I don’t think the hyperloop matters one way or the other to your original argument (which I agree with). Someone can be a genius and still make mistakes and fail to succeed at every single goal. (For another example, consider Isaac Newton who a) wasted a lot of time studying alchemy and still failed to transform lead into gold and b) screwed up his day job at the Royal Mint so badly that England ended up with a de facto gold standard even though it was supposed to have both silver and gold currency. He’s still a world-historic genius for inventing calculus.)
Alchemists still performed experiments on chemical reactions, discovered new ones and described them, practiced how to separate substances and for that they developed tools and methods, that were later in chemistry. It’s not like it was an inherent waste of time, it was a necessary stepping-stone to get to chemistry, which developed from it more gradually than it’s typically acknowledged.
I don’t think the hyperloop matters one way or the other to your original argument (which I agree with). Someone can be a genius and still make mistakes and fail to succeed at every single goal. (For another example, consider Isaac Newton who a) wasted a lot of time studying alchemy and still failed to transform lead into gold and b) screwed up his day job at the Royal Mint so badly that England ended up with a de facto gold standard even though it was supposed to have both silver and gold currency. He’s still a world-historic genius for inventing calculus.)
Alchemists still performed experiments on chemical reactions, discovered new ones and described them, practiced how to separate substances and for that they developed tools and methods, that were later in chemistry. It’s not like it was an inherent waste of time, it was a necessary stepping-stone to get to chemistry, which developed from it more gradually than it’s typically acknowledged.