I think its more a comment of how we should be open to people contributing to these efforts (while still being mindful of wild claims). While the concept of perpetual motion machines is flawed, the effort put into reducing kinetic energy loss is very useful. Flywheels are being actively studied as a method to store excess energy storage. In the long-term view I don't think you can consider anything not worth spending time on, the result just might not be applicable to the original goal.

> How many times did people try out perpetual motion machines?

Or even turning lead into gold! A ton of famous scientist (i.e. Newton) were very busy with that idea but we end up only knowing them for other side projects/discoveries.

> A ton of famous scientist (i.e. Newton)

The abbreviation "i.e." stands for "id est" and means "that is". So what you have written means "A ton of famous scientist (that is, Newton)"...

Now while I'm sure Newton had gravitas (hah!), I doubt it amounted to a ton.

You want to use the abbreviation for "exempli gratia" which is "e.g." and means "for example".

It's a common mistake but easy to remember with eg-xample. :-)

I think perpetual motion is the wrong way to go.

Mark Twain lost all of his money on a wide variety of speculative investments, most of which I would call fairly reasonable.

Getting in on the ground floor does you no good if it's the wrong kind of ground floor, or if it's the right kind of ground floor but the one next door ends up going to the moon while yours falters, or even if it's the right exact ground floor but you go bankrupt investing too early and the person who buys it from you rides it to the moon.