The super elite hypothesis is interesting, in that it lacks a plausible mechanism. By and large you would expect that educating and equipping more people would

The super elite hypothesis is interesting, in that it lacks a plausible mechanism. By and large you would expect that educating and equipping more people would produce more progress in any field, up until there is more coordination tax than benefit from adding more people. Is it possible that the sciences and other fields have exceptionally high coordination taxes? Or is it likely that we’ve structured them such that only a small number of slots exist for people to move the needle. The latter seems eminently true given the finite number of conference slots and the former seems true given the the need to convince more people of a given direction. If such a dynamic exists than the advent of communication technologies may actually hamper forward progress due to elimination of smaller research networks.