Semmelweis, Lister, and Pasteur are great examples. Early adopters of Germ Theory and related issues like sanitation and antiseptics, disbelieved by everyone around them. But you can’t say that they didn’t have impact due to the disbelief—Pasteur was definitely influenced by Lister and Semmelweis, and Pasteur really got the purposefully made vaccines down (whereas with smallpox we lucked out with cowpox happening to already exist). So unlike others whose ideas are sufficiently strange as to be rejected (thus giving good evidence of counterfactual discovery, e.g. Mendel whose work was only rediscovered about when the actual content was being refigured out.), they managed to create huge counterfactual impact.
So I guess, if you can’t convince most people, at least manage to convince a handful of early adopters well positioned to reap the rewards of your ideas?
Semmelweis, Lister, and Pasteur are great examples. Early adopters of Germ Theory and related issues like sanitation and antiseptics, disbelieved by everyone around them. But you can’t say that they didn’t have impact due to the disbelief—Pasteur was definitely influenced by Lister and Semmelweis, and Pasteur really got the purposefully made vaccines down (whereas with smallpox we lucked out with cowpox happening to already exist). So unlike others whose ideas are sufficiently strange as to be rejected (thus giving good evidence of counterfactual discovery, e.g. Mendel whose work was only rediscovered about when the actual content was being refigured out.), they managed to create huge counterfactual impact.
So I guess, if you can’t convince most people, at least manage to convince a handful of early adopters well positioned to reap the rewards of your ideas?