Why Does Eric Betzig Call Bell Labs Impossible to Copy?

Eric Betzig says copying Bell Labs is literally impossible. Full immersion is an immutable law of how the human brain works. Any distraction pulls the mind off the problem it is supposed to work on. Putting up a building like Bell Labs and having people work even 50-hour weeks is not enough.

In his era most of the men had stay-at-home wives and worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Eric Betzig says the wives deserve Nobel Prizes as much as the men who received them, because the work would not have happened without the wives. The arrangement is a unicorn now. People are not expected to have a stay-at-home wife and work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Most people do not want to work even 50 hours. There is no substitute for full immersion, and you cannot do full immersion when you have a family. The price is the family.

A co-host asks whether nonstop work matters enough that Bell Labs would be hard to repeat without it. Eric Betzig answers absolutely. You cannot. It is literally impossible.