Some poor bastard had to come to terms with knowing that he was obviously the dumbest physicist on the Manhattan Project, a net drag on the team
This doesn’t follow. It might be that the dumbest person is still contributing productively. They’ll just be contributing the least. Moreover, there might be enough variation in specific skill sets that no one is actually the dumbest (although I find this second argument to be weak. The truth is that some people really are better than others). Now it is more plausible that some of the dumber people who also worked less ended up distracting people in the project enough that they were net negatives. But that sort of argument requires that they be not only stupid but lazy and disruptive. In practice, few people with those traits last long in serious research.
It might be that the dumbest person is still contributing productively. They’ll just be contributing the least.
This is true. I was thinking, though, of the purely emotional impact on someone who is used to being the smartest person in the room to suddenly finding himself the least smart person in the room. Specifically, it’s a lesson I have had to learn myself—for me, it was a lesson I started learning in high school, and have re-learned the lesson many, many times since then. It’s not a fun lesson.
This doesn’t follow. It might be that the dumbest person is still contributing productively. They’ll just be contributing the least. Moreover, there might be enough variation in specific skill sets that no one is actually the dumbest (although I find this second argument to be weak. The truth is that some people really are better than others). Now it is more plausible that some of the dumber people who also worked less ended up distracting people in the project enough that they were net negatives. But that sort of argument requires that they be not only stupid but lazy and disruptive. In practice, few people with those traits last long in serious research.
This is true. I was thinking, though, of the purely emotional impact on someone who is used to being the smartest person in the room to suddenly finding himself the least smart person in the room. Specifically, it’s a lesson I have had to learn myself—for me, it was a lesson I started learning in high school, and have re-learned the lesson many, many times since then. It’s not a fun lesson.