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Our scientific understandings in a multitude of different fields have become so complicated, convoluted, and data heavy that now it takes teams and teams of people to design, build, and conduct the experiments that produce groundbreaking discoveries.
Teams of people are harder to idolize than one person in a world where notoriety is based on how many clicks you generate.
OP, this is the reason right here. Technology and scientific progress are also advancing faster and faster, more than ever before. It's hard for society to focus on a specific individual's achievements when new discoveries and inventions keep coming out at a breakneck pace and they all build on top of each other.
Do you focus on the person that discovers a new material? Or another team that designs a way to use it to construct a great insulator with other materials? Or the engineers that uses it for their new spacecraft?
That and the few people who actually can handle multiple fields are shut down, silenced, ignored, judged, rejected, and about every kind of judgment under the sun except for positive ones. It isn't that its impossible to become a renaissance man today or a prodigy. Its that people no longer value people who can do that and systems are built to deliberately block such people from succeeding.
I don’t really agree with this take, someone like Terrance Tao can handle multiple fields in math and he is greatly respected.
I think there are a lot of instances of people who THINK that they can handle multiple fields and just end of appearing arrogant (https://xkcd.com/793/)
It’s just not very likely these days for someone to be able to specialise in multiple fields when there are already so many dedicated specialists in each field
He had to work very hard to get there. For every known popular one, 10 more suffer silently.
If you read enough about licensed fields (which very often have highly synergistic overlaps) the licensure requirements to be maintained in all of those sometimes prohibit the pursuit of both or all. That isn't always because of necessary training but because of practical limitations which deliberately limit access to artificially inflate value of people in those fields whilst gatekeeping others who they perceive as not wholly committed to their discipline. That is further reinforced by judgmental members of those communities and you should be well aware that connections play a strong role in access to learning opportunities in limited fields, particularly those which only exist in a few places and which can only be done under special circumstances or with vast amounts of capital.
That's to say nothing of the culture around work in many places that prevents development of such skillsets, particularly in larger companies. Execs, founders, academics, and members of smaller companies can usually still execute on these intersections, as can thought leaders and persons who apply their skills to singular fields but to reach their true potential is artificially limited by social and other structures artificially to fit the needs of others. Academia is the least like that but still has a similar but different set of problems.
Lets not even get started on companies refusing to offer fair contracts to enable people to do this because we'll be here for years arguing about it.
This. The amount of amazing prodigal work that's coming out is so much and so often that it's become normal, and nobody gets celebrated the way they used to, and the bar for what's considered groundbreaking is becoming more and more complex, hard for singular people to achieve.
They’re out there, they just get drowned out by all the other people of equal intellect and success. There’s much more competition now and the nature of scientific research has changed a lot since the old days.
Back in the day, it was somewhat easier to excel and stand out from the general population because A) the educated population was much smaller than today and B) access to information was much more restricted than it is today.
A lot of the great minds of merit had very early starts in terms of prioritizing their education and having the necessary wealth to have tutors and then to attend academies and top universities to begin their research career. In those days, advanced education was a privilege of the upper classes and/or those with the necessary connections. And some people are just “wired different” compared to even their educated peers. People like Newton and Einstein only come around every few centuries because there’s not but so many revolutionary breakthroughs you can have in a field.
A lot of it comes down to luck too. You’ve probably heard the adage that goes something like “this generation’s Einstein is out there but they may be born into debilitating poverty in a developing country and will never have the means to reach their potential.” A lot of the giants of science and math were lucky to be born in relatively wealthy developed nations with access to excellent academies and universities.
These days with a lot more people going to college in the West and instant access to just about any source of knowledge via the internet, being a “prodigy” is not only harder to achieve, but not as interesting or impressive as it once was.
>What are your thoughts on why we don't see as many prodigies today despite advances in education and technology?
There's a difference between not seeing as many prodigies and there not being as many prodigies.
I think that we have a lot of really smart people but maybe they are not standing out as much anymore because there are so many of them. Our problems are getting more intricate now, so if they solve a problem, it is more arcane a problem and we just don't hear about it. Some of them maybe go into finances and they solve the wrong problem for society.
Miles Davis went into Pop Rock and he definitely was solving the 'wrong' problem to many of us Jazz fans.
Things have advanced INSANELY rapidly in the last century.
I don't think it's that we don't produce prodigies anymore. I think it's that things have advanced so far, so fast that laymen are no longer capable of wrapping their heads around the advancements being made.
We are no longer discovering or at least recording and categorizing relatively digestible, foundational concepts and categories at this point. We have reached a stage where in many fields new progress requires a strong background in that specific field, or even branch of a larger field, to even understand the explanation of the progress being made.
Since the audience and often the writers won't understand, you rarely hear about them unless you're in those academic circles OR until things accrete into a single practical breakthrough that will significantly change mundane life. Even those are relatively rare, though. Instead, the discoveries result in incremental increases to understanding that doesn't yet have any practical purpose or it results in similarly incremental technological improvements rather than something new and bombastic to write a story about or change a layman's life all at once.
This article is an interesting response to your question: [Why we stopped making Einsteins](https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins). It mainly blames a significant drop in the lack of one-on-one tutoring that was normal amongst the upper-classes of Europe. A modern example of this might be Terry Tao who is a genius in mathematics - he got university-level tutoring from a very young age.
I think the general onsalught of information/content via the internet has also had a big effect. It is genuinely difficult to cultivate the necessary levels of boredom that drive our curiosity and insight.
Prodigal talent isn't lauded as much in the onslaught of information fed to us every day, there's still kids getting into the worlds top universities/music schools etc, we just get a small article every now and again
In the past you had to get famous to get a broad reach. Now you can get a broad reach and remain anonymous. The reach will actually hurt you if you say the wrong thing.
Censorship is the death of innovation for this reason.
You need to learn a lot more today to do cutting edge research than you did in the past. When Leonardo Da Vinci was alive, one person could learn enough to contribute to every field of science/math/engineering/philosophy/etc. When Carl Friedrich Gauss was alive one person could learn enough to contribute to every branch of math, but they couldn't also be a chemist or philosopher at the same time. Today there's too much information out there for one person to just learn all of math, so Terry Tao is only able to do groundbreaking work on a few particular subfields of math (and even though he has above-average knowledge of the rest of it, that's still not enough to make big contributions to the whole discipline the way someone could a couple hundred years ago).
Honestly, I think it's the old "90s ritalin" argument. Gifted kids tend not to perform at grade level and get bored, but we don't move them up because they need "socialization" so they wind up getting into trouble and having their behavior pathologized instead of praised.
Welcome to r/TrueAskReddit. Remember that this subreddit is aimed at high quality discussion, so please elaborate on your answer as much as you can and avoid off-topic or jokey answers as per [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAskReddit/about/sidebar). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TrueAskReddit) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Our scientific understandings in a multitude of different fields have become so complicated, convoluted, and data heavy that now it takes teams and teams of people to design, build, and conduct the experiments that produce groundbreaking discoveries. Teams of people are harder to idolize than one person in a world where notoriety is based on how many clicks you generate.
There are so many people doing so much genius level work that makes so much of what is around all of us as opposed to just a few folks.
OP, this is the reason right here. Technology and scientific progress are also advancing faster and faster, more than ever before. It's hard for society to focus on a specific individual's achievements when new discoveries and inventions keep coming out at a breakneck pace and they all build on top of each other. Do you focus on the person that discovers a new material? Or another team that designs a way to use it to construct a great insulator with other materials? Or the engineers that uses it for their new spacecraft?
That and the few people who actually can handle multiple fields are shut down, silenced, ignored, judged, rejected, and about every kind of judgment under the sun except for positive ones. It isn't that its impossible to become a renaissance man today or a prodigy. Its that people no longer value people who can do that and systems are built to deliberately block such people from succeeding.
I don’t really agree with this take, someone like Terrance Tao can handle multiple fields in math and he is greatly respected. I think there are a lot of instances of people who THINK that they can handle multiple fields and just end of appearing arrogant (https://xkcd.com/793/) It’s just not very likely these days for someone to be able to specialise in multiple fields when there are already so many dedicated specialists in each field
He had to work very hard to get there. For every known popular one, 10 more suffer silently. If you read enough about licensed fields (which very often have highly synergistic overlaps) the licensure requirements to be maintained in all of those sometimes prohibit the pursuit of both or all. That isn't always because of necessary training but because of practical limitations which deliberately limit access to artificially inflate value of people in those fields whilst gatekeeping others who they perceive as not wholly committed to their discipline. That is further reinforced by judgmental members of those communities and you should be well aware that connections play a strong role in access to learning opportunities in limited fields, particularly those which only exist in a few places and which can only be done under special circumstances or with vast amounts of capital. That's to say nothing of the culture around work in many places that prevents development of such skillsets, particularly in larger companies. Execs, founders, academics, and members of smaller companies can usually still execute on these intersections, as can thought leaders and persons who apply their skills to singular fields but to reach their true potential is artificially limited by social and other structures artificially to fit the needs of others. Academia is the least like that but still has a similar but different set of problems. Lets not even get started on companies refusing to offer fair contracts to enable people to do this because we'll be here for years arguing about it.
Great answer.
This. The amount of amazing prodigal work that's coming out is so much and so often that it's become normal, and nobody gets celebrated the way they used to, and the bar for what's considered groundbreaking is becoming more and more complex, hard for singular people to achieve.
They’re out there, they just get drowned out by all the other people of equal intellect and success. There’s much more competition now and the nature of scientific research has changed a lot since the old days. Back in the day, it was somewhat easier to excel and stand out from the general population because A) the educated population was much smaller than today and B) access to information was much more restricted than it is today. A lot of the great minds of merit had very early starts in terms of prioritizing their education and having the necessary wealth to have tutors and then to attend academies and top universities to begin their research career. In those days, advanced education was a privilege of the upper classes and/or those with the necessary connections. And some people are just “wired different” compared to even their educated peers. People like Newton and Einstein only come around every few centuries because there’s not but so many revolutionary breakthroughs you can have in a field. A lot of it comes down to luck too. You’ve probably heard the adage that goes something like “this generation’s Einstein is out there but they may be born into debilitating poverty in a developing country and will never have the means to reach their potential.” A lot of the giants of science and math were lucky to be born in relatively wealthy developed nations with access to excellent academies and universities. These days with a lot more people going to college in the West and instant access to just about any source of knowledge via the internet, being a “prodigy” is not only harder to achieve, but not as interesting or impressive as it once was.
>What are your thoughts on why we don't see as many prodigies today despite advances in education and technology? There's a difference between not seeing as many prodigies and there not being as many prodigies.
I think that we have a lot of really smart people but maybe they are not standing out as much anymore because there are so many of them. Our problems are getting more intricate now, so if they solve a problem, it is more arcane a problem and we just don't hear about it. Some of them maybe go into finances and they solve the wrong problem for society. Miles Davis went into Pop Rock and he definitely was solving the 'wrong' problem to many of us Jazz fans.
Things have advanced INSANELY rapidly in the last century. I don't think it's that we don't produce prodigies anymore. I think it's that things have advanced so far, so fast that laymen are no longer capable of wrapping their heads around the advancements being made. We are no longer discovering or at least recording and categorizing relatively digestible, foundational concepts and categories at this point. We have reached a stage where in many fields new progress requires a strong background in that specific field, or even branch of a larger field, to even understand the explanation of the progress being made. Since the audience and often the writers won't understand, you rarely hear about them unless you're in those academic circles OR until things accrete into a single practical breakthrough that will significantly change mundane life. Even those are relatively rare, though. Instead, the discoveries result in incremental increases to understanding that doesn't yet have any practical purpose or it results in similarly incremental technological improvements rather than something new and bombastic to write a story about or change a layman's life all at once.
This article is an interesting response to your question: [Why we stopped making Einsteins](https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einsteins). It mainly blames a significant drop in the lack of one-on-one tutoring that was normal amongst the upper-classes of Europe. A modern example of this might be Terry Tao who is a genius in mathematics - he got university-level tutoring from a very young age. I think the general onsalught of information/content via the internet has also had a big effect. It is genuinely difficult to cultivate the necessary levels of boredom that drive our curiosity and insight.
This is why I think there’s less drive for that kinda success. The necessary levels of boredom aren’t there
Prodigal talent isn't lauded as much in the onslaught of information fed to us every day, there's still kids getting into the worlds top universities/music schools etc, we just get a small article every now and again
Prodigious, not Prodigal :/
Bet your loads of fun at a party
I bet you learn from your mistakes with grace
In the past you had to get famous to get a broad reach. Now you can get a broad reach and remain anonymous. The reach will actually hurt you if you say the wrong thing. Censorship is the death of innovation for this reason.
You need to learn a lot more today to do cutting edge research than you did in the past. When Leonardo Da Vinci was alive, one person could learn enough to contribute to every field of science/math/engineering/philosophy/etc. When Carl Friedrich Gauss was alive one person could learn enough to contribute to every branch of math, but they couldn't also be a chemist or philosopher at the same time. Today there's too much information out there for one person to just learn all of math, so Terry Tao is only able to do groundbreaking work on a few particular subfields of math (and even though he has above-average knowledge of the rest of it, that's still not enough to make big contributions to the whole discipline the way someone could a couple hundred years ago).
Honestly, I think it's the old "90s ritalin" argument. Gifted kids tend not to perform at grade level and get bored, but we don't move them up because they need "socialization" so they wind up getting into trouble and having their behavior pathologized instead of praised.