5 ms·

Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam?

chasd00 4y ago
> Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam? they're working on getting you to click on an ad
- rllearneratwork 4y ago
  yeah. But some are apparently working at Livermore Nat. Lab still. Also, I feel like there is a bunch at SpaceX, Tesla, NASA, DeepMind and OpenAI
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Yeah, I think we have a lot of sleeper geniuses out there I'm a pretty smart dude. I'm no big deal on HackerNews or in Silicon Valley, but I look easily 10x as smart as most of the normal people I come across in the real world. And I regularly come across people so much smarter than me, they have to explain things to me the same way I talk to a toddler I'll bet a lot of geniuses are congregating in cool orgs like those where they can make a real difference in the world.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- euix 4y ago
  Hear hear!
- phtrivier 4y ago
  They can't exist any more for structural reason. This generation was classically educated, without TV or social media in their childhood. They spent the time we're wasting on HN reading _books_ and following the discipline their elders learned in WWI. They had plenty of occasions to tinker. I claim the brains of those generation was structurally different from ours, and we're talking about the best minds of this generation. It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads" - the reality is that, no, we webshits are not the "best minds".
  - antonfire 4y ago
    > It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads". "The last generation was better because they read _books_ and had _discipline_ and didn't waste their time on frivolous garbage" is also a trope.
    - chrisbaker98 4y ago
      Doesn't mean it's wrong.
      - fastball 4y ago
        It probably is though. Sure, they didn't have as much distractions, but they also didn't have the sum total of the world's knowledge at their fingertips in the same way we do today. People having been saying "this next generation is inferior to the last one" since the ancient Greeks. If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario.
        phtrivier 4y ago
        > If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario. Been on Twitter, Facebook, or Hacker News lately ? More seriously, I really fear this kind of stuff is, to some extend, new : https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/ https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones... (Although, maybe it's comparable to the "opium epidemics" of the 1800s ?) Ironically, I should stop having this kind of conversation... On social network.
  - govg 4y ago
    I mean, sure. But at the same time they were constrained by the tools of their time, had no internet for instant information access and spread, and scientific collaboration has never been at a higher level than it is now. There's no reason to believe that people who grow up with instant lookup and massive computational power will somehow be less capable than people whose only tools were pen and pencil. What is possible now couldn't even be dreamed of back then.
- adventured 4y ago
  > they're working on getting you to click on an ad They're not, and there's zero evidence to back that frequently floated premise up. That's a particularly laughable myth created by those same industry people to feel better about their terrible life choices. If you can't do something meaningful, at least you can pretend to be a genius doing nothing meaningful. It turns out that both things are false, they're not brilliant and they're wasting their lives. No, the brilliant people are working at TSMC, Intel, AMD, nVidia, Applied Materials, ASML, Illumina, ARM, TI, et al. They're working on CRISPR. They're working on mRNA vaccines. They're working on stem cells. They're trying to cure HIV just as the same type of people cured hepatitis C. They're working for Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech, Roche, Novartis, Amgen, Regeneron, Sanofi, Gilead, Merck, Glaxo, et al. They're trying to figure out how to roll back or cure Alzheimer's. They're dedicating a lifetime of work into exploring the human genome, so that future generations have a much better, much more useful map. They're working on robotics at Intuitive Surgical or Boston Dynamics. They're working on self-driving tech. They've been building out the massive, global cloud infrastructure. They're at NASA, or SpaceX, or ESA and they're doing the work to get us a base on the moon or to Mars. They just got done building rockets that can land upright. They're building a massive, extraordinary, global satellite system in Starlink. They're working on fusion. And so on and so forth. Ad clicks? Yeah right. They're not even in the room.
  - antipotoad 4y ago
    Thank you for this, sincerely.
  - whiplash451 4y ago
    Wow. That was long overdue. Thank you!
  - lifeformed 4y ago
    A lot of wonderful people are doing that, but do those jobs pay anywhere close to the ad companies? Surely there's a lot of bright minds lost to the allure of money.
    - illirik 4y ago
rllearneratwork 4y ago
off-topic, but related. Ulam's "Adventures of a Mathematician" is an excellent and very inspiring book.
bioemerl 4y ago
Hiding behind the names of institutions that got smart enough to not give the peons fame or recognition.
StevenNunez 4y ago
Elon Musk ::ducks::
- vzcx 4y ago
  lmao, brilliant scientist Elon Musk is NOT. A closer comparison would be general Groves, someone who can get the team and resources in place so the work can get done.
  - Mistletoe 4y ago
    He's actually the complete opposite based on reports of what it is like to work with him at SpaceX and Tesla in recent years. Employees describe having to avoid him so he doesn't meddle in the projects and screw them up. Maybe he was like you describe long ago but something...happened.

chasd00 4y ago

> Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam? they're working on getting you to click on an ad

rllearneratwork 4y ago
yeah. But some are apparently working at Livermore Nat. Lab still. Also, I feel like there is a bunch at SpaceX, Tesla, NASA, DeepMind and OpenAI
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Yeah, I think we have a lot of sleeper geniuses out there I'm a pretty smart dude. I'm no big deal on HackerNews or in Silicon Valley, but I look easily 10x as smart as most of the normal people I come across in the real world. And I regularly come across people so much smarter than me, they have to explain things to me the same way I talk to a toddler I'll bet a lot of geniuses are congregating in cool orgs like those where they can make a real difference in the world.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
euix 4y ago
Hear hear!
phtrivier 4y ago
They can't exist any more for structural reason. This generation was classically educated, without TV or social media in their childhood. They spent the time we're wasting on HN reading _books_ and following the discipline their elders learned in WWI. They had plenty of occasions to tinker. I claim the brains of those generation was structurally different from ours, and we're talking about the best minds of this generation. It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads" - the reality is that, no, we webshits are not the "best minds".
- antonfire 4y ago
  > It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads". "The last generation was better because they read _books_ and had _discipline_ and didn't waste their time on frivolous garbage" is also a trope.
  - chrisbaker98 4y ago
    Doesn't mean it's wrong.
    - fastball 4y ago
      It probably is though. Sure, they didn't have as much distractions, but they also didn't have the sum total of the world's knowledge at their fingertips in the same way we do today. People having been saying "this next generation is inferior to the last one" since the ancient Greeks. If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario.
      - phtrivier 4y ago
        > If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario. Been on Twitter, Facebook, or Hacker News lately ? More seriously, I really fear this kind of stuff is, to some extend, new : https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/ https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones... (Although, maybe it's comparable to the "opium epidemics" of the 1800s ?) Ironically, I should stop having this kind of conversation... On social network.
- govg 4y ago
  I mean, sure. But at the same time they were constrained by the tools of their time, had no internet for instant information access and spread, and scientific collaboration has never been at a higher level than it is now. There's no reason to believe that people who grow up with instant lookup and massive computational power will somehow be less capable than people whose only tools were pen and pencil. What is possible now couldn't even be dreamed of back then.
adventured 4y ago
> they're working on getting you to click on an ad They're not, and there's zero evidence to back that frequently floated premise up. That's a particularly laughable myth created by those same industry people to feel better about their terrible life choices. If you can't do something meaningful, at least you can pretend to be a genius doing nothing meaningful. It turns out that both things are false, they're not brilliant and they're wasting their lives. No, the brilliant people are working at TSMC, Intel, AMD, nVidia, Applied Materials, ASML, Illumina, ARM, TI, et al. They're working on CRISPR. They're working on mRNA vaccines. They're working on stem cells. They're trying to cure HIV just as the same type of people cured hepatitis C. They're working for Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech, Roche, Novartis, Amgen, Regeneron, Sanofi, Gilead, Merck, Glaxo, et al. They're trying to figure out how to roll back or cure Alzheimer's. They're dedicating a lifetime of work into exploring the human genome, so that future generations have a much better, much more useful map. They're working on robotics at Intuitive Surgical or Boston Dynamics. They're working on self-driving tech. They've been building out the massive, global cloud infrastructure. They're at NASA, or SpaceX, or ESA and they're doing the work to get us a base on the moon or to Mars. They just got done building rockets that can land upright. They're building a massive, extraordinary, global satellite system in Starlink. They're working on fusion. And so on and so forth. Ad clicks? Yeah right. They're not even in the room.
- antipotoad 4y ago
  Thank you for this, sincerely.
- whiplash451 4y ago
  Wow. That was long overdue. Thank you!
- lifeformed 4y ago
  A lot of wonderful people are doing that, but do those jobs pay anywhere close to the ad companies? Surely there's a lot of bright minds lost to the allure of money.
  - illirik 4y ago

rllearneratwork 4y ago

off-topic, but related. Ulam's "Adventures of a Mathematician" is an excellent and very inspiring book.

bioemerl 4y ago

Hiding behind the names of institutions that got smart enough to not give the peons fame or recognition.

StevenNunez 4y ago

Elon Musk ::ducks::

vzcx 4y ago
lmao, brilliant scientist Elon Musk is NOT. A closer comparison would be general Groves, someone who can get the team and resources in place so the work can get done.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  He's actually the complete opposite based on reports of what it is like to work with him at SpaceX and Tesla in recent years. Employees describe having to avoid him so he doesn't meddle in the projects and screw them up. Maybe he was like you describe long ago but something...happened.