One Einstein Is Worth a Legion of PhD Drones

Re:One Einstein Is Worth a Legion of PhD Drones by chrisco255 on Friday November 19, 2021 @06:50PM (#29284144)

I think Einstein had a particularly unique way of thinking. In fact, he discovered relativity by doing thought experiments, purely by combining his intuitive understanding of light with imagination. Such experiments can only really be conceived in a singular mind.

Individuals matter.

Maybe we'd have had to go another few hundred years before someone else conceived it. While we can't prove a negative (we don't know what the alternate Einstein-less universe turns out like), certainly there have been examples of technology that has been forgotten or lost and it can take another thousand years before it is rediscovered.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:One Einstein Is Worth a Legion of PhD Drones by bitexploder on Friday November 19, 2021 @07:03PM (#29284266)

Except we were on the verge of discovering it even then through multiple people. So we can be pretty sure most of it would have come to pass within a generation. Agree he had a unique way of thinking but there is a lot that is over attributed to him and exceptionalism in general. Still a great thinker of his generation, but there were many such individuals.

[ Parent | on HN ]