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

[QUOTE=Craigewan;39446898]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] Sums up my thoughts exactly. What a ridiculous measurement of genius in the article.

[QUOTE=DanRatherman;39445600]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.[/QUOTE] This. Most scientific research are done by teams, and a lot more effective that way. Plebs are just interested on "personalities" in the scientific community.

people are no doubt getting smarter. most people in their 20s are required to grasp concepts that took mathematicians and physicians years to work out to even land the most basic jobs.

There are threads about giant solar sails, footage of thoughts being made inside a goddamn brain at stuff like that in this very section. And threads like that are made every day. We have loads of scientific geniuses, they just don't get the publicity they deserve

While I can agree that this seems a questionable matter, especially since individuals like Snooki are famous for literally being stupid, the "extinction" of scientific geniuses is a ludicrous insinuation. If anything, stark intelligence simply isn't the cool in-style trend in our current generation/culture.

no, you see, we are not running out of geniuses, that is offensive, we just call them "smart people" now.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;39444753]We went from putting a man on the moon to arguing whether textbooks should teach bible theories of earth's existence or not. God, how we have fallen... [editline]2nd February 2013[/editline] For the record, the guy [I]isn't[/I] saying there are no geniuses "because they're not pop icons".[/QUOTE] Hahah, you serious? That's around the time that bullshit like that began to be injected into US politics. "In god we trust" wasn't always on currency, and "Under God" wasn't originally in the pledge either. At least now there are enough people willing to argue against that kind of thing rather than just let it pass.

"according to these semantics I just pulled out of my butt..."

Scientific discoveries are getting drowned out by all the celebrity gossip.

[QUOTE=Pat4ever;39445952]Can you elaborate on some of these technologies?[/QUOTE] Most of them that plan on being commercially available included new systems for database servers and more efficient parallel computing resources. My past internship has more stuff for research purposes compared to other places. My work consisted of databases/parallel for experiment data from a neutron source. My roommate at the time had even less relate-able work, regarding the plasma lab and a different source. The speeds of the systems, however, in the computing lab were definitely planned on commercial releases. This stuff would blow all machines out of comparison by the current standard. They are just not ready for much use past research for now. This is similar to the way many research labs build their super-computers. Materials-Science scientists are really quite "Genius" in their continuing ability to miniaturize the materials we use for electronics.