We could quibble a bit about exact rarities—Einstein was clearly exceptionally bright, but whether he represents 1 in 10e4 or 1 in 10e6 g depends on all sorts of trivia that I don’t have good estimates for.
If Einstein represents 1 in 1000, then it would imply that on average the 3 top students in each highschool of 3000 students could be expected to be as “smart as Einstein”. Does that sound reasonable to you?
No, I’m pretty sure Einstein-level intelligence is rarer than that, which is why I put my lower bound at 1 in 10^4 (i.e. the top three students in a region’s worth of high schools). I’m not sure it’s much rarer, though—we don’t have an outstandingly good idea of what makes an Einstein other than sheer weight of g, and we don’t even know that people with the prerequisites of an Einstein would consistently have been funneled into fields where they’d have the opportunity to do things like make famous discoveries in physics.
As to the latter, I kind of suspect not. Of the three smartest people in my (pretty large) high school as measured by the National Merit Scholarship program—probably the only American program that looks for exceptional g on a national scale that late in life, though any number of programs exist for gifted children—one now works for Google’s IT department and a second was, last I heard, going into an art school. The third is… well, not in physics or math either. Not sure what the equivalent of Google would have been in 1935 -- maybe something in mechanical engineering? -- but I doubt the hard sciences then selected for intelligence much better than they do now.
Youre are edging into understanding why this is thread meaningless. Einstein-level g is rarish but not specatacular. Einstein-level
domain ability is another thing. Being in the right place at the right time with the right idea is another thing again. Einstein probably wouldn’t have made a Rembrandt-level painter.
Einstein probably wouldn’t have made a Rembrandt-level painter.
...and then, by total coincidence, a couple days ago I went to the website of a Nobel laureate theoretical physicist and was surprised by how much the graphic design looked like the work of a 14-year-old, and not bothering and letting the browser use the default black-on-white text would probably have looked prettier IMO.
But the overwhelming majority of the population (I won’t bother to pull a number of 9s out of my ass) never become a top-level theoretical physicist nor a top-level painter nor a top-level novelist nor a top-level musician nor a top-level statesperson nor a top-level chess player nor anything like that. So, even without assuming that theoretical physics is any more g-loaded than painting, the fact that “Einstein probably wouldn’t have made a Rembrandt-level painter” isn’t a terribly good reason to doubt that Einstein’s g was in the top 0.1%.
But the overwhelming majority of the population (I won’t bother to pull a number of 9s out of my ass) never become a top-level theoretical physicist nor a top-level painter nor a top-level novelist nor a top-level musician nor a top-level statesperson nor a top-level chess player nor anything like that.
By definition, the vast majority of the population can never be top-level. It would stop being top-level if everyone could do it.
On the other hand, you can look at curricula in good schools these days and notice that we definitely seem to be expecting higher intellectual aptitude and greater achievements at early ages these days in order to give people the same levels of status and respect. So hmmm....
By definition, the vast majority of the population can never be top-level. It would stop being top-level if everyone could do it.
Yes, the vast majority of the population can never be top-level at one given thing. But in principle it could well be possible that almost each person is top-level at something (though different people would be top-level at different things). That this isn’t the case is an empirical fact.
On the other hand, you can look at curricula in good schools these days and notice that we definitely seem to be expecting higher intellectual aptitude and greater achievements at early ages these days in order to give people the same levels of status and respect. So hmmm....
I think we’re feeling two different legs of the elephant, so to speak—or there may just be vast inequalities in education as in everything else these days.
I’d have to do quite a bit of searching to get hard backing statistics, but consider, for instance, the average age at which a young scientist achieves an independent position or tenure, or the average publication quantity of people who do get positions, or even (so I’ve heard) the average publication quantity/quality of people who get into graduate school. As far as I know, these indicators have very much been increasing over time; there may even be a causative link: grade inflation at the lower end of the system causing grade deflation the further up you go.
(For example, I’m told that it’s now difficult to get into graduate school if you don’t already have authorship on a publication.)
There’s also anecdotes like these, indicating that people (at least, aspiring Officially Smart People) are being taught more mathematics at an earlier age than previously.
I’d have to do quite a bit of searching to get hard backing statistics, but consider, for instance, the average age at which a young scientist achieves an independent position or tenure, or the average publication quantity of people who do get positions, or even (so I’ve heard) the average publication quantity/quality of people who get into graduate school.
That slash is a division bar, right? ;-)
(More seriously: Sure, students today might know much more maths than Newton did, but being able to learn calculus from a teacher and/or a textbook is a much lower bar than being able to invent calculus from scratch.)
(More seriously: Sure, students today might know much more maths than Newton did, but being able to learn calculus from a teacher and/or a textbook is a much lower bar than being able to invent calculus from scratch.)
True. But the average Maths PhD today is doing something Newton could never have invented at all. Yes, we do stand on the shoulders of giants nowadays, as did Newton, but picking higher-hanging fruit (say: the Standard Model compared to classical mechanics) requires both a greater knowledge of maths and a greater creative effort.
Anyway, point being, I simply don’t feel able to believe that “incredibly high general intelligence” is truly the determining factor of even Famous Historical Hero-level science. There seem to be lots of other things going on.
If Einstein represents 1 in 1000, then it would imply that on average the 3 top students in each highschool of 3000 students could be expected to be as “smart as Einstein”. Does that sound reasonable to you?
No, I’m pretty sure Einstein-level intelligence is rarer than that, which is why I put my lower bound at 1 in 10^4 (i.e. the top three students in a region’s worth of high schools). I’m not sure it’s much rarer, though—we don’t have an outstandingly good idea of what makes an Einstein other than sheer weight of g, and we don’t even know that people with the prerequisites of an Einstein would consistently have been funneled into fields where they’d have the opportunity to do things like make famous discoveries in physics.
As to the latter, I kind of suspect not. Of the three smartest people in my (pretty large) high school as measured by the National Merit Scholarship program—probably the only American program that looks for exceptional g on a national scale that late in life, though any number of programs exist for gifted children—one now works for Google’s IT department and a second was, last I heard, going into an art school. The third is… well, not in physics or math either. Not sure what the equivalent of Google would have been in 1935 -- maybe something in mechanical engineering? -- but I doubt the hard sciences then selected for intelligence much better than they do now.
Youre are edging into understanding why this is thread meaningless. Einstein-level g is rarish but not specatacular. Einstein-level domain ability is another thing. Being in the right place at the right time with the right idea is another thing again. Einstein probably wouldn’t have made a Rembrandt-level painter.
...and then, by total coincidence, a couple days ago I went to the website of a Nobel laureate theoretical physicist and was surprised by how much the graphic design looked like the work of a 14-year-old, and not bothering and letting the browser use the default black-on-white text would probably have looked prettier IMO.
But the overwhelming majority of the population (I won’t bother to pull a number of 9s out of my ass) never become a top-level theoretical physicist nor a top-level painter nor a top-level novelist nor a top-level musician nor a top-level statesperson nor a top-level chess player nor anything like that. So, even without assuming that theoretical physics is any more g-loaded than painting, the fact that “Einstein probably wouldn’t have made a Rembrandt-level painter” isn’t a terribly good reason to doubt that Einstein’s g was in the top 0.1%.
The point was this: that Einstein was very exceptional was not a good reason for thinking he had a very exceptional g, because it’s not all about g.
I agree if by the second instance of “very exceptional” you mean “one in a billion”, but not if you mean “one in a thousand”.
By definition, the vast majority of the population can never be top-level. It would stop being top-level if everyone could do it.
On the other hand, you can look at curricula in good schools these days and notice that we definitely seem to be expecting higher intellectual aptitude and greater achievements at early ages these days in order to give people the same levels of status and respect. So hmmm....
Yes, the vast majority of the population can never be top-level at one given thing. But in principle it could well be possible that almost each person is top-level at something (though different people would be top-level at different things). That this isn’t the case is an empirical fact.
Where are you looking, exactly? Over here it looks quite different.
I think we’re feeling two different legs of the elephant, so to speak—or there may just be vast inequalities in education as in everything else these days.
I’d have to do quite a bit of searching to get hard backing statistics, but consider, for instance, the average age at which a young scientist achieves an independent position or tenure, or the average publication quantity of people who do get positions, or even (so I’ve heard) the average publication quantity/quality of people who get into graduate school. As far as I know, these indicators have very much been increasing over time; there may even be a causative link: grade inflation at the lower end of the system causing grade deflation the further up you go.
(For example, I’m told that it’s now difficult to get into graduate school if you don’t already have authorship on a publication.)
There’s also anecdotes like these, indicating that people (at least, aspiring Officially Smart People) are being taught more mathematics at an earlier age than previously.
I wish we had some hard data to clear things up.
That slash is a division bar, right? ;-)
(More seriously: Sure, students today might know much more maths than Newton did, but being able to learn calculus from a teacher and/or a textbook is a much lower bar than being able to invent calculus from scratch.)
True. But the average Maths PhD today is doing something Newton could never have invented at all. Yes, we do stand on the shoulders of giants nowadays, as did Newton, but picking higher-hanging fruit (say: the Standard Model compared to classical mechanics) requires both a greater knowledge of maths and a greater creative effort.
Anyway, point being, I simply don’t feel able to believe that “incredibly high general intelligence” is truly the determining factor of even Famous Historical Hero-level science. There seem to be lots of other things going on.