of fun as a job I love that all right before I ask my last question where can these guys find you online um that's a good question I try to kind of not spend too much time on social media but I do have a website and probably in the future will be you know kind of updating or at least restarting some of these social media channels because I think what I do on a daily basis is cool to look at so one of these days I need to start you know getting that out there and I'll let you know what I do all right sounds perfect final question what is the impact that you want to have on the world well look I think there are a lot of things I want to do we've kind of touched on a lot of them I think energy you know if we can really reinvent the way we use and produce energy that's going to be probably more transformative than a lot of the things that I can do with my life so if I can have at least a small part and kind of transforming our energy economy that will be important but more than that I think you know if we can inspire a new generation of young people to pursue science and technology as a way to make the world a better place that'll have more of a profound impact on the world than anything else because science is cool and science is the one thing I think that's really gonna get us out of these problems that we face today you know we we're in a rut like we have some big problems that we face domestically and internationally and the globe in general and science and technology represents the tools to get us out of those holes to dig ourselves out of these problems and really make the world a better place in the future than it was in the past so the more young people that are working on that and getting to use these really cool sexy toys the better of the world is gonna be and so if I can have a part in that that would be something I would I would try to do okay thank you so much for coming on the show man you're incredible guys all right on this one I'm telling you the notion of profound curiosity that is something I want you to burn into your soul what I love is this guy is the one tell you that aptitude matters but it doesn't matter nearly as much as you think and if he was gonna have to trade it for something and the funny thing is in his family he has the examples where his brother was actually out scoring him on all the aptitude tests that they were taking but because he had that thing he had that passion that he had discovered he had that profound curiosity which used to get mentors which he used to propel himself forward all of that that was a real juice cultivate that in yourself go out encounter a lot of stuff let his story be the story of that let people right now that don't know what they want to do really look at that and think about what are the ways you can engage with something to discover the things that you really want to do in your life then don't take no for an answer show his level of tenacity get after it convince people persuasion this guy is able to persuade people and I think more than anything with his infectious enthusiasm for what he does fall in love with something get really good at it put in the time and effort don't take no rethink get outside your comfort zone think about other things come at it from a new angle and what he said about failure is incredibly awesome and it may be oft-repeated but it is literally the foundation of so many things not just science but hearing it from somebody who's had that level of success to say literally what I do is all about failure is pretty incredible I hope you guys were listening as closely as I was all right boys and girls if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey Thank You Man hey everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 285,846

Rating: 4.9209828 out of 5

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, gary vee, gary vaynerchuk, tim ferriss, lewis howes, taylor wilson, Taylor Wilson, nuclear fusion, fusion, physics, nuclear reactor, genius, genius doesnt matter, why genius doesn't matter, science, engineering, STEM, stem, einstein, Einstein, the next einstein, Vice, VICE, Vice News, Time, time, Time Magazine

Id: Ggn6P-6USr4

Length: 48min 31sec (2911 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2017