The author hasn't spent much time looking for counter-examples:
* Paul Shannon * Paul Erdös * Donald Knuth * Richard Feynman * Harper Lee * Iain Banks * Leonard Bernstein
And I think you can go on-and-on.
Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
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Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#212We 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?
How often people could afford a home and basic necessities for a family (including stability) without focusing on money back then? And how often can people afford those now without focusing on money?
It is very, very likely that it has.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It was not referring to Lana del Rey, that criticism would be the opposite of what we're discussing, and thus it's sort of funny you'd assumed that's whom I'd meant... The purpose of redacting the name is that I like the singer, her music is great, and I don't think there's a point to invoking her as "a bad dancer" in a discussion on HN of all places.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#214We 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.
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Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is not in any sense true that becoming a professor is harder now than in 1905.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The Real World started in 1992. It was "credited with launching the modern reality TV genre" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World_(TV_series)
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#217All 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…
I like where you are going with this, but the Newton example seems really bold.
Didn't most of his discoveries come during a pandemic where he had to work alone from home without much contact with the outside world?
Viewing my 4th grade history of Newtown knowledge through your lens, I am questioning how much of his story was now marketing.
But to do have specific examples of how his accomplishments came from a collective?
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is addressed early on in the article. Maybe one of the problems with lack of genius is that we don't actually read anymore. Ponder that! Spengler began writing Decline of the West in 1914. Tolstoy was only four years dead when Spengler started his book; Marx was only 30 years deceased. But Spengler could state, with the full expectation that his audience would not question him, that these men belonged in global…
not only "geniuses", I'm sure the widespread reduction in reading in the general population has had significant affects across all aspects of society
do you have evidence for your claim? everything I can find suggests that literacy is about as high as ever, as are book sales.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#219Upperclassmen should tutor lowerclassmen and perhaps they should even be graded on it. If you can't explain something, you probably don't actually understand that thing - and I really don't think school can get much worse, so perhaps adding a little self governance would give them a chance at being successful.
Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
#220Perhaps the clue is "aristocratic tutors" Perhaps the problem is not a decline in genius, but that too many geniuses are now given the opportunity to fulfill their potential (whereas before they'd have lacked education, compared to aristocrats), making it difficult to stand out and receive popular acclaim.
Define fulfilling potential? If early childhood education was something that a "genius" could afford to focus on(in terms of opportunity cost), wouldn't the contributions of the students far outstrip the potential individual contributions of the single "genius"? My focus is on the availability of these tutors for individuals.
You can kind of see this in sports in the US. Sports are only lucrative for the top performers, and those lucky enough as well. This leaves a wide swath of very high level athletes available to parents willing to pay. This also extends to competitive public funded sports depending on where you're at.
On one hand, it would be amazing for gifted tutors to be widely available, on the other- the situations that would create such availability are probably not going to be good. I'm just thankful that my career will hopefully afford me the ability to be a single income household, with the time and resources to tutor my own child.