Furthermore, if not for people with unusually high intelligence, there would have been no Renaissance and no industrial revolution: Europe would still be in the dark ages, as would the rest of the world.
I’m not sure about this: lots of humans can make small incremental progress. For every Isaac Newton or Terry Tao there’s a 10 or 15 people who are a few years behind them.
If this is in fact true then there is I think a decent question here if the Great Filter is partially the presence of geniuses or people much smarter than the norm for the species.. It may be that most species have a very low levels of variation in intelligence levels. I know that for studies with ravens there’s little variation in what puzzles they can solve, but the total intelligence may be substantially lower enough than humans that it is hard to see. Also it is possible that are samples are too small to notice the really smart ravens.
For every Isaac Newton or Terry Tao there’s a 10 or 15 people who are a few years behind them.
Corollary: only the fastest get noticed, not those that would’ve managed it a little later. Thus we get a selection effect by which we automatically attribute things to the best/fastest/whatever and don’t get to see who else could do it.
That definitely seems to be part of what is going on. Poincare and Hilbert were both working in very similar directions to Einstein when he came up with Special Relativity. On the other hand, in both those cases, Poincare and Hilbert were both extremely smart.
On the other how much does this end up mattering? Maybe Jonah’s comment is still essentially correct because the 10 or 15 people a few years behind are still people of unusually high intelligence just not as high as the very top people?
As for Poincare, I say that he published a full theory of special relativity in 1905. We only give Einstein credit because he used it to get general relativity. He used it, but otherwise it was pretty much as ignored as Poincare’s.
I don’t have any knowledge of the history here, but my friend Laurens Gunnarsen (PhD in mathematical physics from University of Chicago) wrote in his (very favorable) review of Poincare’s The Value of Science:
A final brief caveat: although Poincare was clearly the greatest mathematician of his time, he was not the greatest physicist. A curious wrong-headedness kept him from beating Albert Einstein to the creation of special relativity, and general relativity eventually proved Poincare wrong in some of his opinions on the relation between physics and geometry. So when Poincare speaks of physics, bear in mind that some of his positions no longer seem really tenable.
I know that you may have similar background (I still don’t know who you are IRL), but thought I’d point that out (though it’s completely tangential to the main thread of conversation).
What is that a response to? my claim that Poincaré beat Einstein? That’s not a relevant credential, and even if it were, I would not be moved by the claim unless it were a lot more precise. He might simply mean that Poincare took several papers over several years, while Einstein got it right in one try.
For Joshua’s purpose, priority disputes are not important. Most people who reject Poincaré′s 1905 paper as a complete theory accept his 1906 paper as a complete theory not influenced by Einstein.
In fact, I think that the whole concept of priority disputes is idiotic. Time is a crude proxy for influence. Columbus discovered America because it remained discovered. He changed history. Which leads to my last sentence: neither Einstein nor Poincaré′s papers on special relativity had any appreciable effect. They were considered minor commentary on Maxwell’s equations. The English considered them a cleaner version of FitzGerald’s theory of the aether. France was not interested in special relativity until after WW2. The Germans were more enthusiastic, but that might have been some kind of (extended) nationalism, not really a different comprehension.
I suppose that LG might mean that Poincaré′s theory was mathematically equivalent, but philosophically off, like the English theory I mentioned above. But that English theory claimed to be Einstein’s theory. Philosophical influences are difficult to follow, let alone predict.
What is that a response to? my claim that Poincaré beat Einstein?
Yes
That’s not a relevant credential,
Not only does he have very deep subject matter knowledge, he’s also studied the history in detail (as comes across to some degree in his Amazon review).
He might simply mean that Poincare took several papers over several years, while Einstein got it right in one try.
I don’t know what he had in mind, it’s possible that you and he are on the same page, I just thought I’d point you to the review because it seemed to be in some tension with your claim.
As for the rest of it, I don’t have comments right now –I was responding specifically to the Einstein / Poincare thing.
I’m not sure about this: lots of humans can make small incremental progress. For every Isaac Newton or Terry Tao there’s a 10 or 15 people who are a few years behind them.
Carl Friedrich Gauss illustrates this quite well. He kept a lot of his mathematical discoveries to himself. When they went through his private papers after his death it was found that he’d discovered things years or even decades (or centuries) before anyone else published them. It’s a matter of speculation how much farther math would have advanced had Gauss bothered to publish all his work.
For every Isaac Newton or Terry Tao there’s a 10 or 15 people who are a few years behind them.
In the case of Isaac Newton, we actually got to see this happen: Newton invented calculus several years before Leibniz’s independent re-invention, but Newton didn’t bother publishing anything about it until after he learned that Leibniz was trying to take credit for the same work Newton had already did.
“lots of humans can make small incremental progress”
You could easily imagine that the contribution each sub-genius makes is only appreciated or assimilated in part, since it’s easier to derive trivial results from powerful theorems than to construct proofs of powerful theorems from trivial results. The problem is gathering seemingly disparate and disconnected pieces of knowledge together in a single mind and linking them into a coherent whole, and a genius who produced many of these bits of knowledge by himself is in a much better position to do this than somebody who has to learn everything from external sources, struggling against the inadequacy of memory for learned material althewhile. So the “minor” contributions are lost to time simply because they’re not sufficiently important to be studied widely.
I’m not sure about this: lots of humans can make small incremental progress. For every Isaac Newton or Terry Tao there’s a 10 or 15 people who are a few years behind them.
If this is in fact true then there is I think a decent question here if the Great Filter is partially the presence of geniuses or people much smarter than the norm for the species.. It may be that most species have a very low levels of variation in intelligence levels. I know that for studies with ravens there’s little variation in what puzzles they can solve, but the total intelligence may be substantially lower enough than humans that it is hard to see. Also it is possible that are samples are too small to notice the really smart ravens.
Corollary: only the fastest get noticed, not those that would’ve managed it a little later. Thus we get a selection effect by which we automatically attribute things to the best/fastest/whatever and don’t get to see who else could do it.
That definitely seems to be part of what is going on. Poincare and Hilbert were both working in very similar directions to Einstein when he came up with Special Relativity. On the other hand, in both those cases, Poincare and Hilbert were both extremely smart.
On the other how much does this end up mattering? Maybe Jonah’s comment is still essentially correct because the 10 or 15 people a few years behind are still people of unusually high intelligence just not as high as the very top people?
What about Hilbert and special relativity?
As for Poincare, I say that he published a full theory of special relativity in 1905. We only give Einstein credit because he used it to get general relativity. He used it, but otherwise it was pretty much as ignored as Poincare’s.
I don’t have any knowledge of the history here, but my friend Laurens Gunnarsen (PhD in mathematical physics from University of Chicago) wrote in his (very favorable) review of Poincare’s The Value of Science:
I know that you may have similar background (I still don’t know who you are IRL), but thought I’d point that out (though it’s completely tangential to the main thread of conversation).
What is that a response to? my claim that Poincaré beat Einstein? That’s not a relevant credential, and even if it were, I would not be moved by the claim unless it were a lot more precise. He might simply mean that Poincare took several papers over several years, while Einstein got it right in one try.
For Joshua’s purpose, priority disputes are not important. Most people who reject Poincaré′s 1905 paper as a complete theory accept his 1906 paper as a complete theory not influenced by Einstein.
In fact, I think that the whole concept of priority disputes is idiotic. Time is a crude proxy for influence. Columbus discovered America because it remained discovered. He changed history. Which leads to my last sentence: neither Einstein nor Poincaré′s papers on special relativity had any appreciable effect. They were considered minor commentary on Maxwell’s equations. The English considered them a cleaner version of FitzGerald’s theory of the aether. France was not interested in special relativity until after WW2. The Germans were more enthusiastic, but that might have been some kind of (extended) nationalism, not really a different comprehension.
I suppose that LG might mean that Poincaré′s theory was mathematically equivalent, but philosophically off, like the English theory I mentioned above. But that English theory claimed to be Einstein’s theory. Philosophical influences are difficult to follow, let alone predict.
Yes
Not only does he have very deep subject matter knowledge, he’s also studied the history in detail (as comes across to some degree in his Amazon review).
I don’t know what he had in mind, it’s possible that you and he are on the same page, I just thought I’d point you to the review because it seemed to be in some tension with your claim.
As for the rest of it, I don’t have comments right now –I was responding specifically to the Einstein / Poincare thing.
Carl Friedrich Gauss illustrates this quite well. He kept a lot of his mathematical discoveries to himself. When they went through his private papers after his death it was found that he’d discovered things years or even decades (or centuries) before anyone else published them. It’s a matter of speculation how much farther math would have advanced had Gauss bothered to publish all his work.
In the case of Isaac Newton, we actually got to see this happen: Newton invented calculus several years before Leibniz’s independent re-invention, but Newton didn’t bother publishing anything about it until after he learned that Leibniz was trying to take credit for the same work Newton had already did.
“lots of humans can make small incremental progress”
You could easily imagine that the contribution each sub-genius makes is only appreciated or assimilated in part, since it’s easier to derive trivial results from powerful theorems than to construct proofs of powerful theorems from trivial results. The problem is gathering seemingly disparate and disconnected pieces of knowledge together in a single mind and linking them into a coherent whole, and a genius who produced many of these bits of knowledge by himself is in a much better position to do this than somebody who has to learn everything from external sources, struggling against the inadequacy of memory for learned material althewhile. So the “minor” contributions are lost to time simply because they’re not sufficiently important to be studied widely.