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Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

erikhoel.substack.com

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Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#131

Post by exdsq »

xoserr wrote: post #78
Victerius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We aren't innovating like we use to and it isn't even close. We are just such a histrionically ignorant society that has lowered the bar on innovation so we can pretend that we are a society innovating at lighting speed. 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. E…

Is it possible that you don't appreciate the great innovations of the last decade, but looking back there will be just as many as the 1900-1910s?

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#133

Post by seibelj »

mwcampbell wrote: post #83
humanistbot wrote: post #6

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 think this is more of a version of the "why have we stopped making good music/movies, almost everything today is garbage?" issue. Tangentially, though, I think there's something to the complaints about music. Why does pop music have any noticeably autotuned singers at all, when anyone who regularly goes to karaoke bars knows that there are lots of good singers everywhere? In other words, why is being a good enoug…

Pop music is about so much more than being a good singer. The hook is key, as is the content, the brand (artist), and how it's marketed. It takes a village to manufacture successful pop music. Being able to sing super well isn't required anymore, but having an army of people to assist making it popular most certainly is. The rare artist that goes viral on a shoestring quickly accumulates all the same help that other pop artists have to ensure future releases are also hits.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#134

Post by tastyfreeze »

syshum wrote: post #105
hans1729 wrote: post #5

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…

Where is my Flying Car, Where is my Space Tourism, Where is my Space Colony, Where is my Underwater Colony, Where is my Cheap Plentiful Environmentally friendly Energy Generation / Storage it seems to be we are stuck, we are improving current technology, but we have not created new technology in a long time, Sure computers got smaller and more powerful but that is just iteration of the same design.. We need another m…

Prior to the invention of telegraph and rail Thomas Jefferson lamented the fact that transport and communication were so slow. Modes of transportation and communication hadn't changed in centuries. Technological progress had seemed to slow to a crawl. Shortly after his death, telegraph and rail were invented and technological progress boomed. Technology is constantly refined slowly for long periods of time. Then there is a new discovery and everything changes rapidly. I believe we are on the precipice of such a boom. ReBCO high temperature super conductors were invented in the 80s and reached manufacturable maturity in 2010. Anything that uses powerful electro magnets is just starting the process of being made more powerful and cheaper. This invention is why there is a sudden interest in commercial fusion. I have seen recent papers calculating upgrades to MRI that will make them more powerful, cheaper to build and run. I already feel the future of my childhood has arrived. I am very excided for the technology we will see in the next couple decades.

PS I only used Thomas Jefferson because I recently read Undaunted Courage that talked about Jefferson's lamentations of slow progress.

PPS Computer aided design could be seen as the last great technology boom. It has allowed us to build more efficient and lighter machines that were not possible before.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#135

Post by mettamage »

jzellis wrote: post #27

We don't have Einsteins because the brightest people don't work on astrophysics because there's no money in it. Instead, they're figuring out how to use AI to sell more dick pills and artfully distressed furniture to people devoid of erections and taste on the goddamn Internet, for more money in a year than Einstein saw in a decade.

IMO, the real smarties work in hft.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#136

Post by paganel »

mabub24 wrote: post #124
alx__ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been reading Chuck Klosterman's book, But What If We're Wrong?. Which is partly that thought. The things that get remembered in the global consciousness are not always the people or things we'd expect. It's possible that we have a "genius" right now that will be remembered in 100 years. But due to all the local noise it's hard to see through that and remain objective. Basically we're really terrible at guessing what…

This is a well studied phenomenon in literature. Some books we regard as classics today sold relatively little upon release, while authors in the past were incredibly popular then, upon the author's death usually, the name was utterly forgotten from aesthetic appraisals. Ideas of a "canon" are much less stable than people think.

Even when it comes to philosophy I think it holds true. Up into the 1930s Bergson was regarded as one of the most important philosophers in Europe while Wittgenstein was barely mentioned outside a few, select circles, even he had already published his Tractatus. Nowadays Bergson returns blank stares when you mention his name to an Anglo audience while Wittgenstein is seen as one of the most important philosophers of the last few hundred years.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#137

Post by lodi »

humanistbot wrote: post #6

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 think that's part of it, but I also think there's some merit to our intuition as well; sometimes you can viscerally feel if you're in a boom or bust cycle. During the reality TV phase I remember thinking "this is all garbage", and then shows like The Sopranos and The West Wing kicked off an era that had me thinking "I literally can't keep up with all the good shows; there's too much good TV to watch." I think this was a pretty common feeling, and not in hindsight but during the era. In gaming I remember marvelling at a PC boom in 98-99, and then hating the "xbox-ification" of PC games for a few years after that.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#138

Post by torstenvl »

karaterobot wrote: post #91

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…

Elon Musk in the niche field of government contracting for space flight is the closest I can think of.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#139

Post by HotHotLava »

johnNumen wrote: post #109
mtalantikite wrote: post #73

"Is there anyone who died in the last decade you could make that sort of claim for?" 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.

None of those people are geniuses.

According to whose definition? If Tolstoy, Marx and Beethoven count as geniuses, I don't see an argument for excluding Asimov, Musk or Eminem.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#140

Post by ceejayoz »

pharke wrote: post #112
xoserr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't innovating like we use to and it isn't even close. We are just such a histrionically ignorant society that has lowered the bar on innovation so we can pretend that we are a society innovating at lighting speed. 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. E…

The smart phone doesn't even belong in the same category as the others you listed. The digital computer certainly does but it's been 80 years since that occurred. The smartphone is simply a refinement of that basic technological leap. Practically everything people are listing here falls in the category of refinement of existing technology rather than a completely novel form of technology. That is the scary and correc…

> The smartphone is simply a refinement of that basic technological leap.

There's very little that isn't.

Moon rockets are a refinement of thousand year old technology, fireworks. Steam engines are a refinement of little toys from ancient Greece. Guns are a refinement of throwing things.

Any definition of innovation that doesn't include smartphones is a silly one, in my book. It's quite clear they were novel and massively impactful on society.

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