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Looks like a case of an attention-grabbing headline not written by the article author. The book review itself seems to argue that the idea of polymathy can no

Looks like a case of an attention-grabbing headline not written by the article author. The book review itself seems to argue that the idea of polymathy can no longer be applied at all today.

ginko 6y ago
I was about to say that. If a genuine polymath were 1 in a million we should have 7000 von Neumanns right now.
- danharaj 6y ago
  Maybe they're all working in sweatshops or mining cobalt.
- tomrod 6y ago
  For the past few decades, we've absorbed them into adtech.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Only in HN is the notion that the "geniuses" of this generation are working for the FAANGs, sure, some may be, but I am willing to bet 99% of them are not.
    - monkeydreams 6y ago
      I think it might be an allusion to the Jeff Hammerbacher quote "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads".
      - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
        Or optimizing microseconds out of high-frequency trading algorithms. Quote James Tobin (1984), > I [suspect] that we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I suspect that the immense power of the computer is being harnessed to this 'paper economy', not to do the same transactions more economically but to balloon the quantity and variety of financial exchanges.
      - sunstone 6y ago
        In my twenty five years of browsing the web I've clicked on two ads. The second one very recently. I guess it's a tough job.
    - derefr 6y ago
      How do you figure? Intelligence / multi-talented-ness, and interest in changing the world, aren't necessarily correlated. Most "geniuses" still probably just want to get reasonable wealthy and retire to pursue their hobbies. (They just have more interesting hobbies than the average person.) And, for people who weren't born to wealth, the FAANGs are a good place to get one's f-you money from, without necessarily needing to dedicate the entirety of one's motivational resources to solving work-related problems.
      - solresol 6y ago
        Because "geniuses" may well want to get reasonably wealthy and retire, but might be fundamentally unable to adapt to working for a large corporation.
        cambalache 6y ago
        Correct, on top of that it is a highly presumptuous and naive take. I originally wrote 99% of "geniuses" will never work for a FAANG (I was being generous). First of all there are dozens upon dozens of academic fields besides CS. Most of the people in the top of those fields (think people in medicine,chemistry, math, economics, history, finance and a long etc) will work with Ads. Then you have plenty of geniuses in non-academic fields (guys like Magnus Carlsen or Caruana), poets, writers, musicians, sportsmen, again none of them thinking about how making you click an add. Then you have lots of smart people in CS, but not in the US/Canada etc, plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians and on and on etc who for many reasons wont work for a western company. Then you have also plenty of smart american CS graduates who dont want to work for a FAANG, or will work for a very short time and leave for greener pastures from their POV. All in all, assuming 1% of this generation "geniuses" work in SV is an extremely generous supposition.
        derefr 6y ago
        Not going to rebut your entire comment—some of the assumptions are just that, assumptions about what the word “geniuses” would be implicitly taken to mean in context—but some specific points: > people in the top of those fields ... math ... history I don’t know any way for a “genius” mathematician or historian to get rich pursuing their own career. Some of the other examples, sure, but not these ones. It can actually make more sense for people in certain academic disciplines to take the underlying g factor that allowed them to become so good at their discipline, port it over to becoming good at programming, and then make the most money they can doing programming. (It’d be even better to port their intelligence over to an attempt at being an investment banker; but that field has far higher barriers to entry.) > plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians ... wont work for a western company I think the presumption is that they’d work for China’s/India’s/Russia’s equivalent of FAANG. I.e., take the highest-paying “cog in the machine” programming jobs they could in their own markets. > poets, writers, musicians Many of the “geniuses” of these fields certainly do end up making their money in advertising, if not “ad tech” precisely. If a songwriter/musician gets wealthy-enough to retire, most of the time, it isn’t usually from royalties from a hit single, or even from royalties from creating the soundtrack to a popular movie. It’s almost always from big-contract (but work-for-hire) advertising jingles. Artists (or, moreover, illustrators and visual designers)? Again, usually the biggest contracts are with advertisers—or with product-design consultancies who get paid to increase products’ marketability through a visual refresh.
    - jimbob45 6y ago
      I think his comment was implying that such individuals would have naturally gravitated toward the highest-paying jobs and thus adtech. The subtext being that we waste the brightest minds of our generation on trivial and useless jobs.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        But we dont that is my point. HN wants to believe that. It is not true.
  - huonpine 6y ago
    Or they just don't want to be Oppenheimer
- glitchc 6y ago
  You know we might just have 7000 von Neumanns among us, but may be unable to recognize them. The vast majority of 7+ billion people on the planet are unknown to everyone some except family and a couple of friends. The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - papeda 6y ago
    > The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant. Eh, it depends. It's not true that popular ==> good, but I think there are plenty of areas where it's more true than it used to be that good ==> popular. For example, many more people now have a much better chance to get an education and demonstrate aptitude in some area. And better communication means talent is better matched to opportunity. That's not to say we're really optimizing human potential. That doesn't even seem close to true. But I think we're doing a lot better than we were even 50 years ago.

Looks like a case of an attention-grabbing headline not written by the article author. The book review itself seems to argue that the idea of polymathy can no longer be applied at all today.

ginko 6y ago

I was about to say that. If a genuine polymath were 1 in a million we should have 7000 von Neumanns right now.

danharaj 6y ago
Maybe they're all working in sweatshops or mining cobalt.
tomrod 6y ago
For the past few decades, we've absorbed them into adtech.
- cambalache 6y ago
  Only in HN is the notion that the "geniuses" of this generation are working for the FAANGs, sure, some may be, but I am willing to bet 99% of them are not.
  - monkeydreams 6y ago
    I think it might be an allusion to the Jeff Hammerbacher quote "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads".
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      Or optimizing microseconds out of high-frequency trading algorithms. Quote James Tobin (1984), > I [suspect] that we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I suspect that the immense power of the computer is being harnessed to this 'paper economy', not to do the same transactions more economically but to balloon the quantity and variety of financial exchanges.
    - sunstone 6y ago
      In my twenty five years of browsing the web I've clicked on two ads. The second one very recently. I guess it's a tough job.
  - derefr 6y ago
    How do you figure? Intelligence / multi-talented-ness, and interest in changing the world, aren't necessarily correlated. Most "geniuses" still probably just want to get reasonable wealthy and retire to pursue their hobbies. (They just have more interesting hobbies than the average person.) And, for people who weren't born to wealth, the FAANGs are a good place to get one's f-you money from, without necessarily needing to dedicate the entirety of one's motivational resources to solving work-related problems.
    - solresol 6y ago
      Because "geniuses" may well want to get reasonably wealthy and retire, but might be fundamentally unable to adapt to working for a large corporation.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        Correct, on top of that it is a highly presumptuous and naive take. I originally wrote 99% of "geniuses" will never work for a FAANG (I was being generous). First of all there are dozens upon dozens of academic fields besides CS. Most of the people in the top of those fields (think people in medicine,chemistry, math, economics, history, finance and a long etc) will work with Ads. Then you have plenty of geniuses in non-academic fields (guys like Magnus Carlsen or Caruana), poets, writers, musicians, sportsmen, again none of them thinking about how making you click an add. Then you have lots of smart people in CS, but not in the US/Canada etc, plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians and on and on etc who for many reasons wont work for a western company. Then you have also plenty of smart american CS graduates who dont want to work for a FAANG, or will work for a very short time and leave for greener pastures from their POV. All in all, assuming 1% of this generation "geniuses" work in SV is an extremely generous supposition.
        derefr 6y ago
        Not going to rebut your entire comment—some of the assumptions are just that, assumptions about what the word “geniuses” would be implicitly taken to mean in context—but some specific points: > people in the top of those fields ... math ... history I don’t know any way for a “genius” mathematician or historian to get rich pursuing their own career. Some of the other examples, sure, but not these ones. It can actually make more sense for people in certain academic disciplines to take the underlying g factor that allowed them to become so good at their discipline, port it over to becoming good at programming, and then make the most money they can doing programming. (It’d be even better to port their intelligence over to an attempt at being an investment banker; but that field has far higher barriers to entry.) > plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians ... wont work for a western company I think the presumption is that they’d work for China’s/India’s/Russia’s equivalent of FAANG. I.e., take the highest-paying “cog in the machine” programming jobs they could in their own markets. > poets, writers, musicians Many of the “geniuses” of these fields certainly do end up making their money in advertising, if not “ad tech” precisely. If a songwriter/musician gets wealthy-enough to retire, most of the time, it isn’t usually from royalties from a hit single, or even from royalties from creating the soundtrack to a popular movie. It’s almost always from big-contract (but work-for-hire) advertising jingles. Artists (or, moreover, illustrators and visual designers)? Again, usually the biggest contracts are with advertisers—or with product-design consultancies who get paid to increase products’ marketability through a visual refresh.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    I think his comment was implying that such individuals would have naturally gravitated toward the highest-paying jobs and thus adtech. The subtext being that we waste the brightest minds of our generation on trivial and useless jobs.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      But we dont that is my point. HN wants to believe that. It is not true.
- huonpine 6y ago
  Or they just don't want to be Oppenheimer
glitchc 6y ago
You know we might just have 7000 von Neumanns among us, but may be unable to recognize them. The vast majority of 7+ billion people on the planet are unknown to everyone some except family and a couple of friends. The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- papeda 6y ago
  > The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant. Eh, it depends. It's not true that popular ==> good, but I think there are plenty of areas where it's more true than it used to be that good ==> popular. For example, many more people now have a much better chance to get an education and demonstrate aptitude in some area. And better communication means talent is better matched to opportunity. That's not to say we're really optimizing human potential. That doesn't even seem close to true. But I think we're doing a lot better than we were even 50 years ago.