🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:56:05 UTC No. 16296732
This photograph contains many of the smartest people in human history including Einstein, Planck, Dirac, etc, but even this crowd at its large size doesn't contain all the people who lived at the time who would normally considered among the smartest people who ever lived (e.g. Nikola Tesla was also alive at the time).
How many people alive today would you consider worthy of being referred to as arguably among the smartest who ever lived? I can't think of many.. how did so many geniuses live simultaneously at the time this photo was taken, when so few people of their caliber exist today?
Shouldn't the amount of exceptional genius be evenly spread throughout time? Is something holding us back in modern times that prevents us from achieving greatness?
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 03:30:24 UTC No. 16296882
>>16296732
some of the smartest people ever who are alive today:
>Ed Witten
>Robert Langlands
>Gerard ‘t Hooft
>Frank Yang
>Simon Donaldson
>Robert Laughlin
they are all boomers or older. the reason why there are no people under 40 on this list is because Western culture went soft and we gave up on meritocracy. genuinely smart people follow incentives like the rest of us, and when affirmative action and DEI in academia made it non-meritocratic there, then all the geniuses decided to sell out and go into finance instead
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 04:55:43 UTC No. 16296946
>>16296882
>all the geniuses decided to sell out and go into finance instead
They went into other fields where they could earn a living. Some of them are in tech. Not really their fault that DEI policies kept them out of science.
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 06:08:39 UTC No. 16296979
>>16296732
>Nikola Tesla
Stopped reading there, tell me when you graduate highschool
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 06:23:37 UTC No. 16296994
>>16296732
>This photograph contains many of the smartest people in human history
no it doesn't, its just a bunch of stupid nerds
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 18:17:55 UTC No. 16297624
>>16296979
I said normally considered among the smartest people who ever lived, not that I consider them. If I was going off only on my own opinion then my question would make no sense
Anonymous at Fri, 26 Jul 2024 18:18:45 UTC No. 16297626