when I scraped together the data, ran the big regression, and found that birth year accounted for (suppose) 30% of the variance in eminence, that wouldn’t refute any of the potential explanations for why cohort correlated with eminence
I’d love to see that data & analysis! Did you post it somewhere? Can you email it to me at gmail?
I think there was a LW post years ago saying that the word “obviously” is only used to cover up the fact that something isn’t obvious, and I agree with that more every year.
The evidence against the low-hanging fruit idea is that it explains only fame distribution across time, while the “attention and accretion model”, which says that people gain fame in proportion to the fame they already have, and total fame in a field is constant, explains fame distribution at any given moment as well as across time. If you use “attention and accretion” to explain fame distribution in the present, you will end up also explaining its distribution across time, not leaving very much for low-hanging fruit to explain.
Of course it is possible that low-hanging fruit is a strong factor, being cancelled out by some opposing strong factor such as better knowledge and tools. In fact, I think an economic-style argument might say that people work on the highest-return problems until productivity drops below C, then work on tools until it rises just above C, then work on problems, etc. So we should expect rate of return on worked-on problems to be fairly constant over time.
when I scraped together the data, ran the big regression, and found that birth year accounted for (suppose) 30% of the variance in eminence, that wouldn’t refute any of the potential explanations for why cohort correlated with eminence
I’d love to see that data & analysis! Did you post it somewhere? Can you email it to me at gmail?
I’m talking about a hypothetical analysis there. I haven’t actually collected the data and put it through the grinder (at least not yet)!
I think there was a LW post years ago saying that the word “obviously” is only used to cover up the fact that something isn’t obvious, and I agree with that more every year.
Yeah, I’m trying to install mental klaxons that go off when I unreflectively write (or read) “obvious” or “obviously”.
The evidence against the low-hanging fruit idea is that it explains only fame distribution across time, while the “attention and accretion model”, which says that people gain fame in proportion to the fame they already have, and total fame in a field is constant, explains fame distribution at any given moment as well as across time. If you use “attention and accretion” to explain fame distribution in the present, you will end up also explaining its distribution across time, not leaving very much for low-hanging fruit to explain.
That’s a fascinating result (although I’d wait for more details about the data & models involved before allocating the bulk of my probability mass to it). Does that mean our perception of fewer geniuses nowadays is merely because older geniuses grabbed most of the fame and left less of it for later geniuses? That’s how it sounds to me but I may be over-interpreting.
Does that mean our perception of fewer geniuses nowadays is merely because older geniuses grabbed most of the fame and left less of it for later geniuses?
Do we perceive there are fewer geniuses nowadays? I think we tend to pick the one thing somebody did in each generation or decade that seems most impressive, and call whoever did it an Einstein, with no idea how hard or easy it really was.
For instance, some people called Watson and Crick the great geniuses of the generation after Einstein, for figuring out the structure of DNA. Yet Watson and Crick were racing people all over the world to find the structure, because they knew anybody with the right tools would be able to figure it out within a few months. It required only basic competence.
(What’s especially interesting about that case is that Watson and Crick both did things that showed genius after they were hailed as geniuses, given genius-level funding and freedom, and expected to do genius things. Were they geniuses all along (a low prior), did they develop genius in response to more-challenging conditions, or is funding and freedom more important than genius?)
Today, we’ve got genuine genius entrepreneurs like Sergei & Larry, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, yet the public thinks the great genius of that generation was Steve Jobs. Possibly because Apple spent many (dozen? hundred?) millions of dollars advertising Steve Jobs. Peter Thiel was never on a billboard.
My gut says there are fewer geniuses nowadays, although I don’t really trust it on this one.
As for guts that aren’t mine...Bruce G. Charlton. Gideon Rachman. Dean Keith Simonton, although he simultaneously argues that modern first-rate scientists, “[i]f anything”, need “more raw brains”. Cosma Shalizi, who I think is being serious there, not just florid.
I think we tend to pick the one thing somebody did in each generation or decade that seems most impressive, and call whoever did it an Einstein, with no idea how hard or easy it really was.
I think there are certainly people who do that. There are people (not sure I can name any, but I’m sure they exist...Ray Kurzweil, maybe?) who are relentlessly upbeat about the march of scientific genius & progress, and people who just like jumping on hype bandwagons. There are also people with gloomier outlooks.
Today, we’ve got genuine genius entrepreneurs like Sergei & Larry, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, yet the public thinks the great genius of that generation was Steve Jobs. Possibly because Apple spent many (dozen? hundred?) millions of dollars advertising Steve Jobs. Peter Thiel was never on a billboard.
I don’t intuitively think of “genius entrepreneurs” as a natural category...
That advertising (and similar hype) influences whom people think of as geniuses is a good point.
I’d love to see that data & analysis! Did you post it somewhere? Can you email it to me at gmail?
I think there was a LW post years ago saying that the word “obviously” is only used to cover up the fact that something isn’t obvious, and I agree with that more every year.
The evidence against the low-hanging fruit idea is that it explains only fame distribution across time, while the “attention and accretion model”, which says that people gain fame in proportion to the fame they already have, and total fame in a field is constant, explains fame distribution at any given moment as well as across time. If you use “attention and accretion” to explain fame distribution in the present, you will end up also explaining its distribution across time, not leaving very much for low-hanging fruit to explain.
Of course it is possible that low-hanging fruit is a strong factor, being cancelled out by some opposing strong factor such as better knowledge and tools. In fact, I think an economic-style argument might say that people work on the highest-return problems until productivity drops below C, then work on tools until it rises just above C, then work on problems, etc. So we should expect rate of return on worked-on problems to be fairly constant over time.
I’m talking about a hypothetical analysis there. I haven’t actually collected the data and put it through the grinder (at least not yet)!
Yeah, I’m trying to install mental klaxons that go off when I unreflectively write (or read) “obvious” or “obviously”.
That’s a fascinating result (although I’d wait for more details about the data & models involved before allocating the bulk of my probability mass to it). Does that mean our perception of fewer geniuses nowadays is merely because older geniuses grabbed most of the fame and left less of it for later geniuses? That’s how it sounds to me but I may be over-interpreting.
Do we perceive there are fewer geniuses nowadays? I think we tend to pick the one thing somebody did in each generation or decade that seems most impressive, and call whoever did it an Einstein, with no idea how hard or easy it really was.
For instance, some people called Watson and Crick the great geniuses of the generation after Einstein, for figuring out the structure of DNA. Yet Watson and Crick were racing people all over the world to find the structure, because they knew anybody with the right tools would be able to figure it out within a few months. It required only basic competence.
(What’s especially interesting about that case is that Watson and Crick both did things that showed genius after they were hailed as geniuses, given genius-level funding and freedom, and expected to do genius things. Were they geniuses all along (a low prior), did they develop genius in response to more-challenging conditions, or is funding and freedom more important than genius?)
Today, we’ve got genuine genius entrepreneurs like Sergei & Larry, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, yet the public thinks the great genius of that generation was Steve Jobs. Possibly because Apple spent many (dozen? hundred?) millions of dollars advertising Steve Jobs. Peter Thiel was never on a billboard.
My gut says there are fewer geniuses nowadays, although I don’t really trust it on this one.
As for guts that aren’t mine...Bruce G. Charlton. Gideon Rachman. Dean Keith Simonton, although he simultaneously argues that modern first-rate scientists, “[i]f anything”, need “more raw brains”. Cosma Shalizi, who I think is being serious there, not just florid.
I think there are certainly people who do that. There are people (not sure I can name any, but I’m sure they exist...Ray Kurzweil, maybe?) who are relentlessly upbeat about the march of scientific genius & progress, and people who just like jumping on hype bandwagons. There are also people with gloomier outlooks.
I don’t intuitively think of “genius entrepreneurs” as a natural category...
That advertising (and similar hype) influences whom people think of as geniuses is a good point.