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…
I agree the "lowest hanging fruit" is likely a key factor, as well as tuttoring.
But I would also guess that being recognized as a genius was easier in past times, especially for aristocrat family members. The same way music artists will never be as huge as the Beatles or Michael Jackson once were because of the long tail effect, we now are exposed to so many bright minds, and not way to pick out an Einstein amongst them.
In other words: We might have all the geniuses we expect statistically, but when everyone is special, no one is special.
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…
In the arts there are plenty of "geniuses", Miles Davis is one.
What is a genius? Not doubting the extent to which teaching practices are related to producing "geniuses", I think an issue with the topic is also framing (and therefore identifying) what defines a "genius". Taking into account the examples mentioned in the article, they all come from (understandably) "classical" (and broad) categories. I'd wager that there are more geniuses out there in the world, being that the landscape is much greater as there are far more niches to dive into. In my opinion the larger problem and why there's a decline in the "classical" genius is that it's being applied to a completely different frame, which are the present times. The definition of genius needs different criteria in order to make sense in today's world.
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.
Public education is too broad of a definition. People treat public schools as all being equal.
There is a vast difference in level of education depending on where you live.
Things like etiquette, business and investing are taught in schools, all depends on which public schools you go to.
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.
Einstein got rejected? From where?
I dont remember the exact schools. He was looking for academic teaching/research position. But, he could not find the one. He got the patent job through his friend's father.
The smart phone doesn't even belong in the same category as the others you listed. The digital computer certainly does but it's been 80 years since that occurred. The smartphone is simply a refinement of that basic technological leap. Practically everything people are listing here falls in the category of refinement of existing technology rather than a completely novel form of technology. That is the scary and correc…
That's ridiculous, the smartphone has changed society far more than desktop's or really any form of computer that exists. Vast numbers of people only access the internet via a smart phone. Doctor's visits across the globe, remote working from wherever you are, hand held GPS and maps, access to countless hours of entertainment, etc....
None of that is possible without digital computers and those generalize to a much larger domain of devices and technologies that have revolutionized the world in thousands of ways. So no, the smartphone has not had a larger impact on the world than the invention of the digital computer. As for the other examples, GPS is not possible without the Theory of Relativity, video calls are not possible without motion pictures, the integrated circuits that make up the smartphone are not possible without plastics, and I doubt we would have many close connections with the rest of the world without air travel. Besides that, remote working and doctor's visits are possible without a smartphone, same thing with GPS which predates smartphones by quite a bit, same with access to entertainment. None of those things are really very revolutionary. GPS is the closest since it does provide a novel and superior way of navigating but you'd be hard pressed to make a case for entertainment or remote working being on par with manned flight or plastics.
The smart phone doesn't even belong in the same category as the others you listed. The digital computer certainly does but it's been 80 years since that occurred. The smartphone is simply a refinement of that basic technological leap. Practically everything people are listing here falls in the category of refinement of existing technology rather than a completely novel form of technology. That is the scary and correc…
> The smartphone is simply a refinement of that basic technological leap. There's very little that isn't. Moon rockets are a refinement of thousand year old technology, fireworks. Steam engines are a refinement of little toys from ancient Greece. Guns are a refinement of throwing things. Any definition of innovation that doesn't include smartphones is a silly one, in my book. It's quite clear they were novel and mass…
This argument is being framed incorrectly. It's the fundamental discovery that counts, not the implementations. The discovery of steam power is more important than Hero's Engine because discovering that you can do useful work with steam allows you to build all kinds of things that didn't exist before. Having a whirligig that runs on steam gives you nothing more than a few minutes enjoyment. Guns are definitely not a refinement of throwing things, someone who only knows how to throw something cannot build a gun. Guns are a refinement of the invention of gunpowder and good enough metallurgy to produce the gun itself. Similarly, rocketry is a refinement of gunpowder and the discovery that pressurized gasses escaping from a hole or nozzle can propel something. A smartphone itself is not a truly novel discovery, it's essentially a handheld portable computer. All the same technology exists or could exist in other form factors. If we compare it to something simple like a hammer, it is just a small hammer good for doing certain tasks and not others. It doesn't compare to the discovery that if you attach a weight to a handle you can hammer things. There are other specialized forms of hammer that are better for other tasks. i.e. a smartphone is just a specialized form of computer.
The quality of this thread is really disappointing. Conservatively, about 80% of the replies, criticisms, suggestions, re-framings, here are addressed in the article by the author. About 20% of the replies here are responding to the title alone (and therefore focused on Einstein/progress in hard science). The piece is about the kind of education the children of the aristocracy received and how it has disappeared enti…
I don't see the author addressing most obvious criticism. There is no definition of genius. He mentions a lack of ideas, but doesn't talk about the effect that every field is much more specialized. You won't make advances in physics on the level of Newton or Kelvin. "The basics are covered" (with all the caveats that apply to this statement). He also ignores the pure genius that went into developing computing and the…
Or maybe we are so intellectually impoverished that there are a lot of orthogonal advances that we just do not see and do not try to pursue.
Like, most of modern chipmaking is just glorified analog photography, who knows what sort of microprocessors we could make through wildly different processes.