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You’re completely deluded into believing that genius is overrated. While it is never in isolation, and its fruits are the product of historical necessity, it ta

You’re completely deluded into believing that genius is overrated. While it is never in isolation, and its fruits are the product of historical necessity, it takes a rare breed of sacrifice, which PG here is saying as obsession, to hit the targets no one else sees (paraphrasing Arthur Schopenhauer); and is constitutionally the personal, moral input of an individual on choosing how to cause themselves to be, unconcerned with the mediocre concerns of their contemporary society. Shame on you and your ilk for suggesting Descartes, Newton, Kant etc. were just there picking low hanging fruit. They were doing work no one had the courage to do.

throwawaymath 7y ago
> You’re completely deluded into believing that genius is overrated. ... > Shame on you and your ilk for suggesting Descartes, Newton, Kant etc. were just there picking low hanging fruit. They were doing work no one had the courage to do. There's a lot of passion in your comment, but it's also really antagonistic. The person you replied to was very respectful and cogent in expressing their point of view; you abandoned that civility quite quickly - and for what? If you're as well read as your references imply, surely you can appreciate an argument which casts aspersion on the "lone hero" ideation of historical progress.
- achillesheels 7y ago
  Such an aspersion is anti-heroic and trite, which is an abomination to the very civilization you stand upon and has bequeathed the motivations for computing power altogether. Denouncing sophomoric philistinism is an incredibly appropriate act of high culture.
tekkk 7y ago
I see the reasonings of both of your points. To me it seems in the old days, there was a lot of hindrance in reaching your potential therefore for those few to become geniuses, you truly had to be exceptional and since there was so few, your impact would be tremendous. Now compare that to the modern day, where I'd say a lot higher percentage of people are hitting their potential as a genius. Therefore, a lot more people are coming up with new novel things, but since a lot of the easy major milestones in sciences have been attained, the impact of those single individual geniuses is much smaller. Modern age Newton could be just a very good AI researcher from England. It's just impossible for humans to have devolved so much that the genius of the previous generations would be so much different than we have today.
dang 7y ago
> You’re completely deluded [...] Shame on you and your ilk Crossing into personal attack isn't allowed, and we ban accounts the keep doing it, so can you please not do it here? If you'd take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see how the intended spirit of this site points in the opposite direction. Note that it doesn't depend on how right you are.
- achillesheels 7y ago
  I was personally offended, I apologize for my rhetoric.

throwawaymath 7y ago

> You’re completely deluded into believing that genius is overrated. ... > Shame on you and your ilk for suggesting Descartes, Newton, Kant etc. were just there picking low hanging fruit. They were doing work no one had the courage to do. There's a lot of passion in your comment, but it's also really antagonistic. The person you replied to was very respectful and cogent in expressing their point of view; you abandoned that civility quite quickly - and for what? If you're as well read as your references imply, surely you can appreciate an argument which casts aspersion on the "lone hero" ideation of historical progress.

achillesheels 7y ago
Such an aspersion is anti-heroic and trite, which is an abomination to the very civilization you stand upon and has bequeathed the motivations for computing power altogether. Denouncing sophomoric philistinism is an incredibly appropriate act of high culture.

tekkk 7y ago

I see the reasonings of both of your points. To me it seems in the old days, there was a lot of hindrance in reaching your potential therefore for those few to become geniuses, you truly had to be exceptional and since there was so few, your impact would be tremendous. Now compare that to the modern day, where I'd say a lot higher percentage of people are hitting their potential as a genius. Therefore, a lot more people are coming up with new novel things, but since a lot of the easy major milestones in sciences have been attained, the impact of those single individual geniuses is much smaller. Modern age Newton could be just a very good AI researcher from England. It's just impossible for humans to have devolved so much that the genius of the previous generations would be so much different than we have today.

dang 7y ago

> You’re completely deluded [...] Shame on you and your ilk Crossing into personal attack isn't allowed, and we ban accounts the keep doing it, so can you please not do it here? If you'd take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see how the intended spirit of this site points in the opposite direction. Note that it doesn't depend on how right you are.

achillesheels 7y ago
I was personally offended, I apologize for my rhetoric.