71–80 of 505 posts
I think a more convincing theory for me is that society abounds with "IQ shredders". Sure, we're now living in an era of abundant information, but we're also living in an era of abundant distractions and hazards.
This 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…
You're absolutely right, although on a completely different topic: I'd argue that most of the things you mentioned might not be good for society, especially when combined with the view that most technological development takes place in publicly traded companies whose primary obligation is to maximize quarterly profits. I guess it is innovation when a personalized recommender system is able to pick exactly the right c…
Sure, Toni Morrison. Whitney Houston. Prince. Steve Jobs (slightly over a decade). I don't know, the list goes on? There are plenty of culture shifting geniuses among us. It just doesn't look the same as it did in the 19th and early 20th century.
I would argue Fabrice Bellard should be in contention, DJ Bernstein, etc. There are geniuses all around us and that is what has changed. It's by no means normalized but extraordinary doesn't seem as extraordinary when the world is literally powered by tens of thousands of extraordinary people doing awesome things day in and day out.
Those are just two public examples I can think of, imagine how many genius level brains are working at Intel, AMD, TSMC and ASML that make the physics of what we consider "normal" tick.
This 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…
Innovation is not the same as genius. Innovation generally occurs as a linear function from point a to b, whereas genius operates as a step function. Geniuses are the people who make that mental leap of progress in t=1 instead of t=sqrt(2), and they sit up there waving their hands saying "Hey guys! Look what I found up here!", and we all say "How the hell did you get up there so fast? What the heck are you talking about?" until we start catching up and go "Oh yeah... that makes sense".
I 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:…
I agree. It's just that there is so much innovation everywhere, that those geniuses of old are not THAT outstanding. There are many geniuses, who make big contributions, but they don't work by themselves, so their contributions are not seen as advancing a field by one big leap. The same with music. You just need to search more. Youtube and spotify made this easier, I discover totally new astounding music authors and…
I think this hits the nail on the head. Because we now have access to an instant world-wide exchange of ideas scientists work more closely together on developing their respective fields than ever before. By the time a major breakthrough happens most experts in the field will have already seen it coming.
Breakthroughs consist of many smaller leaps in knowledge and we are now hyper-aware of each small development, thus it doesn't seem like we're making big leaps anymore. Rather than creating new geniuses the Internet eliminated the need for the classic "genius" to make a breakthrough in a scientific field.
If we consider Einstein as a "10x scientist", I for one, I'm glad that society is realising that it's better collectively to increase slightly the performance/achievements of 10 scientists than relying on a single "10x" one for innovation.
Take optimization using Monte Carlo. What do you prefer, ten little innocuous steps or a single bold large leap over a barrier?
I dont see human endeavor as linear. I see it as an infinite dimensional space that we are somewhat directed to explore. In this PoV little steps get me nowhere.
Also, consider that ten little scientists will quickly dominate the institution and crowd out the genius who they cannot understand.
This 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…
Are we really seeing a lot of innovation? The last technological breakthrough was the smartphone. We still don't have space stations that can accommodate more than a half dozen people (spoiler: I want to live on Cloud City). We don't have Moon colonies. We don't have 3D holograms (not the ones that rely on spinning a stick really fast and using a projector). We still don't have a cure for any type of cancer. No warp…
The smartphone was 15 years ago but we act like it was yesterday.
1900-1910ish we got air conditioning, plastics, airplanes, motion pictures, the Theory of Relativity..
We are just so clueless now. Even the smart people are clueless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're absolutely right, although on a completely different topic: I'd argue that most of the things you mentioned might not be good for society, especially when combined with the view that most technological development takes place in publicly traded companies whose primary obligation is to maximize quarterly profits. I guess it is innovation when a personalized recommender system is able to pick exactly the right c…
fwiw, that's a very time-local judgement of the progress we made. Objectively, as a species, we solved inter-connectivity, high quality media, etc. - the fact that we currently live in a culture where these means are distributed in the name of wealth will simply be meaningless a couple hundred years down the line.
I see simply no other way out of very deeply the status/hierarchy thing that's so deeply ingrained into our species.
I'd argue that the low-hanging fruit of science has been picked. That's why we're not seeing "Einsteins" everywhere. In fact, there's an Asimov short story (I can't recall the name) where certain members of society exist only to make connections between unrelated fields because the knowledge of humanity has become so vast. In fact, I'd say we're not far from that now, as there are more and more stories along the line…
Add to that the ever increasing time pressure and funding problem. Remember, Einstein was a patent clerk. Most people simply cant afford to invest their time into allowing themselves to think freely. I am confident we could get the genius rate back up with something like UBI.