5 ms·

I don't know if you meant it to parallel the Bezos quote about blue origin / the desire to push our species out across the solar system but it came to mind righ

I don't know if you meant it to parallel the Bezos quote about blue origin / the desire to push our species out across the solar system but it came to mind right away when I read what you wrote because I have been thinking along similar lines: "The solar system can support a trillion humans, and then we'd have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how incredible and dynamic that civilization will be," Bezos boasted during a speech at New York's Yale Club, which was transcribed by Business Insider. I wonder if can't figure out something as simple as how to allocate the basic rewards of our system socio-efficiently if the future will turn out more like "The Expanse" than "Star Trek". And if we focused on simply getting all the near-Einsteins out of the patent office (as you said) here on Earth first how much faster the goal of colonizing the star system would be achieved.

ErikAugust 8y ago
The irony being that Bezos runs a company that monopolizes a lot of very smart people who end up working on some web microservice that powers some small part of Amazon.com.
- HNLurker2 8y ago
  The irony is that he tries to scale creativity and geniuses
oh_sigh 8y ago
We have 15x the population as when Mozart lived. Do we have 15 Mozarts now? And arguably more of the population is living in better conditions, so maybe it should be closer to 30x or something?
- all2 8y ago
  Probably. A major problem with talent, genius, and hard workers is discovery. Our models of societal discovery are broken; we point our focus towards a few 'rock star' type jobs and everything else is left for historians to discover.
- nine_k 8y ago
  A huge influence on Mozart's success was his father, a renowned musician. He discovered his talent early on, and put a lot of effort into growing it, effectively making it his full-time job for some time. I bet a number if naturally gifted kids just don't receive such a boost, and don't spend as much time and effort on unfolding their unique talents. Young Mozart worked a lot, sometimes against his wish.
- perfunctory 8y ago
  I think we do. We, general public, just don't know them. My conspiracy theory suggests that dead artists are more popular than the modern ones because for a government it's much to easy to keep reselling Mona Lisa brand.
- nosianu 8y ago
  Oh yes we do. Music today is orders of magnitude more in all directions that you want to explore "music space". Mozart would feel he is in paradise if he were resurrected today, sooo much to explore, sooo many more options. From instruments to the variants of music, not all based on the European system, to how easy it is to listen to music at any time, anywhere (even if the quality is not concert hall, even a mediocre player beats not having the option at all). I play (alto and soprano) recorder and violin, amateur-casual, and listen to almost all styles there are at least occasionally, and depending on mood and context find amazing things in many places. The kind of music Mozart knew is such a small subset. What may have suffered, not sure, is the ability to play an instrument. Given how easy it is to listen to music made by others anywhere there is no need to learn how to play. On the other hand, using computers and modern music tech in general you can compose and play music that Mozart had to get a hundred people together for, and you don't need to train your synthesizer to play your notes. When I imagine I would meet a medieval society the one thing that I would want to bring is a synthesizer (and solar panels and good speakers), and a huge electronic library of music. We have come a looong way in the last one- to two hundred years, with ever increasing speed in new musical developments.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Maybe we do. John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison, Jimmie Hendrix, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Prince. We might not know for 100 years just how history will judge them.
petermcneeley 8y ago
I think such quotes are for simpletons. There is no way a highly intelligent person that knows history and science would actually believe such things.
- mental1896 8y ago
  Any chance you might expand on that idea (for us simpletons)?
  - petermcneeley 8y ago
    The idea that there is a constant %P of an Einstein for a given population is an overly simplistic view on human creative drive. So obviously thinking that you will get a thousand Einsteins out of a population of 1 trillion is simpleton "math". Ideas matter, culture matters, availability of resources matters. You could have a trillion people like in the movie WallE and get not a single scientific advancement out of them. In the order of importance I dont think the total population size is really a significant factor here. I think Jeff Bezos is smart which is why I doubt he holds to any comments indented for layman audiences.

ErikAugust 8y ago

The irony being that Bezos runs a company that monopolizes a lot of very smart people who end up working on some web microservice that powers some small part of Amazon.com.

HNLurker2 8y ago
The irony is that he tries to scale creativity and geniuses

oh_sigh 8y ago

We have 15x the population as when Mozart lived. Do we have 15 Mozarts now? And arguably more of the population is living in better conditions, so maybe it should be closer to 30x or something?

all2 8y ago
Probably. A major problem with talent, genius, and hard workers is discovery. Our models of societal discovery are broken; we point our focus towards a few 'rock star' type jobs and everything else is left for historians to discover.
nine_k 8y ago
A huge influence on Mozart's success was his father, a renowned musician. He discovered his talent early on, and put a lot of effort into growing it, effectively making it his full-time job for some time. I bet a number if naturally gifted kids just don't receive such a boost, and don't spend as much time and effort on unfolding their unique talents. Young Mozart worked a lot, sometimes against his wish.
perfunctory 8y ago
I think we do. We, general public, just don't know them. My conspiracy theory suggests that dead artists are more popular than the modern ones because for a government it's much to easy to keep reselling Mona Lisa brand.
nosianu 8y ago
Oh yes we do. Music today is orders of magnitude more in all directions that you want to explore "music space". Mozart would feel he is in paradise if he were resurrected today, sooo much to explore, sooo many more options. From instruments to the variants of music, not all based on the European system, to how easy it is to listen to music at any time, anywhere (even if the quality is not concert hall, even a mediocre player beats not having the option at all). I play (alto and soprano) recorder and violin, amateur-casual, and listen to almost all styles there are at least occasionally, and depending on mood and context find amazing things in many places. The kind of music Mozart knew is such a small subset. What may have suffered, not sure, is the ability to play an instrument. Given how easy it is to listen to music made by others anywhere there is no need to learn how to play. On the other hand, using computers and modern music tech in general you can compose and play music that Mozart had to get a hundred people together for, and you don't need to train your synthesizer to play your notes. When I imagine I would meet a medieval society the one thing that I would want to bring is a synthesizer (and solar panels and good speakers), and a huge electronic library of music. We have come a looong way in the last one- to two hundred years, with ever increasing speed in new musical developments.
sokoloff 8y ago
Maybe we do. John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison, Jimmie Hendrix, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Prince. We might not know for 100 years just how history will judge them.

petermcneeley 8y ago

I think such quotes are for simpletons. There is no way a highly intelligent person that knows history and science would actually believe such things.

mental1896 8y ago
Any chance you might expand on that idea (for us simpletons)?
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  The idea that there is a constant %P of an Einstein for a given population is an overly simplistic view on human creative drive. So obviously thinking that you will get a thousand Einsteins out of a population of 1 trillion is simpleton "math". Ideas matter, culture matters, availability of resources matters. You could have a trillion people like in the movie WallE and get not a single scientific advancement out of them. In the order of importance I dont think the total population size is really a significant factor here. I think Jeff Bezos is smart which is why I doubt he holds to any comments indented for layman audiences.