Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored • Hacker News Board

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#191

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

lodi wrote: post #137

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…

> 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...

The West Wing and The Sopranos l started in 1999. Jackass and Survivor started in 2000.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#192

Post by wcarron » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

I think the author has got it mainly correct. There exists a perfect analog to this 'genius problem' in plain sight: Architecture. Back in the day, especially the art-deco era, buildings were adorned with beautiful facades and friezes and carvings. They had style and substance and actual design.

Today, all you get are construction companies shitting out glass-paned bricks with shoddy materials, poor usability considerations, zero design considerations, etc. "Luxury" apartments slapped together so poorly I'd sooner bet on the structural integrity of a literal popsicle-stick house, are now the norm for new construction.

It's a classic case of quality-vs-quantity, and this too the author pointed out. Everything about America and its culture is tuned ferociously towards maximum effficiency, reproducability, and simplicity. There is next-to-no room in American for focused, well considered, small-scale solutions. Not unless you are the ultra-wealthy. Normal people cannot afford craftsmanship anymore, because quality itself is now a luxury. In the same way, "Geniuses" (in the way the author describes) aren't produced here anymore.

The reason is simple: America has, for decades now, sacrificed quality (with brutal zeal) at the altar of quantity.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#193

Post by jaegerpicker » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

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…

In the last 15 years we got reusable rockets, mRNA vaccines, Crispr, workable quantum computers, AI capable of beating us at Go, and many other numerous breakthroughs. Sure 1900-1910 meaningfully changed the world but the bar form the 1800's was dramatically lower than the 2000-2010 bar from the 1900's. Ironic that such a ignorant comment laments societies ignorance.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#194

Post by JackFr » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

humanistbot wrote: post #21

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…

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…

> that will get them to keep watching videos on an ad-supported platform

Eventually the ads have to be for something.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#195

Post by giraffe_lady » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

yakubin wrote: post #160

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does a trumpet with a straight mute contribute positively to a song? Compared to an unmuted trumpet it has reduced dynamic control and a flattened, generic timbre. But using them is common, and the distinctive sound is a key part of many well-known musical passages.

The technical proficiency of a trumpeter is completely orthogonal to whether they use a mute on a particular piece, since it is just a simple hardware technique. And the same thing with autotune. Incredible singers can and do use it for its technical effect, because they think that effect contributes to the song.

As a listener you can disagree, just as I find the heavy strings vibrato of classic pop a distraction. But you can't assess how good a song is by categorizing techniques used in it. Claims that new techniques rob music of something ineffable, or just sound bad, are ubiquitous for new musical techniques and are as old as instruments at least.

If you think autotune is the First Bad One when people said the same things about piano pedals, metal violin strings, geared tuning pegs, electric amplification, I just want you to consider the company you're in here.

You can not like it but stop claiming it's objectively bad when it is not.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#196

Post by tippytippytango » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

We need a definition of genius and a way to measure this. I see genius all around me. It doesn't get recognized because so much genius is getting actualized now we just expect it. People are upset with Apple because they don't come out with a new game changing innovation every 6 months.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#197

Post by kkfx » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

Education is an important, but not unique, part of the puzzle: slowness and resources are the rest. In the past researches was made ALSO for profit, but also just as mere research, there was no management no "time-to-market" push like these days and things evolve slowly so there is time to produce valuable things.

These days books are written and re-written with purposes like "publish-or-perish", "we need new ed. for profit" etc. the outcome is obviously mostly garbage. There is not much public research just done to research, with economic tranquility and slow thinking, again the outcome can't be mostly different than garbage.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#198

Post by chronofar » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:41 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…

> Has money suddenly become more important to everyone?

Quite possibly, or dare I say probably. The amount of available products and experiences one could purchase with more money was significantly smaller in Einstein's time than today. I think it'd be quite a reasonable hypothesis to posit the explosion of consumerism coupled with the everything everywhere effects of online life have caused folks to be considerably more aware of, and interested, monetary gain.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#199

Post by giraffe_lady » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #188

Datenstrom wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I feel the same sentiment about the brightest working on those or similar problems, is it that in the past there was not a similar proportion of the brightest working on similarly pointless and wasteful problems and that now they are all forgotten while Einstein is not? I feel like a large portion of the brightest may have always sold out, maybe Einstein was just obsessed with a particular problem enough to cha…

"is it that in the past there was not a similar proportion of the brightest working on similarly pointless and wasteful problems" It is that in the past a large portion of the world's brightest were working in the fields or fishing or mining or making bowls or adding up numbers as a clerk.

still are tho

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#200

Post by gr1zzlybe4r » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

wcarron wrote: post #192

I think the author has got it mainly correct. There exists a perfect analog to this 'genius problem' in plain sight: Architecture. Back in the day, especially the art-deco era, buildings were adorned with beautiful facades and friezes and carvings. They had style and substance and actual design. Today, all you get are construction companies shitting out glass-paned bricks with shoddy materials, poor usability conside…

Potentially - but the quantity focus that you're talking about is a direct result of the construction and development that we allow. We basically prohibit people taking risks in architecture and design because it's impossible to build a lot of "interesting" stuff due to zoning (which is what you can build) and structure (which is how you can build) regulations.

All of the pretty architecture that you're talking about was built when the legal handcuffs for doing it didn't exist.

Tl;dr - I get what you're saying but can't ignore the structure of what we've set up that encourages/enables it.