Slashdot Mirror
The End of Individual Genius?
An anonymous reader writes "A recent study suggests the downfall of individual researchers, who are being rapidly replaced by enormous research groups. Quoting: '... in recent decades — especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 — the trend has been to create massive institutions that foster more collaboration and garner big chunks of funding. And it is harder now to achieve scientific greatness. A study of Nobel Prize winners in 2005 found that the accumulation of knowledge over time has forced great minds to toil longer before they can make breakthroughs. The age at which thinkers produce significant innovations increased about six years during the 20th century.'"
Of course, I didn't RTFA but this is /. so when has that ever stopped anyone from commenting?
Standardized education has extended its tentacles farther and farther. And since it's .. standardized .. you get less chance of anyone standing out. That's kind of against the entire idea of standardized education. Smear all those little minds in to one mildly mediocre band of test results. So now you have brilliant children having to work twice as hard just to be themselves.
Companies (and universities) own your soul. You can't come up with a great idea on your lunch break - it's not your idea. You might get to put your name on the list of people who worked on it but the company/university is going to take the credit and the money.
Take away the precocious youth and the curious adult and you lose the independent researcher.
I won't even get into extended lifespans, artificially extended childhood or a whole host of other, related societal issues.
If it's a proof, I'll bet you 10-to-1 that the real business of proving it was done by a computer, not by a human.
And in fact most discoveries these days are really done by computers, not by humans.
You've not quite got that right. Some problems can only be solved in reasonable time with computers, some hypothesis confirmations can also only be done in reasonable time with computers. That doesn't mean that the algorithms aren't the result of many hours of human work.
The hypothesis in my Ph.D thesis was demonstrated as being valid through use of computers. It took me two years to come up with the underlying principles, and weeks for the computer to crunch its way to the answer. The computer found that I was correct, but only through applying my algorithm.
That's how things work these days.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
To become a genius, you not only have to be smart, but also have to put in a lot of single-focus effort from a young age. And the latter is what has become hard, these days. Too many distractions, from games, TV, Internet, Slashdot, etc.
Remember the Polgar sisters. Intelligence and hard dedicated work made them into chess grandmasters.
Interestingly, I thought I'd look at Wikipedia for her, to see how she is doing now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgar
Quote from her father: "Geniuses are made, not born"
Bert
Not sure why this is modded troll. Einstein's special relativity was simple stuff, sure you could claim that it took an outsider to see it (not a total outsider ofc as he did have a degree in physics and knew about Lorentz transformations), but his important stuff was defiantly not done alone. His work on quantum mechanics was almost always in collaboration with others and while he provided the insight to the physics of general relativity he got a lot of help with the maths. Most of Feynman's works were also collaborations.
It's fair to say that if Einstein had been an outsider, he would never have developed general relativity or EPR specifically because he wouldn't have known enough about the maths needed to support the theories.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!