There are modern day geniuses, they just look different to the big name scientists he is lamenting. I would argue Fabrice Bellard should be in contention, DJ B

There are modern day geniuses, they just look different to the big name scientists he is lamenting. I would argue Fabrice Bellard should be in contention, DJ Bernstein, etc. There are geniuses all around us and that is what has changed. It's by no means normalized but extraordinary doesn't seem as extraordinary when the world is literally powered by tens of thousands of extraordinary people doing awesome things day in and day out. Those are just two public examples I can think of, imagine how many genius level brains are working at Intel, AMD, TSMC and ASML that make the physics of what we consider "normal" tick.