Is Humanity Running Out Of Scientific Geniuses? (Or are they already extinct?) - Polidicks

What a stupid headline to an article. If anything, we should be gaining more than they did in the past. With how much our popullation exceeds these days.

I think a lot of the scientific breakthroughs in this day and age require teams of geniuses and not just one notable figure.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;39444753]For the record, the guy [I]isn't[/I] saying there are no geniuses "because they're not pop icons".[/QUOTE] I think that's even wronger though. Graphene was synthesized three or four years ago, and the LHC is doing something fantastically weird stuff.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;39444837]You sound like you're looking to pick a fight.[/QUOTE] I don't see why you're upset about his post. It's 100% accurate. The two things you bring up are in no way comparable. You brought up one of the best of late 20th century, and some shittiness of the early 21st.

Oh, and to refute this point: [quote]“When was the last time that someone forced us to rewrite the textbooks in some domain? Or even create an entirely new domain from scratch? Can you think of anybody since DNA?” he said.[/quote] Go look up mirror neurons. It completely revamped psychology a decade ago. It was even found recently that the synaptic-gap model of neurons was found to be inaccurate, making all current psych textbooks wrong.

It's hard to completely revolutionize a way we think when we already know so much and constantly patch it.

"Geniuses are people who come up with “surprising ideas that are not a mere extension of what is already known,” this doesn't exist...sorry. "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton.

[QUOTE=MIPS;39444564]They just can't afford to go to post secondary anymore and get picked up by the media because they went to a reputable house of hearning. Or they end up getting harassed in a mismanaged school system to the point they commit suicide or become mental wrecks that cannot educationally mature further. Edited: Or we are setting the bar so high now that we write 90% of them off as not good enough.[/QUOTE] If we're comparing today to the Renaissance, there's much better access to education now. e: even in the US where you have to pay to go to school.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;39444659]Given that a great deal of humanity built their homes "by hand" in 90% of history, I wouldn't say it's really that big of a thing to do.[/QUOTE] Most people haven't built their own homes recently. They have teams of workers do it for them. Also, how many people carved out a water system down the side of a mountain by hand?

I'd consider any of the scientists that work currently on any major space, physics, chemistry, or biological sciences to be geniuses of equivalent importance and brilliance to the famous examples like Da Vinci and Galileo. Only difference is that we have a fuckton of geniuses all working quietly and efficiently, whereas in the past a scientific brilliance was as rare as a whore who didn't have the clap or a well that didn't have cholera. So no, that would be a no.

Well the majority of the world is either uneducated or has low education, so I guess maybe that plays a role. But I guess that depends on whether intelligence comes from genetics or environment, which I don't know.

[QUOTE=yaourt -Syua;39445640]Well the majority of the world is either uneducated or has low education, so I guess maybe that plays a role. But I guess that depends on whether intelligence comes from genetics or environment, which I don't know.[/QUOTE] environment mostly. if it was genetics then there wouldn't be a point of improving the education system at all, and you would see literacy rates rise in nations that improve their education system.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39445650]environment mostly. if it was genetics then there wouldn't be a point of improving the education system at all, and you would see literacy rates rise in nations that improve their education system.[/QUOTE] It is my understanding that knowledge and intelligence are separate things, but don't hold me to that.

Genius is different when science is so heavily collaborative and can't rest on one mans ideas and discoveries. we can't feel the same way as we did way back when

[QUOTE=yaourt -Syua;39445677]It is my understanding that knowledge and intelligence are separate things, but don't hold me to that.[/QUOTE] i dont think the separation is as great as people might claim. [editline]2nd February 2013[/editline] i mean at its core, intelligence is your ability to think critically about the world around you. the ability to think critically [i]can[/i] be taught.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;39445758]i dont think the separation is as great as people might claim. [editline]2nd February 2013[/editline] i mean at its core, intelligence is your ability to think critically about the world around you. the ability to think critically [i]can[/i] be taught.[/QUOTE] When the article posits that it is going extinct it sounds as if a biological trait is dying out. I think it's probably far more likely that the societal and cultural emphasis on critical thinking might be dying out.

[QUOTE=x-quake;39444655] A very important point to note is the gap between research and actual availability. When I worked on my past internship, I witnessed and worked on a number of projects that are ahead of many technologies available today in the market; but, these technologies won't be ready for the public for a while due to numerous standards and testings they need to undergo.[/QUOTE] Can you elaborate on some of these technologies?

i don't even agree with that idea. people are still learning to think critically. i mean i think there are problems with education but i don't think people are getting dumber or not being able to think on their own(at least not any moreso than previous decades). we do still have a ton of geniuses. steve jobs and bill gates are two great geniuses, for example. the problem i think lies in the fact that there is less money in scientific pursuits and more money in banking, executive positions, management, etc. learning a science isn't as attractive as getting an mba, from either a monetary or cultural standpoint. so we get a lot more geniuses in the financial sector and a few less in the scientific sectors. couple that with the fact that we put a huge emphasis on these millionaires and billionaires and business owners; we almost worship them. the geniuses who develop something like a quantum computer or new nano-materials aren't reported on or talked about as much, they are drowned out by the fervent screams of a society that values wealth more than knowledge.

[QUOTE=sambooo;39444515][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines[/url][/QUOTE] Except if there was a headline like "Is Popular Science Still Complete Horseshit?" the answer would be "very yes". I love this. Actual subject: "Dean Keith Simonton fears that surprising originality in the natural sciences is a thing of the past, as vast teams finesse knowledge rather than create disciplines." PopSci version: "OMG GENIUSES ARE EXTINCT!?" *furious quotemining* The best part is it isn't phrased as a question in the original. Simonton says geniuses [I]are[/I] extinct and then explains why by his definition of genius etc.

clearly we must build more gardens and adopt democracy to get a 25% bonus on great people!

I think we might have run out of geniuses. The guys lke Einstein picked all the low hanging fruits so now all the MIT grads are gonna have to work harder and collaborate to reach the higher fruits.

Made me think of this: [video=youtube_share;icmRCixQrx8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8[/video] [video=youtube;nFs80rf9D4Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFs80rf9D4Q[/video]

Maybe we aren't having as many huge breakthroughs because as we go forward things are getting more complex? It scares the shit out of me, but it seems logical that we may eventually hit an intellectual barrier where we just can't advance any further.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;39444604]Does when you drench it with lighter fluid :eng101:[/QUOTE] I loved setting things on fire when I was a kid.

[QUOTE=valkery;39444689]The guy is 68, fell through his roof while building his house which caused him to fracture his hip, and a week later he was back up working on his roof. It's not really a big deal when you think about how people did it in the past, but he makes everything he does almost a religious experience.[/QUOTE] I don't want to be a naysayer; I mean he sounds like a great, hard-working and determined dude! But falling through a roof and then working through the pain of an injury to finish the job doesn't constitute scientific genius in any sense of the word, and doesn't support your point that 'snobby schools can turn away hard working geniuses' [editline]2nd February 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=yaourt -Syua;39445640]Well the majority of the world is either uneducated or has low education, so I guess maybe that plays a role. But I guess that depends on whether intelligence comes from genetics or environment, which I don't know.[/QUOTE] There are more people with a higher level of education today than there has been in the past, when University education was pretty much a rich kids' game and student loans were unheard of.

Of course we have many gen-- [img]http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/article_slideshow_slide/public/2012/04/09/nicki-minaj.jpg[/img] Nevermind

The opposite actually,we have more geniuses

I think the problem is that he is equating "Causing massive paradigm shifts in understanding" to genius. The thing is, Science has improved a lot since it was even in the earlier half of the 20th century. Paradigm shifts are harder to cause because we have a much firmer grasp on the basics of physics, chemistry etc. And even still, our understanding of quantum physics and dark matter etc are shifting all the time, it's just that the efforts are collaborative and very few people outside of those fields can understand them. Even in Ecology, my particular field, we have had people since Einstein who have revolutionised the way we think about Ecology - but Ecology is a broad, difficult-to-understand field (Speed of Light is a simple, intuitive concept to explain at a basic level to laypersons, by comparison) so these aren't shifts that are readily understood by people. Same with neurologists - my old thesis supervisor (Before I shifted from Biology to Ecology) is currently redefining the way we think Biological clocks work in a profound way, but he has help, because that's how science works now. I completely disagree with this article, basically. Genius is probably more active than it was before, it's just it's tackling higher-order, complex things which don't translate well to media cults of personality around the genius, and because with so many, it's almost commonplace.

[QUOTE=FreakyMe;39445851]When the article posits that it is going extinct it sounds as if a biological trait is dying out. I think it's probably far more likely that the societal and cultural emphasis on critical thinking might be dying out.[/QUOTE] I disagree with the article's premise entirely. Science has gotten harder, we've run out of ways for one man to make a discovery or a theory such as general and special relativity. Discoveries are made by teams without one core person now, and hence we don't have researchers in the same public light as Einstein or Newton. [editline]2nd February 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=EzioAuditore;39446766]Of course we have many gen-- Nevermind[/QUOTE] Why the fuck did you post a photo of a pop star in a thread about great scientists. Just because there is one famous dump person doesn't mean we don't have Geniuses.

I think it's more that we've discovered so much it's getting a lot more difficult to discover something new.