Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored • Hacker News Board

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#431

Post by danieljacksonno » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

I think there are two things going on here, that explain satisfactory why we feel like we see fewer geniuses now:

1) There are now so many people who would be seen as geniuses 150 years ago that they drown each other out, leaving little space in the spotlight for someone to gain the culture defining attention a genius in 1850 might have gotten.

2) In addition, the culture that would be defined by such a genius is now several orders of magnitude more complex than it was in 1850. That means getting everyone to agree on anything is a much harder feat now, much less to get the zeitgeist to agree someone is a genius. (Just look at people like Gates, Jobs and Musk - just as quickly as they are seen as geniuses by one part of the culture, another part wants to drag them down again).

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#432

Post by lern_too_spel » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #408

datatrashfire wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that 1:1 instruction, or tutoring, is a superior way to acquire knowledge. Having lots of information available is great, but not a substitute.

The discussion here is about an argument that says basically without tutoring you can't create Einsteins. My only point is that we can now make them easier and cheaper than ever because they can make themselves. On this specific topic, I must admit I do believe 1:1 tutoring is overrated. I've taught myself most of what I know, and the rest I learned in a classroom. I have never had one on one tutoring. I may not be r…

The article isn't about high performers. It is about world-changing genius. If you had a competent tutor, you would progress much faster and much further than you have by yourself.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#433

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

fouc wrote: post #410

acenes wrote: post #403

But the reason why so many historical figures were tutored or homeschooled is because there was no adequate public education system. This is confusing correlation for causation. Indeed, Bertrand Russell wrote: > The method of a hereditary leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of the class had been taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not exceptional…

I have a strong suspicion that aristocrat homeschooling would still beat out public education system in many ways.. For example, public education system doesn't particularly touch on social skills, etiquette, rulership/leadership, Machiavellianism, business, investing, property management, etc.

no because that's the skills of a political and economic oligarchy. If you want to see successful education systems look at the Soviet Union, India, China and also France.

A boatload of testing, rigorous learning combined with high formal standards, that's to say an actual meritocracy is how you can quite literally churn out geniuses. Chess is a good example.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#434

Post by morberg » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #433

fouc wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong suspicion that aristocrat homeschooling would still beat out public education system in many ways.. For example, public education system doesn't particularly touch on social skills, etiquette, rulership/leadership, Machiavellianism, business, investing, property management, etc.

no because that's the skills of a political and economic oligarchy. If you want to see successful education systems look at the Soviet Union, India, China and also France. A boatload of testing, rigorous learning combined with high formal standards, that's to say an actual meritocracy is how you can quite literally churn out geniuses. Chess is a good example.

And yet Magnus Carlsen is from Norway.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#435

Post by regpertom » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 6:21 AM UTC

vermilingua wrote: post #411

regpertom wrote: post #406

Feynman talks on names of birds being irrelevant. Also that there’s a hidden side to science not talked about and just assumed the student will pick up, that your weaknesses should be exposed. Also cargo culting. Bart Simpsons karate teacher says first we fill your head with knowledge then we break bricks with it. The article says tutors went on the grand tour. We’re full time live in always available. The Huxley quo…

Is this account just feeding the comment thread through GPT-3 and posting what it considers to be a suitable reply?

I think you’re calling me a bot. That’s a shame. I’ll reply literally: Feeding a comment thread, through regular reply box, with what I consider hopefully within the realm of suitability. And personally: I think I have trouble conveying complicated thoughts (to me) without spending lots of words on background and hedging information. I hope to get better with practice. I hope that at least I don’t get in the way too much so I posted as it’s own comment not a reply to someone.

Is this what you mean?

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#436

Post by archibaldJ » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 6:29 AM UTC

nwatson wrote: post #421

pier25 wrote: post #394

I could be totally wrong, but my hunch is that this is more related to the lowest hanging fruit rather than human capacity. Maybe scientific discoveries simply get exponentially harder. In painting, it's very rare for someone to make anything original these days. We won't have any more Picassos, etc, simply because they were the first to explore a new terrain. It's really not a matter of education, genetics, or talen…

Is useful, worthwhile knowledge in a "sparse" search space? If so it will take more and more effort to reach anything new, and we'll need generations-long moonshot efforts to force young kids to skip their childhoods to dedicate time to nothing more than making the next, say chemistry, discovery by the time they're 45. Many are accused of manufacturing B.S. search spaces to explore in English departments. If worthwhi…

100% agreed.

To add my 2¥ I think this aligns with a generalised version of the main thesis of the essay too. It’s just that the modern variation of aristocratically tutored is along the lines of serendipity-induced tutored (meeting the right mentors/senseis at the right time in the sense that when you turned back and look at the past you can connect the dots nicely for your future endeavour. It is in this way that you can increase your chance to prevail in a field in ways that are your choosing and only yours)

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#437

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

morberg wrote: post #434

Barrin92 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no because that's the skills of a political and economic oligarchy. If you want to see successful education systems look at the Soviet Union, India, China and also France. A boatload of testing, rigorous learning combined with high formal standards, that's to say an actual meritocracy is how you can quite literally churn out geniuses. Chess is a good example.

And yet Magnus Carlsen is from Norway.

Sure, but we don't make judgements on individual data points. The Soviet Union with the short Fischer interlude dominated chess entirely. Today Russia still averages the strongest top 10 players, India and China have risen to become the third and fourth strongest chess nations within a generation or two, and looking at immigrant engineering talent in the US paints a pretty clear picture as well.

And the educational divide globally and development of science excellence pretty much only grows. How is this even a discussion given the evidence, any countries around that run on 'aristocratic homeschooling'? Saudi royal family kids in Swiss private schools?

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#438

Post by bshanks » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

I think 1-on-1 tutoring is great and I agree that there should be more of it. But whether "genius" has declined seems unclear to me. In my life I've personally met a handful of astoundingly smart intellectuals who work across multiple disciplines -- I imagine these people are probably as smart as the geniuses of history. And I think there are still intellectuals and artists who impact the world at large in a big way. Imo what has changed is only that for some reason these people aren't canonized as "geniuses".

I suspect that, like "top college", people are only considered a "genius" if everyone (or at least "every notable intellectual") knows about them, and there is only room in people's memories for several such people; but over time, the number of really smart people doing revolutionary work at any given time has grown from a handful to many thousands. As the ratio of "available genius spots" to "people who should be considered geniuses" has shrunk from near 1.0 in the distant past to a tiny fraction today, culture responded by giving up on canonizing geniuses.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#439

Post by hans1729 » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 7:06 AM UTC

bruce343434 wrote: post #184

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…

I can't tell if this is a parody and/or copypasta > that I’m typing while my girlfriend lies in my arm in our bed, should be mind blowing

Why so cynical about it? That's just what the situation was. The topology of our species' communication changed entirely within a single biological generation, from centralized orgs that delay and transform the signal, to the point where one node streams natively to any channel of their choosing, no transformations applied. How is that not worth mentioning in this thread, and how is it justifying cynic remarks?

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#440

Post by gilleain » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 7:30 AM UTC

zrkrlc wrote: post #420

gilleain wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Wasn't that Newton quote a swipe at Robert Hooke, who was known to be quite short?

Hah, I was not aware of that. Although from the description on wikipedia, it seems the two were not quarelling at the time he wrote that phrase in a letter to Hooke.