Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

erikhoel.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 505 posts

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#161

Post by dav_Oz »

alx__ wrote: post #107
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:…

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…

I would argue that is actually the norm. The more I dig deeper into the history of any field the more I realize how many publicly unknown geniuses there are. Mostly only recognized and praised as such by the connoisseurs of the respective field.

And it makes sense, especially in our times, sophisticated PR (and Einstein enjoyed that, too, in addition in being a genius) just trumps any recognition one might get in a life time, in the short term that is.

If you are not seeking some grandiose recognition (like Newton or Edison, famously) you are potentially a better explorer of the yet Unknown not bothering wasting any energy and being less corruptable by discoveries, you are happy to share with others and helping to bring about.

Off the top of my head: Three examples of rather unknown "geniuses" in physics in no particular order:

Chien-Shiung Wu, Oliver Heaviside, John Michell

One could also argue, as I sometimes do, too, that a genius is just a convenient narrative device in order to highlight and illustrate some important turning point with the historical person serving as some responsible "actor" in bridging over an otherwise complex and often self-contradictory development into a tangible coherent state.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#162

Post by amusedcyclist »

mettamage wrote: post #135
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.

The smartest of them all teach math in universities

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#163

Post by frazbin »

glitchc wrote: post #159

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 rem…

Nailed it. Also Terry exists.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#164

Post by amusedcyclist »

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…

Our understanding of the world is so advanced that revolutionary changes are bound to be rarer and when they do happen they're understood by a tiny fraction of the population. In fact most people have absolutely no idea what Einstein did. He was indeed a great scientist, but to the average person Einstein is a just an idea of a genius, they were never touched by his work. I studied physics in undergrad and I barely understand anything about GR, though i have some understanding of the historical context so i guess that gives me a bit of appreciation for what he did

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#165

Post by toyg »

kosasbest wrote: post #151
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…

It's not just that - it's that the competition is now the scale of the planet.

Back in the day, if you made it in print somewhere, you were officially an intellectual of some prestige. Then it became about access to radio. Then it was all about reaching TV. All these channels were very limited, so just by getting there one could ensure they had a position among the officially recognised elite.

Now one is competing with a literally infinite amount of channels, from all over the planet, unloading talent in any discipline 24/7. You can market the hell out of yourself and the world can still decide they are too busy caring about Korean singers and African memes.

Which really is the beef I have with this article: genius is not recognised anymore because now we are a global village of billions, rather than an elite of a few hundreds of thousands, and we consume all sorts of radically different media rather than a handful of shared sources. So we simply don't agree on what is "genius" anymore, at a societal level; geniuses do their work in smaller groups, where they get some recognition, and that's it.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#167

Post by threatofrain »

glitchc wrote: post #159

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 rem…

Product implies that we can reliably deliver via process. How does one reliably produce Beyonce?

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#168

Post by bitlax »

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…

https://youtu.be/HJGp19h47o4

Peter Thiel would say you're describing innovation in bits as opposed to atoms.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#170

Post by amusedcyclist »

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.

Thats vaguely insulting to all the people who do work on astrophysics, I work in AI and i'm pretty certain the average astronomer is a lot smarter than the average AI researcher. Its mostly a matter of pop culture perspective, astronomy just doesn't get the kind of media coverage it used to
Post reply on HN