Freeman Dyson's JASON anecdote: elite minds failed badly in wet labs — a lesson for AI
rbhar90 · x · 2026-10-28
Physicist Freeman Dyson once recalled that as a member of the elite government consulting group JASON, he was let loose in a biology lab doing basics like DNA and RNA extraction. He and fellow physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians — many among the world's smartest people — failed miserably, massively underestimating how messy wet-lab work is. The poster argues this carries a lesson for the AI era: even brilliant minds misjudge complexity outside their domain.
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