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Comment by dymk | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I'm saying he was not smart, nor was he resourceful. He was certainly mentally ill.

He didn't build a reactor. He didn't build an x-ray machine. No experiments took place. There was no scientific method employed. He took apart a bunch of smoke detectors. He irradiated his mother's back yard, and then he tried to do it again in an apartment building.

He wasn't a misunderstood savant.

The guy did nothing that should be emulated, lauded, or praised. He's a cautionary tale of untreated mental illness.

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Smart or not he had a lot of domain knowledge and had the ambition to learn more. Its vastly disappointing that none of the authorities or adults in his life steered him towards work in the nuclear field

> none of the authorities or adults in his life steered him towards work in the nuclear field

How do you know they didn’t?

It's been more than a decade since I read the book. If I remember correctly, the parents were pretty absent/clueless and uninvolved. It's possible someone tried to steer him (science teacher working with the tanning lotion). But it doesn't seem the the parents would have been likely to do it based on his side of the story.

> he had a lot of domain knowledge

It doesn't take domain knowledge to stockpile smoke detectors. He learned what he did from high school chemistry textbooks.

> had the ambition to learn more

Apparently not, as evidenced by him not having successfully built anything nor pursued any higher education.

A person like this is actually unsuitable, even if he was smart. How likely you are to steal nuclear material is a factor there.

As far as I know he didn't do well in math. I suspect what might have helped most is to have less enablers.

He didn't seem to have ambition to aquire the kind of knowledge that makes a difference. Math. Safety protocols. The politics of working with others and creating a sense of absolute trust.

He may have had a lot of domain knowledge, but was any of it at all relevant to a supercomputer simulation of a reactor?

This isn't something you learn as you go. If you try something, and aren't already 99% sure what is going to happen before you try it, then you may be learning lots of random nuclear facts, but you aren't learning what the professionals do.

99.99% of nuclear engineers have probably never done even one DIY experiment past the very safe "Let's measure bananas" stuff.

The best way to steer him towards a real career would be to make him understand why you do not build backyard reactors, and why you learn your math, go to college, and do things professionally or not at all.

Most people could not / would not go and teach themselves chemistry in their bedroom. While not a savant, it sounds like he might have benefited from being given direction from an interested adult.

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