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I actually disagree. It’s kind of a power law distribution thing where 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs. We should absolutely opti

I actually disagree. It’s kind of a power law distribution thing where 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs. We should absolutely optimize for geniuses.

vsareto 5y ago
That seems worthless if they find their own way to knowledge outside of the schools. I think the K12 system destroying potential geniuses is a seriously overblown concern, especially in the internet age.
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  Yes. The "geniuses" will be alright.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  Disagree, but I'm concerned about the geniuses as a group of neglected children, not whether or not we're extracting maximum financial/scientific benefit from them. I always sigh whenever the discussion treats these kids/young people as tools. The current system is terrible for genius kids' emotional and social development, and in some important ways it hobbles them. (Particularly when it comes to encouraging them to develop resiliency, accept that sometimes they need help, and develop their own sense of self-worth rather than derive it from the accolades of the adults around them).
Natsu 5y ago
I feel like things are going to diverge further, between people floating around through the system and learning almost nothing vs. those self-learners who ignore that and learn on their own, not letting anything hold them back.
DubiousPusher 5y ago
> 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs That is maybe the single most dubious statistic I've seen thrown out so offhandedly in my entire time on HN.
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  I’m talking specifically about stuff like the discovery of gravity or electricity, not the very important and significant inventions that aren’t really a step change. The number of people who make these discoveries may even be hundreds or thousands but that is vanishingly small on a planet of billions of people.
  - DubiousPusher 5y ago
    Most academic discoveries come from the same kind of hand-me-down process as practical inventions. Newton's tutor was the one who encouraged him toward studying proto-calculus. He even wrote down the fundamental theorem of calculus himself once but not realizing its importance never publicized it.
    - xNeil 5y ago
      Interesting! I'd appreciate any sources though.
      - mattkrause 5y ago
        Here's a nice example of the "contingency" of scientific success by Bol, de Vaan, and van de Rijt (2018). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1719557115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1719557115 Grants are reviewed and ranked by a panel of experts. While they often agree in the broad strokes, their scores also have random or subjective components: different reviewers might prefer different approaches; even the same reviewer might give slightly different scores if they re-reviewed a grant (e.g., due to their mood). However, someone eventually does need to set a payline, or threshold for funding. As a result, you'd expect people who submitted the worst funded grants and the best unfunded grants, which have very similar scores, to have similar career trajectories. After all, their abilities--as measured by grant scores--are virtually indistinguishable. However, the winners go on to win nearly twice as much funding in the next eight years. This presumably reflects the fact that funding begets more funding (you can collect more and better data for subsequent work) and prestige begets more prestige (you've now got another thing to put in the "awards" category).
peepop6 5y ago
Sounds like a good way to create even more cults of personality and egotistical assholes who can't work in a team. Breakthroughs aren't made by lone geniuses anymore. We just have that superhero fetish eg. picture of black hole where credit was practically given to that one woman in the picture.
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  Not everyone who dislikes working in a team is an "egotistical asshole". Some of us are just neurodivergent and have social anxiety.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  Breakthroughs were rarely made by lone geniuses even before. Sure, there are some, but even Edison had a huge lab full of people doing the work. Bell labs was extremely successful (at least on the innovation front) not due to lone geniuses, but due to a large collection of very smart people all collaborating together.
mattkrause 5y ago
I really doubt that. Being smart certainly helps, but you also need the right opportunities, environment, and colleagues to “produce” science. These all feed back onto each other in complicated ways: funding gives you time and space to work on tough problems, which attracts talented colleagues, who can make you yourself smarter and thus able to attract more funding and more colleagues…and so on. This works the other way too: a funding squeeze limits what you can work on (if anything), etc. I can certainly believe that it looks like a power law, but I doubt “intrinsic ability”, insofar as that’s even a thing, has a similar distribution.

I actually disagree. It’s kind of a power law distribution thing where 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs. We should absolutely optimize for geniuses.

vsareto 5y ago

That seems worthless if they find their own way to knowledge outside of the schools. I think the K12 system destroying potential geniuses is a seriously overblown concern, especially in the internet age.

DubiousPusher 5y ago
Yes. The "geniuses" will be alright.
Mezzie 5y ago
Disagree, but I'm concerned about the geniuses as a group of neglected children, not whether or not we're extracting maximum financial/scientific benefit from them. I always sigh whenever the discussion treats these kids/young people as tools. The current system is terrible for genius kids' emotional and social development, and in some important ways it hobbles them. (Particularly when it comes to encouraging them to develop resiliency, accept that sometimes they need help, and develop their own sense of self-worth rather than derive it from the accolades of the adults around them).

Natsu 5y ago

I feel like things are going to diverge further, between people floating around through the system and learning almost nothing vs. those self-learners who ignore that and learn on their own, not letting anything hold them back.

DubiousPusher 5y ago

> 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs That is maybe the single most dubious statistic I've seen thrown out so offhandedly in my entire time on HN.

throwaway1777 5y ago
I’m talking specifically about stuff like the discovery of gravity or electricity, not the very important and significant inventions that aren’t really a step change. The number of people who make these discoveries may even be hundreds or thousands but that is vanishingly small on a planet of billions of people.
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  Most academic discoveries come from the same kind of hand-me-down process as practical inventions. Newton's tutor was the one who encouraged him toward studying proto-calculus. He even wrote down the fundamental theorem of calculus himself once but not realizing its importance never publicized it.
  - xNeil 5y ago
    Interesting! I'd appreciate any sources though.
    - mattkrause 5y ago
      Here's a nice example of the "contingency" of scientific success by Bol, de Vaan, and van de Rijt (2018). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1719557115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1719557115 Grants are reviewed and ranked by a panel of experts. While they often agree in the broad strokes, their scores also have random or subjective components: different reviewers might prefer different approaches; even the same reviewer might give slightly different scores if they re-reviewed a grant (e.g., due to their mood). However, someone eventually does need to set a payline, or threshold for funding. As a result, you'd expect people who submitted the worst funded grants and the best unfunded grants, which have very similar scores, to have similar career trajectories. After all, their abilities--as measured by grant scores--are virtually indistinguishable. However, the winners go on to win nearly twice as much funding in the next eight years. This presumably reflects the fact that funding begets more funding (you can collect more and better data for subsequent work) and prestige begets more prestige (you've now got another thing to put in the "awards" category).

peepop6 5y ago

Sounds like a good way to create even more cults of personality and egotistical assholes who can't work in a team. Breakthroughs aren't made by lone geniuses anymore. We just have that superhero fetish eg. picture of black hole where credit was practically given to that one woman in the picture.

nyuszika7h 5y ago
Not everyone who dislikes working in a team is an "egotistical asshole". Some of us are just neurodivergent and have social anxiety.
compiler-guy 5y ago
Breakthroughs were rarely made by lone geniuses even before. Sure, there are some, but even Edison had a huge lab full of people doing the work. Bell labs was extremely successful (at least on the innovation front) not due to lone geniuses, but due to a large collection of very smart people all collaborating together.

mattkrause 5y ago

I really doubt that. Being smart certainly helps, but you also need the right opportunities, environment, and colleagues to “produce” science. These all feed back onto each other in complicated ways: funding gives you time and space to work on tough problems, which attracts talented colleagues, who can make you yourself smarter and thus able to attract more funding and more colleagues…and so on. This works the other way too: a funding squeeze limits what you can work on (if anything), etc. I can certainly believe that it looks like a power law, but I doubt “intrinsic ability”, insofar as that’s even a thing, has a similar distribution.