Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored • Hacker News Board

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#151

Post by kosasbest » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

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:…

> While if we look around today, we see all the people who will never make it into the history books

I think this is largely because modern geniuses don't market themselves well. I mean the world is undeniably rampant with genius, but if you can't market your genius via social media or other means, then you fade into the background.

Consider that there are people on the spectrum who are bad at social interaction and can't be a 'Youtuber' or 'influencer' so easily.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#152

Post by m0llusk » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #32

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-ge... is about essentially a very similar style of intensive individualized tutoring. (This SSC review links to a new English translation iof this work.) I'm not sure that intensive tutoring ever "went out of style" though, so much as gradually becoming infeasible because of (1) the amount of high-skill effort involved, which became more and more costly due to…

Is there proof that tiger parents are not effective? Many high achievers I have met have had parents that pushed them from early on. Casually dismissing this effect without any metrics seems an error.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#153

Post by tastyfreeze » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #20

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…

The problem is, we could be doing so much better as a species, but our best minds are either selling ads or working in finance. Neither of which creates real progress for the masses. Not to mention that the government and the military have all but scrapped their research programs - a lot of the progress of the last decades has fundamental roots there (most notably the Internet). Instead, we let private companies like…

Government research is for breaking ground that is too costly for the private sector or doesn't have a financial pay off. After the private sector steps in government should move on to new frontiers.

Taxing billionaires will not solve anything. It is just a shoe in the door for more taxes for you. No matter what the government gets in taxes it will never be enough to satiate the desire to spend other people's money. Just remember, anything that is applied to billionaires also will be applied to you. After all, we are all equals.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#154

Post by makz » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

Works for fictional characters as well, like Goku who is a genius martial artist.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#155

Post by defgeneric » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

The quality of this thread is really disappointing. Conservatively, about 80% of the replies, criticisms, suggestions, re-framings, here are addressed in the article by the author. About 20% of the replies here are responding to the title alone (and therefore focused on Einstein/progress in hard science).

The piece is about the kind of education the children of the aristocracy received and how it has disappeared entirely.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#156

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

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:…

[deleted]

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#157

Post by sam-s » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

One might consider the fate of Salvator Lombardo at Cornell University... No "aristocratic tutoring", just a self-driven genius, who was denied a stipend because he has the wrong skin color and genitals.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#158

Post by barrkel » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

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:…

That idea is countered right in the quoted passage by Tanner Greer.

In the past, it was obvious who was genius, even a few years after people died. Now, it's less clear.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#159

Post by glitchc » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

All geniuses were a manufactured product, bar none. Einstein and Newton are products, not individuals, of an ancient marketing campaign. No different from Gaga or Beyonce in the present. Beyonce exists as an idea more so than a person.

What is nominally a group of individuals working collectively to solve a problem became attributed to a single person purely for marketing purposes. It is easier for most people to remember one name, or attribute an effect to a singular cause (by extension causer).

What we remember through the mists of time is not the best, but what garnered the most attention in that era. Those two are not the same, never have been. What you call genius mow was back then an influencer.

Now modern technology has made it possible for anyone to become an influencer. And so, geniuses are everywhere and nowhere, all at once. The influencers that survive into the next era (I’m looking at Elon) will be the geniuses of our time.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#160

Post by yakubin » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #130

mwcampbell wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Because the technical proficiency of a singer, or any musician/instrumentalist for that matter, is not what makes a song interesting or memorable.

There is no single thing that makes a song interesting or memorable, but technical proficiency is one of factors. Of course, I don't think that being "at the top" in technical proficiency makes a song any better than being just among a broader set of "best performers", but autotune makes people sound flat, generic, robotic, which is on the opposite end of the spectrum. That it doesn't contribute positively to a song is an understatement.