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I think John von Neumann was a genius but I also think that at the time there was also confluence of great minds across mathematics and science in general which

by Guthur 6y ago

I think John von Neumann was a genius but I also think that at the time there was also confluence of great minds across mathematics and science in general which likely feed into and accelerated the advancements. Maybe it's still happening but we no longer hear the names, though potentially it was also just one of those alignments of possibilities.

Frost1x 6y ago
I often wonder if there are points in human understanding where there is an opportunistic amount of existing knowledge, current exploration of knowledge, and sets of ideas floating around that lead to these sorts of surges of shared ideas and principles in disciplines. While it's no doubt from accounts Nuemann was brilliant, I've observed other brilliant people who I feel could be ground breaking minds given the right set of circumstances. A bit of nature vs nurture, environment vs natural talent. I feel as though humanity often has the Neumann, Einstein, Euler, Ramanujan, etc. but need the right set of circumstances to really shine through. They could just be outliers but when you see a collection of these sort of minds during a time period, I can't help but think there is an environmental factor enabling it. Even people as brilliant as Newton had some equivilance in Leibnez with the invention of calculus (Newton was clearly above and beyond though).
- koolba 6y ago
  Him and Einstein also did not have to contend with getting jobs optimizing ad placement. Necessity is the mother of invention. But abstract thought requires time to focus on things outside the mundane.
  - tome 6y ago
    Einstein had a job as a patent clerk!
sellyme 6y ago
> Maybe it's still happening but we no longer hear the names We do hear the names, it's just difficult to recognise which ones are going to be the names that echo for generations. I would be completely unsurprised if articles like this were written about Tao in 50 years' time.
rowanG077 6y ago
It's also possible there no longer is an environment that supports these kind of people.
esjeon 6y ago
I fully agree with this. While he was definitely a smart person, he was also lucky to be a polymath during the time of big transition for math and science. Knowing multiple fields, polymaths have a big advantage in systemizing a new school of thoughts. Being a grand master of one school will be less advantageous for this specific goal. Also, I think there are much more polymaths during our time than 1900s, thanks to the internet. A single person can consume much more information than before. This will make it difficult to make a single person get all the spotlight. I believe we have a lot of geniuses in the back stage that the public simply don’t know exist.

by Guthur 6y ago

Frost1x 6y ago

I often wonder if there are points in human understanding where there is an opportunistic amount of existing knowledge, current exploration of knowledge, and sets of ideas floating around that lead to these sorts of surges of shared ideas and principles in disciplines. While it's no doubt from accounts Nuemann was brilliant, I've observed other brilliant people who I feel could be ground breaking minds given the right set of circumstances. A bit of nature vs nurture, environment vs natural talent. I feel as though humanity often has the Neumann, Einstein, Euler, Ramanujan, etc. but need the right set of circumstances to really shine through. They could just be outliers but when you see a collection of these sort of minds during a time period, I can't help but think there is an environmental factor enabling it. Even people as brilliant as Newton had some equivilance in Leibnez with the invention of calculus (Newton was clearly above and beyond though).

koolba 6y ago
Him and Einstein also did not have to contend with getting jobs optimizing ad placement. Necessity is the mother of invention. But abstract thought requires time to focus on things outside the mundane.
- tome 6y ago
  Einstein had a job as a patent clerk!

sellyme 6y ago

> Maybe it's still happening but we no longer hear the names We do hear the names, it's just difficult to recognise which ones are going to be the names that echo for generations. I would be completely unsurprised if articles like this were written about Tao in 50 years' time.

rowanG077 6y ago

It's also possible there no longer is an environment that supports these kind of people.

esjeon 6y ago

I fully agree with this. While he was definitely a smart person, he was also lucky to be a polymath during the time of big transition for math and science. Knowing multiple fields, polymaths have a big advantage in systemizing a new school of thoughts. Being a grand master of one school will be less advantageous for this specific goal. Also, I think there are much more polymaths during our time than 1900s, thanks to the internet. A single person can consume much more information than before. This will make it difficult to make a single person get all the spotlight. I believe we have a lot of geniuses in the back stage that the public simply don’t know exist.