Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
erikhoel.substack.com
Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
1–10 of 505 posts
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#2I see how "aristocratic tutoring" brings up people at the wrong end of the curve (like G. W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind") but I don't see it creating genius.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#3This one one of those granular issues where there is no single right answer. Given the forum, the best answer would be why has our given technology been shaped to act as aristocratic tutors to us all?
Further, is there enough room for any given Einstein in this dogmatic landscape?
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#4This one one of those granular issues where there is no single right answer. Given the forum, the best answer would be why has our given technology been shaped to act as aristocratic tutors to us all? Further, is there enough room for any given Einstein in this dogmatic landscape?
It maybe less about dogma and more about the size of the remaining problems. A single Einstein can't go find the Higgs boson; you need a multi-national consortium willing to build a city-sized machine for it.
You see the same in all sorts of fields. Inventing the telescope is neat. Inventing the JWST isn't something a single contributor is capable of.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#5This is ridiculous. We’re seeing innovation EVERYWHERE, and looking back, this will be a golden age for progress (if the species makes it far enough to look back, that is).
Think of it like this: we invented personal computers. At the time, only nerds had access to computation. These days, all kinds of scientists just script up things in python. We have how many million people who are able to code? I don’t even care how minuscule the odds are that ONE coder changes the world. The numbers make it impossible for us to lose on all the fronts. Tech is basically matured to the point where all the questions of the 90s are now solved. Ad tech? Check. Search? Check. Mobile hq video and photo beyond the 90s imagination? Check. The list goes on. Computers ALREADY BEAT HUMANS AT GO, let that sink in.
I don’t even care how pessimistic you are - if you fail to see how we are a) blooming right now and b) will continue to bloom for the foreseeable future, the wording is exactly right: YOU fail to see it.
It’s there. It’s everywhere. The fact that you can read this message, that I’m typing while my girlfriend lies in my arm in our bed, should be mind blowing. If you lost that sense of wonder, maybe it’s time to reconsider your models.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#6I think this is more of a version of the "why have we stopped making good music/movies, almost everything today is garbage?" issue. With the benefit of hindsight, we only remember the greats (and the very worst villains) from past eras. While if we look around today, we see all the people who will never make it into the history books, just like we see all the songs and movies that will never become "classics."
Edit: And yes, the internet has brought about immense and immeasurable benefits to science and innovation. It can both be true that most people on Facebook are dunces and getting dumber because of Facebook, and that there has been massive developments in research and development that would not have happened without the internet.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#7I completely disagree with the premise, that geniuses are vanishing - I think we have more than ever, it just takes a lot more to make notable progress these days. However, the article still ended up being a decent read, exploring how a lot of geniuses had tutors. I think our education system is messed up in a lot of ways, and we'd have a better society if kids got more adult attention. Saying this as a parent of a middle schooler, I really feel the issues in staff-constrained pandemic years.
It would be interesting to have past geniuses sit in today's world - I think we'd be dismayed that in the massive ocean of knowledge we have these days, they wouldn't seem so legendary anymore.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#8Are they pointing out a lack of geniuses, or just a lack of pop culture geniuses? And are the silos in knowledge so stratified now that we as a culture just don't recognize those who are?
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#9The idea that we "made" Einstein to begin with is risible anyway.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#10Pinning an argument to "based on Wikipedia mentions" isn't scientific. Overlooking the lack of real data, it is a well written argument.