2 ms·

Indeed, and just in population terms the scale isn't even comparable anymore. Consider the 1920s, 1930s etc when academia produced famous luminaries like e.g.

Indeed, and just in population terms the scale isn't even comparable anymore. Consider the 1920s, 1930s etc when academia produced famous luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger or etc. etc. etc. The population of the world was 1/4 of what it is now -- but even more so the world of academia was closed to probably 99% of that world population ... if you lived outside Europe or North America ... forget it. If you were a woman? Nope. Not from a northern European ethnic background? Not upper class? Also forget it. So in reality the pool of possible candidates was very small who could rise up through this "meritocracy." It was a very defined small fish tank. Easy to look into the tank and see the biggest fishes.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
Note how you have no trouble enumerating famous academics from pre-1960s. Shouldn’t we have much more such famous people, if your theory is true that institutional obstacles kept a lot of geniuses out? What are the „luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger“ of today? There should be many more! The progress of science should speed up, the number of groundbreaking papers should grow. Yet the opposite is true [0]. Could it instead be that progress in science is driven by a few geniuses, and 95% of academia nowadays is just a mechanism of turning grants into (often fraudulent) papers [1], suffocating the institution of university as a byproduct? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x [1] https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  You either didn't bother reading what I wrote, or you're just interested in hearing yourself speak or both.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    It seems to me you didn’t grasp what I wrote, which is unsurprising.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      keep on with the fantasy, UberMensch. It's pretty funny.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

Note how you have no trouble enumerating famous academics from pre-1960s. Shouldn’t we have much more such famous people, if your theory is true that institutional obstacles kept a lot of geniuses out? What are the „luminaries like e.g. Bertrand Russell or Tolkien or Wittgenstein or Gödel or Whitehead or Heidegger“ of today? There should be many more! The progress of science should speed up, the number of groundbreaking papers should grow. Yet the opposite is true [0]. Could it instead be that progress in science is driven by a few geniuses, and 95% of academia nowadays is just a mechanism of turning grants into (often fraudulent) papers [1], suffocating the institution of university as a byproduct? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x [1] https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=JQmc17eb0v8oHRAH

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
You either didn't bother reading what I wrote, or you're just interested in hearing yourself speak or both.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  It seems to me you didn’t grasp what I wrote, which is unsurprising.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    keep on with the fantasy, UberMensch. It's pretty funny.