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Einstein was no lone genius

nature.com

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Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#31

Post by eru »

api wrote: post #6
ratsmack wrote: post #2

I wonder how many geniuses there have been in the world that never had the opportunity to expand their natural skills because they were to busy just surviving.

Billions. IQ is normally distributed, so it's easy math. Lots of cynics think people are dumb or we don't have enough smart ones, but the truth is that we quite literally have more brains than we know what to do with. We are a species of bored underachievers trapped in a gravity well with nothing much to do and no future, so we spend our time fighting and drugging and making pointless doodads as townies trapped in so…

> IQ is normally distributed, [...]

But only by definition. IQ tests are graded on a scale.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#32

Post by TeMPOraL »

hguant wrote: post #22
hsitz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no shift. The question of whether individuals are primary influence on events or whether things are "in the air" and thus almost bound to happen (albeit caused by some individual or other) has been kicked around for at least a couple centuries. Napoleon was one of early examples often used. Was he a unique individual who exerted enormous influence on course of world events? Certainly. Were conditions in the…

Right, but the conditions being ripe for a Naploean still requires Napolean. Saying that "the time was such that someone like so and so HAD to rise up" is meaningless. Nothing HAS to happen, in the realms of human behavior. People may be likely to do something, or the potential to do a great thing might be more potent at one point in time than another, but that potency still requires an efficient cause to become real…

The conditions require someone like Napoleon to be there, which probably applies to many people. The first one to rise up usually wins. You can see it actually pretty clearly in science - multiple independent discoveries are more common than not, leading to the conclusion that if you were to kill Einstein in 1904, somebody would have published about relativity and photoelectric effect within a year or three.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#33

Post by danharaj »

Einstein being a socialist and all around lover of human beings probably would agree. His letters to people like Levi-Civita make that clear. There are very few hermit geniuses. Whom we consider geniuses now were often gregarious individuals who mixed themselves up with others. An individual can only be as great as the communities that nurture them. We all rely on others to guide us towards truth and away from error.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4305

Before developing his 1915 General Theory of Relativity, Einstein held the "Entwurf" theory. Tullio Levi-Civita from Padua, one of the founders of tensor calculus, objected to a major problematic element in this theory, which reflected its global problem: its field equations were restricted to an adapted coordinate system. Einstein proved that his gravitational tensor was a covariant tensor for adapted coordinate systems. In an exchange of letters and postcards that began in March 1915 and ended in May 1915, Levi-Civita presented his objections to Einstein's above proof. Einstein tried to find ways to save his proof, and found it hard to give it up. Finally Levi-Civita convinced Einstein about a fault in his arguments. However, only in spring 1916, long after Einstein had abandoned the 1914 theory, did he finally understand the main problem with his 1914 gravitational tensor. In autumn 1915 the G\"ottingen brilliant mathematician David Hilbert found the central flaw in Einstein's 1914 derivation. On March 30, 1916, Einstein sent to Hilbert a letter admitting, "The error you found in my paper of 1914 has now become completely clear to me".

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#34

Post by TeMPOraL »

hsitz wrote: post #28
akiselev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the conditions being ripe for Napoleon require a Napoleank not the Napolean , which is the crux of this individual vs circumstances debate. The interesting question is whether Napoleon (or Hitler or Stalin) was a unique individual necessary for the progression of events we call history or could that role have been fulfilled by another narcissistic, paranoid egomaniac (which Napolean, Hitler, and Stalin arguab…

Yeah, kind of undecidable, in similar way to nature vs. nurture debate. However, I would say that the case for scientific advancements being "in the air" and nearly inevitable is much stronger than, say, the inevitability of a paranoid egomaniac arising as a leader, rather than a more even-keeled and humane figure. Political action often seems balanced to go either way, for ill or for good, while scientific progress…

I'd say that the case of scientific, as well as technological 'advancements being "in the air" and nearly inevitable' is much stronger than individuals effecting social changes. For example, Reformation happened not because of Martin Luther per se, but because of printing press that gave common people the Bible, and that spread the Luther's theses around Germany in a matter of weeks, and around the world in a matter of months (arguably, this was one of the first cases of pre-Internet outrage). If you were to remove Luther, a similar movement would likely start anyway, given that it was actually growing elsewhere in parallel! People we name and attribute changes to seem to be just puppets of the circumstances.

EDIT

Scott Alexander covers that one too:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#35

Post by TeMPOraL »

iopq wrote: post #29
vacri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "one weird trick" Reading this, I couldn't help but think "Maintain correct time in orbit by using this one weird trick discovered by a patent clerk. Click to find out how!"... :)

"Lone wolf patent clerk rewrites 10 most important physics equations. #7 will shock you!"

"This Lone Pattern Clerk Dozed Off At His Job, Dreaming About Light. You Won't Believe What Happened Next!"

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#36

Post by visakanv »

sriku wrote: post #26

What Einstein and others contributed towards GR in a decade is now generally taught in one semester of grad school physics. Ruling out the possibility that grad students are today >20x intelligent than Einstein, and considering that Einstein needed no more experimental results than already available to everyone in 1905, the emphasis ought not to be as simplistic as "lone genius", but on his perseverance and nose for…

He said it himself. "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#37

Post by cba9 »

robrenaud wrote: post #14
javajosh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanity is ~7B, and "billons" implies >= 2B which is >= 30% of humanity. I'd define "great" to be the top 1% of minds, which is ~70 million people. So, yes, tens of millions of great minds are certainly wasted, but not billions . (Not that that's much consolation).

Apparently 107 billion humans have ever lived. 1% of that is greater than a billion. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579 > here are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived. That said, merely being in the top 1% of intelligence doesn't seem to be worthy of the genius title.

> That said, merely being in the top 1% of intelligence doesn't seem to be worthy of the genius title.

Especially considering that the population average in many places and times is far below the current population averages normed in the USA and UK and Western Europe. If you asked how many people throughout history or globally would be in the top 1% of the USA/UK/WE population, the answer will be much smaller than a billion. (Thin tails strike again.)

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#39

Post by sholanozie »

mettamage wrote: post #3

To some I might seem like Captain Obvious, but to me this article gave me a big insight. I mean I know social capital is important. I know it really well. Nevertheless, I didn't know that social capital is that important. Even Einstein needed it. I had no idea. I only thought he stood on the theories of others, but a lot of other people also helped him?! I never knew. How about Stephen Hawking? Did he receive signifi…

The big lie sold to us is that there is such a thing as a "self-sufficient" man. The people who make it the furthest are the people with the most extensive and powerful networks.

Re: Einstein was no lone genius

#40

Post by fsloth »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #10
cubano wrote: post #8

Einstein's big year was 1905, not 1915, and the four (five?) papers he produced during that year (one of which won him a Nobel) could easily be described as the work of a "lone genius." He did most of work of that year while working, of course as we all know, as a patent clerk. Obviously, no one lives in a vacuum, and all legendary geniuses stand on the shoulders of other giants, but I can't help but think this artic…

It's part of a larger push toward revisionist history in general. It's no longer correct to imagine that great people moved history through inspiration and force. Now, everything is cooperative, gradual, social, and voluntary. Today's archaeologist might find the remains of a burned city littered with arrowheads and skulls and say, "There was no invasion! This was clearly just theater!" You might see an entire civili…

I don't think it's revisionism, more like giving flesh to the skeleton of the popular version of a markable person. No one denies that it was Einstein that published those papers.

History is quite incomprehensible without giving a social context. Genghis Khan could have not conquered without the mongols being trained in hunting and herding, thus leading to the tactics that resulted in overwhelming victories.

Einstein could not have written the papers he did without the corpus of the scientific knowledge and the people around him. It was his will that drove him forwards but to truly undertsand his conditions better we need the historical context.

Maybe a stone age Einstein would have invented bronze. Who knows. But, theory of relativity even as a concept would have been beyond incomprehensible.

People do not exist in a vacuum. The social context is the ocean, the individual is the surfer on the waves. Individual impetus drives the person forwards but if the weather is not agreeable to his ambitions he cannot surf.

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