Most people here are interpreting "genius" as something like "really smart" or "able to make scientific progress". I don't believe that's the author's meaning: he's talking about individuals whose work single-handedly upends our understanding of the world and causes a revolutionary change in thinking. By that definition, making a faster CPU, or a very successful product is not sufficient. By that definition, who are the Einstein-level geniuses? Someone in the thread said Whitney Houston, but... uhh, anyone else?
Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
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Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#92This 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…
So, I basically agree with you that there's lots of progress to be amazed by. I also think that the "genius" model is fundamentally flawed, at least in today's age -- there's something to be said for the possibility that education and support systems have improved to the point where maybe geniuses are everywhere. If anything I think we have too much of a genius mythology, and maybe this paper is sort of inadvertently pointing out that the Einsteins of the past were more about the social structures they found themselves than their "genius" per se.
There is another argument to be made, though, that goes something like this: a lot of what people are pointing to are basically engineering achievements rather than anything else. Most of what we know of as modern computing was essentially in place by the early 1980s, and alot of what's happened since is just refinements of that. So, being able to casually videochat on your phone is kind of like living in the future, but it's something that basically just took a ton of engineering refinements to get to.
That might be fine enough on its own, but there has been a ton of money thrown into things at the same time, far more than in the past. So we go from a desktop PC in 1985 to your smartphone today? It's pretty remarkable, the miniturization involved, but how much money has been thrown at that?
I don't want to sound too critical, as I'm basically on board with you and I think the OP is sort of off the mark in a number of ways, but I do think it's coming from a kernel of truth at some level.
Let me put it a different way: the idea that there would be no progress in anything over the last 50 years seems like a strawman. It's not really what these pieces are arguing. What they're arguing is basically that the years from say, 1915-1975 or so, especially 1940-1975 or so, were really remarkable scientifically speaking, and we're kind of in a period of just engineering the hell out of those advancements since then.
Of course I admit this could all be nonsense; I wish these sorts of papers and essay had more empirical backing behind their basic arguments but with a couple of exceptions I don't see it.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed with all your points, except for this one: > b) will continue to bloom for the foreseeable future I don't think this will be the case. True, it was/is a golden age, but I don't see how this demonstrably unsustainable machine can go on fore the "foreseeable future". Unless we get a huge breakthrough on the order of fusion, I don't see this golden age going on more than 50 or so more years.
The reason I see us continuing to progress is: we have tons of spare intellectual resources. I can't imagine a world where millions of people live in rich countries, who can code, who can read scientific publications, that just stops progressing. Of course the system we've built is constantly evolving, so some things will certainly collapse. E.g. the web will be more and more partitioned - not everything just gets be…
Climate change is not going to wipe out the human species, but it will cause a large amount of economic upheaval, migration, and things like that. Not exactly the sort of circumstances that are conducive to progress.
Then there are many political reasons; the internal politics of many western countries are kind of in a stalemate, and have been for quite some time. It all keeps working for the time being, but it seems to me that there's a very plausible chance a crisis is looming on this front as well. The geopolitical situation I'm a bit less worried about by the way, in spite of Ukraine and China's chest-beating about Taiwan.
Once this kind of infrastructure for progress gets compromised then things will become very hard. I dare not make any predictions: it can go both ways, but I'm a lot less confident things will work out as easily as you say.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#94This 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…
People keep saying how fast flight evolved, such that a person was alive both for Wright brothers and landing on the Moon.
We live in a similar (or even higher) acceleration now, with a lot of us born during floppy disks, magnetic tapes and punch cards and we're witnessing having the entirety of world knowledge in our pockets, anywhere in the world, for free!
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#95Earlier 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.
Maybe I'm lacking some nuance here. Are you saying humans will become less greedy in the next couple hundred years?
Edit:. Appreciate you for putting your opinions out in open air.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#96[deleted]
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#97This 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…
I don't wholly disagree with your overall point, but I'm not entirely onboard, either. I feel like, as someone else mentioned, you're perhaps conflating innovation and "Einsteins" (read: genius) a bit too much. I also think that you're too narrowly focused on innovations within tech, while genius can occur in countless other fields and the article itself doesn't even keep it's focus on "genius" so narrow.
>... all the questions of the 90s are now solved.
This is exceedingly hyperbolic and I can't imagine you actually think this is true.
>Ad tech? Check.
Ah, yes! Advertising technology! I think we're all delighted, as a species, that we've innovated so hard in this realm. Invasive, targeted advertising is the bee's knees and will really propel us forward as a civilization.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#98Earlier 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.
> Objectively, as a species, we solved inter-connectivity, high quality media, etc.
I do not think that is an objective statement at all. I think one could just as readily make a highly data-supported argument that never in history have we been more factionalized or inundated with low-quality media than in the current moment.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#99When Einstein proposed General Relativity it could be tested by nothing more complex than a camera. If anyone comes up with a theory of physics to explain further what we observe about the world the test usually entails a multi trillion dollar machine, a team of thousands of scientists and decades of engineering to bring about a test. Usually these things require novel engineering and for environments where we have n…
> plenty of very clever people working on hard problems and coming up with clever solutions this is not what this all talk is about Einstein is an (prime) example of conceptualist - man, who introduced revolutionary concept into our understanding of the world. There are a lot of Nobel laureates who are (hard) problem solvers. But in physics looks like we truly need a conceptualist, new Einstein so to speak
Those only come about every several generations. Many of them needed the entire thinking population of humans in the meantime to package up ideas in a different way so they could bring about their flash of insight.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#100This 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…
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