Totally agree. There's no way it's early enough to say whether or not something has triggered a golden age today - we need the benefit of historical perspective

Totally agree. There's no way it's early enough to say whether or not something has triggered a golden age today - we need the benefit of historical perspective for that. Other assumed facts: 1) we ever started "making Einsteins" in the first place 2) Assuming (1), we actually stopped Lots of other things are possible: - there are people of incredible genius out there making profound discoveries the author is unaware of - there are people of incredible genius out there making profound discoveries the impact of which has yet to be generally felt or appreciated - So much is being published now and some fields are so niche and complex that it takes time for the community to process and undestand work that is done - People are empowered by better tools etc to tackle bigger things which take longer and require more collaboration (eg the langlands project) - geniuses aren't made at all, but instead just come along every now and again at random. You can't extrapolate from a stochastic process involving very rare events and make any kind of determination whatsoever about trends without having that determination basically just reflect your assumptions.