Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored • Hacker News Board

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#171

Post by toyg » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #141

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.

How much money was in physics when Einstein was working in it?

Tenured university members made pretty good money. As they do now, to be fair - it just got much harder to get there, because of larger and fiercer competition for a shrinking number of positions, so the effort/benefit ratio has fallen quite dramatically.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#172

Post by vajrabum » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

amusedcyclist wrote: post #162

mettamage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the real smarties work in hft.

The smartest of them all teach math in universities

I'm not so sure. At VMware in the 2000s we had Marketing Executive who had been a tenured math professor at Stanford. He joined early probably following the primary technical founder at VMware, Mendel Rosenblum, but still.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#173

Post by hwillis » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

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.

> We don't have Einsteins because the brightest people don't work on astrophysics because there's no money in it.

Einstein worked in a patent office from 1902-1909. In 1905 he published four papers on the photoelectric effect (laying the way for quantum physics), Brownian motion (proving the existence of atoms), special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy (leading to atomic energy).

From the beginning Einstein wanted to be a teacher and had little interest in money. Has money suddenly become more important to everyone?

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#174

Post by yboris » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

Reminds me of László Polgár - who wanted to show the world that if focused properly, any child can become stellar at something. He chose chess since it was an easy-to-measure-outcome mental activity. Two daughters become the best and second-best female chess players in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#175

Post by watwut » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

hwillis wrote: post #173

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.

> We don't have Einsteins because the brightest people don't work on astrophysics because there's no money in it. Einstein worked in a patent office from 1902-1909. In 1905 he published four papers on the photoelectric effect (laying the way for quantum physics), Brownian motion (proving the existence of atoms), special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy (leading to atomic energy). From the beginning…

Einstein applied to higher institutions where he wanted to work, but he was not admitted. The patent office was the available job, so he took it.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#176

Post by edmcnulty101 » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

The problem is not just the availability of information.

The problem is the time that capitalism requires just to survive leaving very little extra time to do stuff even for a genius.

It takes not just genius to do great things but a mountain of free time and resources, which the aristocrats had in spades back in the day.

Elon Musk is one of the few people with the confluence of all of these factors and is doing great things.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#177

Post by gilleain » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

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…

Really? What about Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician whose solutions to problems were generally considered completely novel and unconnected to other's results. Eventually he worked with Hardy, but sadly died early.

Or Alexander Grothendieck, who when given at university a choice of 14 open problems to pick one to work on one over a period of several years, solved several within months. Again he had a mixed experience of early training, and worked independently at first. Of course, he later collaborated with many others.

Newton literally said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" because he acknowledged that his work built on that of others. Indeed, if he had communicated his results earlier, maybe he would have worked with Leibniz on the calculus.

While people do like to focus on a singular visionary - rather than a history of invention or scholarship - that does not mean that there were not extraordinary individuals in history. Yes, they also had to be in the right place and the right time. They also had to have the time (usually, enough money) and the connections.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#178

Post by hwillis » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

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…

> Einstein and Newton are products, not individuals, of an ancient marketing campaign.

You managed to pick two of the most alone geniuses in history. Newton was afraid to even tell anyone about calculus because he was worried about being mocked. Einstein's miracle year was done completely outside academia and the only two other people in the Olympia Academy said they had nothing to do with it.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#179

Post by gcthomas » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #176

The problem is not just the availability of information. The problem is the time that capitalism requires just to survive leaving very little extra time to do stuff even for a genius. It takes not just genius to do great things but a mountain of free time and resources, which the aristocrats had in spades back in the day. Elon Musk is one of the few people with the confluence of all of these factors and is doing grea…

Capitalist tech investor with piles of cash and political influence, yes. But is Musk a genius? That case really hasn't been made yet.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#180

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #145

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…

Pop performers are optimizing for something outside what hits a recording -- that is to say, in the same way that opera singers have to have some theatrical ability in addition to singing the music, pop performance these days involves a huge amount of choreographed dance. A pop singer I'll not name performed on a late night show and was a target of internet ribbing for having brought only some semi-awkward samba-like…

> A pop singer I'll not name performed on a late night show and was a target of internet ribbing for having brought only some semi-awkward samba-like side-stepping

For anyone wondering, I believe this is referring to Lana Del Rey. Not sure what the purpose of redacting the name was...

Maybe that's not who you were referring to though? Iirc, the criticisms weren't just about her swaying, but singing that was described as "mumbling". That latter criticism is explicitly the opposite of what we're discussing.