4 ms·

It's somewhat depressing how much smarter people seem to have been in the past than they seem to be now.

vecter 10y ago
What gives you that impression? When Newton alive, no one knew calculus. He had to invent it (along with Leibniz). Now we learn calculus in high school.
- qubex 10y ago
  Everything we take for granted today must have been by definition been invented previously, so any list of who-invented-what contains Great People Of The Past but doesn't contain the rank and file of those who worked in obscurity and achieved little, leaving the impression that in the past folks were smarter. It is a form of survivorship bias.
jonnybgood 10y ago
People of today are just as smart. It was only simpler then. Math has grown in complexity and has caused mathematicians to become more specialized. So, in order to see the good stuff and the smart people of today, it requires going deep in to those specialized fields. It's a matter of accessibility.
- amelius 10y ago
  Could you give some examples in the field of Computer Science then perhaps?
  - jackmott 10y ago
    http://tomasp.net/coeffects/ http://tomasp.net/coeffects/ http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2741 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2741
- privong 10y ago
  > People of today are just as smart. It was only simpler then. An additional effect is that when people learn the major past discoveries (e.g., calculus, mechanics), the version that is taught is often significantly different from how the discoverer cast it or how the idea was originally formulated. Years of teaching, refinement, and finding other techniques to solve problems or prove theorems makes it easier to learn. One example is "Maxwell's Equations" for electro-magnetism; the most commonly used modern form consisting of 4 equations was condensed from Maxwell's 20 equations by Oliver Heaviside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations#Formulation_in_terms_of_electric_and_magnetic_fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations#Formulat... If the original 20 equation form was more conducive to use and teaching, I suspect we those would be more widely used.
- eggy 10y ago
  I think all is equal. Yes, you learn calculus in high school now, but we also have Geometric Algebra coming back since the 80s, which allows for succinct symbolic expression of geometrical calculations. This and the field of computation, which for the mathematician is like the telescope was for the astronomers of old. I think the room for discovery, great discoveries, is still within reach as before. New tools, new concepts, and new challenges. I am still amazed at what could be hand calc'ed or graphed by some of these incredible mathematicians in the past. Amazing. The fact that we have institutions and foundations like the Santa Fe Institute and The Long Now among many others, show the big questions are still being tackled, but of course, many of us while away in the trenches of technology, and its hard to see what the brightest are up to sometimes.
zild3d 10y ago
Well this is Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory" and "founder of digital circuit design theory", not your average grad student of back then, or today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon
- jacobolus 10y ago
  And Shannon himself might have been somewhat depressed by how much “smarter” his young self was. Richard Hamming: “When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. In fact I will give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards.”
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    > The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards. Regression to the mean guarantees this effect regardless of what goes on at the Institute for Advanced Study.
    - oneloop 10y ago
      Stupid comment. The quality of work of a very good scientist is not a random variable with an average being the same as the population average. Some scientists are actually better than average. Stop trying to sound smart. Now you could argue that IAS scientists were actually average, and they were just lucky enough to hit upon quality results before they went to IAS. In this case your comment could logically make sense. If that is what you believe, I will just assume that you know nothing about the world of research in the past 40 or so years (at least not in an area where IAS is world's best, like theoretical physics) during which the IAS produced some of the world's best research, as opposed to just having the scientists with the world's biggest reputations.
behnamoh 10y ago
That's because back then, academic people (i.e. university professors and researchers) REALLY cared about science per se, and not just putting out papers every few months to get promotion.
snowwrestler 10y ago
Or is it just easier to identify the most important thinkers retrospectively, than in the moment? For example let's ask the HN masses: who do people think is the smartest person alive today? What work have they done / are they doing?
- llamaz 10y ago
  I agree. In his own time, Bach wasn't very well known. Handel on the other hand was an international superstar. Now the tables have turned.
andrepd 10y ago
Utter nonsense. People aren't, in general, dumber nowadays that they were in the past. It's just that the cutting edge keeps getting harder and harder. The stuff Newton and Einstein became famous for is now standard high school/undergraduate curriculum, while the stuff being done on the cutting edge nowadays needs 20 years of study to become able to contribute anything new, often ridiculously small and niche contributions.

What gives you that impression? When Newton alive, no one knew calculus. He had to invent it (along with Leibniz). Now we learn calculus in high school.

qubex 10y ago
Everything we take for granted today must have been by definition been invented previously, so any list of who-invented-what contains Great People Of The Past but doesn't contain the rank and file of those who worked in obscurity and achieved little, leaving the impression that in the past folks were smarter. It is a form of survivorship bias.

jonnybgood 10y ago

People of today are just as smart. It was only simpler then. Math has grown in complexity and has caused mathematicians to become more specialized. So, in order to see the good stuff and the smart people of today, it requires going deep in to those specialized fields. It's a matter of accessibility.

amelius 10y ago
Could you give some examples in the field of Computer Science then perhaps?
- jackmott 10y ago
  http://tomasp.net/coeffects/ http://tomasp.net/coeffects/ http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2741 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2741
privong 10y ago
> People of today are just as smart. It was only simpler then. An additional effect is that when people learn the major past discoveries (e.g., calculus, mechanics), the version that is taught is often significantly different from how the discoverer cast it or how the idea was originally formulated. Years of teaching, refinement, and finding other techniques to solve problems or prove theorems makes it easier to learn. One example is "Maxwell's Equations" for electro-magnetism; the most commonly used modern form consisting of 4 equations was condensed from Maxwell's 20 equations by Oliver Heaviside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations#Formulation_in_terms_of_electric_and_magnetic_fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations#Formulat... If the original 20 equation form was more conducive to use and teaching, I suspect we those would be more widely used.
eggy 10y ago
I think all is equal. Yes, you learn calculus in high school now, but we also have Geometric Algebra coming back since the 80s, which allows for succinct symbolic expression of geometrical calculations. This and the field of computation, which for the mathematician is like the telescope was for the astronomers of old. I think the room for discovery, great discoveries, is still within reach as before. New tools, new concepts, and new challenges. I am still amazed at what could be hand calc'ed or graphed by some of these incredible mathematicians in the past. Amazing. The fact that we have institutions and foundations like the Santa Fe Institute and The Long Now among many others, show the big questions are still being tackled, but of course, many of us while away in the trenches of technology, and its hard to see what the brightest are up to sometimes.

zild3d 10y ago

Well this is Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory" and "founder of digital circuit design theory", not your average grad student of back then, or today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon

jacobolus 10y ago
And Shannon himself might have been somewhat depressed by how much “smarter” his young self was. Richard Hamming: “When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. In fact I will give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards.”
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards. Regression to the mean guarantees this effect regardless of what goes on at the Institute for Advanced Study.
  - oneloop 10y ago
    Stupid comment. The quality of work of a very good scientist is not a random variable with an average being the same as the population average. Some scientists are actually better than average. Stop trying to sound smart. Now you could argue that IAS scientists were actually average, and they were just lucky enough to hit upon quality results before they went to IAS. In this case your comment could logically make sense. If that is what you believe, I will just assume that you know nothing about the world of research in the past 40 or so years (at least not in an area where IAS is world's best, like theoretical physics) during which the IAS produced some of the world's best research, as opposed to just having the scientists with the world's biggest reputations.

behnamoh 10y ago

That's because back then, academic people (i.e. university professors and researchers) REALLY cared about science per se, and not just putting out papers every few months to get promotion.

snowwrestler 10y ago

Or is it just easier to identify the most important thinkers retrospectively, than in the moment? For example let's ask the HN masses: who do people think is the smartest person alive today? What work have they done / are they doing?

llamaz 10y ago
I agree. In his own time, Bach wasn't very well known. Handel on the other hand was an international superstar. Now the tables have turned.

andrepd 10y ago

Utter nonsense. People aren't, in general, dumber nowadays that they were in the past. It's just that the cutting edge keeps getting harder and harder. The stuff Newton and Einstein became famous for is now standard high school/undergraduate curriculum, while the stuff being done on the cutting edge nowadays needs 20 years of study to become able to contribute anything new, often ridiculously small and niche contributions.