Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

Re:Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens by wisty on Thursday December 22, 2011 @12:39AM (#3380554)

The whole "great men made history" meme is kind of discredited. It's true to a point, and it's certainly a lot more interesting (therefore easy to remember) if you say that WWII was Hitler vs. Churchill and Stalin, but it's not entirely correct.

In science, it might just be 1% of the top 1% who make the big breakthroughs - how many times did one guy make more than one really huge breakthrough? I can think of one big fuzzy-haired counterexample.

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Re:Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens by eru on Thursday December 22, 2011 @02:59AM (#3380822)

Also you often have the same thing invented multiple times independently, at the same time or in different times.

So if by some accident we missed a genius, she would probably be replaced by a bunch of merely clever people.

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Re:Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens by rbanffy on Thursday December 22, 2011 @07:31AM (#3381324)

I wouldn't use "great", just "weird enough not to be infected by the mind virus du jour".

We depend on weird people.

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