There is a tendency to modernize or whitewash the views of heroes of the past so they pass muster today.
A generation ago we had far less reticence to categorize and rank people, for better and for worse.
I don’t know enough about Einstein to have a strong opinion here so this is a question more than rebuttal.
Does he normally write in loose metaphor or is he generally straight to the point?
Did he mean valuable things like bread, or only extreme value like electrodynamics? Well he didn’t say “extreme value” and it’s easy to argue the character of productive members of society is above that of pickpockets so that fits.
So IMO a straightforward interpretation would be calling the great masses of humanity dumb rather than extolling the virtues of bakers.
There is really only one way to read his message. Which is a good thing, given that it is intended to be transmitted across 5000 years.
“everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle”
Thus emphasizing the critical nature of bakers.
This thread is a clear indicator that ther are multiple ways to read it. One may seem more valid than others but it's not at all unambiguous.
I'd love to know what the people in 5000 years, if there are any, project onto this. Maybe they'll refer back to this thread and fall into two major camps.
The intelligent few will produce more novel ideas, combined or individually, than the masses.
Whom by definition produce nothing (at least nothing novel).
I'm not saying mine is the right answer, but I definitely think it is an answer.
Also, why do the Nazis have "Socialist" in their moniker if they were fascist? Can a society/political movement be socialist and fascist simultaneously?
> Also, why do the Nazis have "Socialist" in their moniker if they were fascist? Can a society/political movement be socialist and fascist simultaneously?
They're both high authoritarian societies. Nazis were just for murder along geographic and racial boundaries rather than class boundaries.
Sure, nothing really excludes one from the other I think. You can take all of Europe now, give them a superiority complex, and you’d have a fantastic facist socialist republic.
Even though they have a long history of it, Europe still has a ways to go to get back there :P
Cool take tho
China is a communist state but wants and enforces uniform ciltural norms. The most oppressive regimes of today are communist regimes.
Because a fundamental principle underlying fascism is that words don’t have any inherent or collective meaning, beyond how they’re used in the moment by “the strong” to dominate “the weak.” It’s an irrational ideology.
Why did East Germany call itself the "German Democratic Republic"?
The best way to capture that opposition was to get the Socialists on his side so that's what he went for by calling his party Socialist and setting them in direct opposition to the Communists.
(Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich, Mitcham, 1996)
I can't tell if you're being serious
Liberal used to mean libertarian prior to the 60s.
I think this misses the forest for the trees. IMO, even if the GPs interpretation is wrong, it's still a far more interesting and insightful observation (that groups so often behave so much worse than individuals) than the alternative (some people are a lot smarter than others).
As far as absolute comparisons of intelligence goes, we don't yet have a way to measure it and may never have. The best we can do are relative comparisons like IQ. So he may well be spot-on in his assessment, and we should respect his point of view, because he was clearly very close to the top of the mountain in his (and every) time.
That's just relativity, but he also did groundbreaking work on atoms and light, and he even designed an interesting new refrigeration cycle.
It's not really possible to say how much raw intellectual power goes into solving a problem (yet), so it's hard to compare giants like Poincare, von Neumann, and Einstein.
Still, Einstein's mind was clearly first-rate.
He revolutionized classical physics, made huge advancements in the brand new field of quantum mechanics (unwillingly at first) and made tons of very interesting philosophical works.
I don't know enough about Einstein to say whether or not he was also an S-tier, but I have often heard it said that someone would have figured out the stuff he is most famous for if he hadn't been there. Because others were working on similar math. And I've also read about Von Neumann just solving unsolvable things on whim, inventing new concepts whole cloth that weren't even the focus of his work, etc.
Nobody could say Einstein wasn't brilliant, but his being famous doesn't mean he was the most brilliant. For that matter, we should acknowledge that the smartest person to have ever lived might have died without ever touching a pencil, because we still use "being born in the right place" as a proxy for greatness. Should we ever meet the basics needs of everyone and to allow every mind to flourish, we might find our greats are less rare than we thought.
Are you intending to come across as so rude? Because I'd say this sounds like your problem. Perhaps English isn't your first language, so I'll forgive your tone.
Anyway, it seems apparent to me that an academic who struggles to land a job researching or teaching after graduation is not "top tier", but as a non-academic, perhaps I misunderstand.
Famously, the man didn't fully understand the mathematics (tensor calculus and differential geometry) required to flesh out his obviously profound ideas about general relativity, so he learned them, and then proceeded to change how we think about the universe. It's completely fascinating the drive and effort required for such a thing.
I realize the profundity of the photoelectric effect, but I've read that had Einstein not figured out relativity that Poincaré wasn't far behind. Also, Einstein commented that he felt von Neumann was the "cleverest man" that he had ever known so curious what these guys thought of Einstein? I like to imagine it rather like the tensions between impressionist musicians where Einstein is the scrappy Satie and the establishment try-hards like Ravel are smugly casting judgment on his lofty ambitions, but this may not be correct.
I maintain that I am asking a fair question about how he compared to his contemporaries.
I think you are cleaning up his values. He clearly seems to be pointing to a few people who produce novel ideas and creations as opposed to the mass of people who never create much of value globally out of their lives.
And actually, this statement used to be uncontroversial. Social media and the death of journalism means that our best thinkers no longer have much of a platform. It may be easy to forget and unpopular to remember, but there are some exceptional and brilliant people out there.
Journalism was never great to begin with
Indeed. The social value and inherent virtue of kings, high-priests, and robber-barons used to be beyond reproach.
Today, the gap between scholars and the public is probably much narrower. This is certainly the case in physics, and I would think in biology and chemistry as well. I believe the only fields where the gap has significantly grown are computer science and pure mathematics, simply due to rapid progress in those fields.
I would argue the opposite. Each field of study has so much more depth now that on any given topic there is more that a layperson has to learn to be on par.
Lay people do tend to be much broader generalists (at least in terms of scientific understanding) than they were in 1939 but they are further behind the specialists.
But broadly the gap between scholars and "the public" is as massive at it's ever been. Meet a few members of "the public" socially, outside of tech or academic circles or however you usually meet people. Go to some random bar or club or whatever and make some friends. I think you'll find, like I do, that most people basically don't know anything. They can sort of do 3rd grade arithmetic, but struggle to apply it, and don't know anything else about mathematics - most people don't understand how to use negative numbers or what they're for, for instance. They don't know anything about history - they don't really know what the Renaissance was, or when the Roman Empire was, or when and where human civilization began, or anything else. They absolutely know nothing about physics - they are completely unaware of the idea that acceleration due to gravity is not dependent on mass, which I see as the starting point of teaching physics.
Swap the places though and send someone who's held various mechanic, repair, manufacturing roles to a high end cocktail bar full of academics and let them ask questions on topics they know, and they'll be shocked (or maybe not) at how most of these academics basically don't know anything about how the nuts and bolts machinery that keeps the world running actually functions in real life, and certainly couldn't do most of the work themselves. They'd probably also come away thinking they'd rather have a random person from their dive bar in Nebraska help them for a day at work on a hard project than one of the people in the fancy bar.
Without being able to rely on these masses of the un-academic "public" to run the world they live in, the academics would largely be helpless and their knowledge useless as they starved to death as the world crumbled around them.
Specialized knowledge and training is amazing, and it allows us to advance as a civilization, but I don't think the average "academic" is much more intelligent or capable in the raw sense than the average person in "the public". Both are needed for society to function and progress. Without the academics there will be no progress, and without the public it will all break down.
Of course, there are also people who have little useful knowledge / skills / motivation either practical or academic. These people can however just as easily exist in the social / family circles of the elite, as in those of the public, so I don't think it's fair to throw them in either group for judgment.
But once a person's intelligence gets too low, they can't figure out anything. But, they can still learn. They don't see anything wrong with them, they think it's how the world works, people know and can do things that somebody taught them. When they see somebody figure something out, they think it's something they learned in the past, but are dumb and evil people who laugh at them for not knowing. Stupid and evil peoppe who refuse to pass on what they were taught. And they never figure out that they aren't normal, or even think that they're brilliant, because they remember more than others.
The reason why it is clear that this is not what he is doing is the rest of the text. He starts by saying that his time is rich in inventive minds. It doesn't really make sense to assert that a couple of sentences later he is arguing that the reason we have war and poverty is a lack of more inventive minds.
For context, remember this statement comes from a time when his homeland is in the grip of the Nazis and WW2 was just beginning. Why would he tell the future that there a smart people and stupid people and the problems are the fault of stupid people?
Especially given the ending I read this note with a tone of hopeful despair about our ability to overcome the emergent failings of large groups. So far I'd say he'd probably be disappointed, but we still have 4916 years to figure it out.
I believe I fall into the latter of the two, but also know folks who fall into the former. I would say pretty bluntly that they are definitely more intelligent and have better character than I do. Probably by an order of magnitude, were it something quantifiable.
This is the Jungian concept individuation.
Can you recommend any brilliant exceptions that come to mind? Especially in journalism.
This would’ve been quite obvious to someone fleeing Germany in the 1930’s after seeing what happens when the people are panicked and afraid and a charismatic leader says “I know whose fault this is and I can fix it!”
Considering these circumstances, I think his assessment is spot on, and the fact that we look down on this idea nowadays (judging from the fact that this is the top-voted comment at the time of writing) may be evidence of the kind of progression he was hoping for in the last paragraph.
It's not always true of course; just a colloquialism.
> the intelligence & character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community.
It doesn't strike me as crazy that a guy who was hanging out with Gödel and von Neumann all day [0] might think this way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Resident_schol...
Back in reality, Einstein likely had an ego the size of a large galaxy, like all the rest. I don't know that I've ever read about someone being similarly famous and them not having an unhealthy outsized ego. The fame always wins.
The masses are very commonly wrong about their adored historical figures though. Gandhi was exceptionally vile in his beliefs. Mother Teresa was a sadist that clearly enjoyed torturing people that had AIDS. FDR was a racist that put Japanese Americans in camps. Che was a sociopathic extreme homophobe and mass murderer. Napoleon was one of the great genocidal maniacs of history, almost on par with Hitler in the death and destruction he caused in attempted conquering. Bill Cosby, well, you know. And on it goes forever.
I’ve never heard of this, and the only sources I can find for the claim you made about mother Teresa make claims that the organization that mother Teresa started would refuse patients pain medication out of misguided notions. I’m curious what specifically you’re referring to here.
And as for:
> FDR was a racist that put Japanese Americans in camps
I wouldn’t go so far to say that FDR was racist for doing this. America was literally bombed and dragged into a war, and other countries were also placing civilians in internment camps. From Wikipedia:
>> Japan interned 130,000 Dutch, British, and American civilians in Asia during World War II.
Does this mean the Japanese were racist? No. This was world war, and countries were doing this as a source of leverage.
I don’t know about the rest of your examples, but I feel like you may be being a bit uncharitable in your characterization of these circumstances.
> Only hours after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7. 1941, Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of California's powerful Salinas Valley Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, was dispatched to Washington to urge federal authorities to remove all individuals of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. In an interview for the May 1942 Saturday Evening Post, Anson told how he drew a frightful scenario for the War and Navy departments, the attorney general and every congressman he could get to listen to him: an invading army coming ashore in Monterey Bay and advancing into the Salinas Valley while Japanese residents blew up bridges, disrupting traffic and sabotaging local defenses.
> By the end of the war, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "farm ownership by Japanese amounted to about 30 percent of their total pre-war farm operations {and} ownership transfers to non-evacuees during and after evacuation has probably reduced these farm ownerships to less than a fourth of the total pre-war Japanese land holdings, including leaseholds . . . ." Few of the internees ever received full payment for their land.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/02/02/b...
This was further exposed in Korematsu vs. the US, where it was revealed that the Office of Naval Intelligence had prepared reports showing there was no actual threat, which they then hid from the courts when Japanese-American citizens sought redress through the justice system. Likewise, the FBI had already locked up or was monitoring anyone they thought was dangerous and had discredited all of the key justifications for internment:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/confession-error-s... https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-Mexican_Labor_Assoc...
There's a fair bit of evidence that Mother Theresa had a religious appreciation for suffering that is presumably the basis for the 'sadist' assertion. That does seem like hyperbole but explaining the complicated ways that she or any of the referenced individuals far fall short of their reputations in an accurate and susinct way is hard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/gcxpr5/saint_mo...
A man who brought independence to 400 million people with non-violent means was a vile man? A man who’s the “father of the nation” to 1.3 billion people was a vile man?
Are you making up your own history here?
Also: "In 1903, when Gandhi was in South Africa, he wrote that white people there should be "the predominating race." He also said black people "are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.""
So maybe read up a little?
So what? You say that like it is some great loss! I think the correct choice is to abscond from this culture of hero worship you're advocating for and see people for their good and bad qualities, and be ready to criticize them without hesitation.
> we cannot and should not hold an individual responsible for the mores of their time
That's the weakest argument. "Of their time"? Last week? Last month? 1,000 years ago? You can pick whatever date you want to justify your hero worship. Personally I don't see accepting the Neuremberg defense as an ethical (or sophisticated) position, but you do you.
If your argument is "your shirt with a picture of Lincoln on it offends me - he was a racist!", then I guess you can just kick rocks or whatever.
P.S. "racist" is lately feeling really close to "communist" of the 50s as far as how effectual it is in describing a person's character. A witch hunt, in other words.
The homophobic claim is patently false. He had no involvement in Cuba's treatment of gay people, and the only quote in which he even mentions gay people is about how he was bothered when a guy he liked was beat up. The homophobia accusation is mostly just peddled as a gotcha question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5eFPgvhS60
Our 21st century version, at least to me, is even harder to phrase... at least currently.
I thought connecting everyone, all opinions, minds, ideas... I thought it would be good. It was, at first. There were ways for the better ideas to float. Ways for ideas to cross-pollinate.
The "society" seemed like a greater intelligence, one that I got a lot from.
Now... It's worse than I could have ever imagined. It's like every person makes the whole a little meaner, dumber, weaker of heart... The whole makes the individual a little worse.
The strategy that you can isolate one person from the herd with your online gang is deeply concerning for the future of reasonable discourse.
All the problems of politics, now permeating all of society.
We think, often, how and as we speak.. as we debate. Now that the conversation, the debate has become.. what it is, I think it really does affect how and what we think. That (garbage) mode of debating is now a major mode of thinking.
It's a mess.
> However, the production and distribution of commodities is entirely unorganized so that everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle
It is possible to give both an Ayn Randian interpretation.
But then: Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
I doubt Einstein would accept an invitation to Galt's Gulch.
High school education was not at all common until the 20th century.
That means most of Einstein’s contemporaries, the masses, would have had between a 50-80% chance of a haphazard middle school level education. [0]
Contrast this with his peers in the sciences who were extremely well educated and an early generation if not the first generation of globally-connected world-class minds and there is no ambiguity about what he is saying.
> Further more, people living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror.
It sounds like he's speaking to the common intervals of war during his lifetime. From 1879-1955 Einstein would have been alive for roughly 27 wars that involved the US and there's probably a multiplicative factor there for international conflicts and wars.
> This is due to the fact that the intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community. I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.
The way I read this is that people are inevitably who vote for war. It's similar to the attitude prevalent in the song "Forever Young" by Alphaville:
Can you imagine how we won the war?
Little fascist lady she loves you so
Following her leader, she's getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen
Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen
> “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would never have lifted a finger.” (1947)
Although it is usually individuals who decide whether to start a war or not.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/Einstein%2...
> the intelligence & character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few...
I don't think Einstein is comparing the most intelligent individuals to the least (or average) here. Certainly there are individuals who are more intelligent than the average, but I would argue not incomparably so.
I believe he's speaking about the tendency of large groups of people to act more like cattle than people. The intelligence of the mob (and the character, represented by the actions of the mob) are what I see as incomparably lower than that of an individual.
And I think this is indicated by the other shortcomings of 20th century humanity that he passes along. War isn't waged by individuals (or even groups of exclusively idiots and villains). There are a bunch of physiological and sociological variables introduced that make the output of the group stupider and less caring than the output of the individual.