I find your statements hard to accept at face value. Does a "polymath" have infinite time to develop excellence in every conceivable discipline? How good was Benjamin Franklin at, say, composing sonatas?
I’m not sure if you are being ironic, but Benjamin Franklin was a pretty good composer: https://iml.esm.rochester.edu/polyphonic-archive/article/ben...
Re:Meta and Google are cutting staff
by Slow_Hand on Thursday September 22, 2022 @03:34AM
(#32935799)
As a career musician I’ve never heard a piece of Benjamin Franklin’s music in my life. I didn’t even know that he composed until this comment. The link you provided has no examples of his music to listen to or to read.
Without any examples of his work it’s hard to believe that they are of any consequence. I don’t think anyone can just write a piece of music, but you don’t present a strong case that anything he wrote is even remotely worthwhile.
Hell, Bruce Willis has a band that’s released records. I just don’t see any reason to think they’re worth listening to over anyone else.
I'm not being ironic. Your article says he composed two pieces and his instrument skills were "modest". I suspect most people are modest at the hobbies they dabble in. That doesn't make a "universal genius".
And even today such people exist. Encountering them is often quite an experience. Seeing them being better than you at almost everything is on one hand really nice, on the other hand it makes you wonder what you did wrong. Such folks are usually quite rare though, 1 in a thousand types of people. But I'd imagine Google should be full of them. Or maybe it isn't, idk, given GP.