Where Have All the Geniuses Gone?
Are Eureka Moments a Scarce Resource?
Let’s put my conclusions up top since this is a long post.
Conclusion
It’s not obvious genius is in decline.
Genius is not a stable concept.
Culture is an obstacle to genius, but not just at the level of perception.
The biggest obstacle to genius is the psychological battlefield where would-be geniuses submit to forces that would make them conform.
The internet increases the opportunity for discoverability, but it also intensifies the mimetic conditions for mediocrity.
Introduction
I enjoyed reading Scott Alexander’s response to Erik Hoel’s essay, Why We Stopped Making Einsteins. Hoel says the reason for the decline in genius is a decline in aristocratic-style tutoring. Alexander contests this.
He writes:
Good ideas are getting harder to find. In 300 BC, if you noticed that the water level in your bathtub got higher when you got into it, you were allowed to run through the streets shouting “eureka!” and declare yourself to be a genius. Now you would need some 400 page mathematical proof drawing on the topology of eight-dimensional manifolds in order to get that kind of cred.
We’re finding lots of ideas anyway, but only by dectupling the number of researchers. More researchers means more distributed progress: it’s unlikely one person will stumble across a fully formed brilliant theory before other people have nibbled off bits and pieces of the same idea.
More democratic norms / tall poppy syndrome. In the past, people celebrated geniuses and would play up their accomplishments in order to have someone to celebrate. Now it’s considered kind of cringe to believe in geniuses, and you should play down their accomplishments, play up the degree to which they depended on lab assistants / collaborators / support staff, and maybe even accuse them of hogging glory or “crowding out” others in the field.
I’d like to respond to each of these points with further reflection. But first:
“What is Genius?” (See: Ancient Rome)
Both authors accept the premise that genius is in decline, although their operational definition remains rather vague. Maybe a good science-y sounding definition of genius is “someone whose discovery in any given field is orders of magnitude above the mean.” Or in Thomas Kuhn’s terms, a genius is someone who induces a “paradigm shift.” In Harold Bloom’s, a genius is someone whose existence creates “an anxiety of influence” for subsequent greats.
The history of the concept of genius is complicated, but really came of age in the Enlightenment era.
The older meaning of genius has little do with being a prodigy and more to do with the daemonic spirit that accompanies us all. According to Giorgio Agamben, the modern birthday party derives from a Roman pagan festival devoted not to celebrating the birth of the person, but rather his or her genius. For Agamben, genius is the doppelgänger that accompanies us, but is mostly hidden from sight. It only comes out in rare moments, such as writing and urination, instances that Agamben says are moments when we are more relaxed.
By the old definition of genius, it can’t decline, because it has nothing to do with accomplishment. But let’s go with the romantic view of the genius as special prodigy.
Has Genius Declined? (Unclear)
Anecdotally, Alexander’s arguments make sense. But one could counter that genius is simply expressed in new forms that didn’t exist before.
If you want to find the next Beethoven don’t look in the music world. Go to film or TV (or Tiktok). If you want to find the next Pina Bausch don’t look to choreography, but to UX.
Not all geniuses are recognized in their time. Maybe there are Emily Dickinsons alive today, but we won’t know about them for another 100 years. Fame and recognition by contemporaries is a different axes than the substance of genius itself.
Einstein may not exist today in the field of theoretical physics; but are Elon Musk’s and Jeff Bezos’s creations not wildly impressive? Perhaps talent has simply shifted away from the theoretical to the practical. Genius exists, but it’s no longer pure. Today’s geniuses are devoted to “capturing value.” There is a cynical reason for this and a positive reason. Cynically, geniuses are influenced by the values of capitalist materialism and so it’s much harder for them to care about the thing itself; they also want their thing to be marketable. Positively spun, geniuses are now meta-geniuses who are reasonably concerned not just with finding truth, but also profiting from their discoveries. There was less upside to capture in the 18th century than now. Geniuses may be special, but some of them are simply rational actors who are guided by market forces.
Is Eureka Harder to Come By? (No)
Eureka moments are not harder to come by because they are subjective states. But it’s worth wondering where we still experience eureka. What is new?
Alexander’s claim that eureka events are rare aligns with the decadence thesis—that we pick low hanging fruits and call it progress. But the genius of phenomenology is that it rebrands ordinary experience as eureka-worthy:
Heidegger lifts up a jug and proclaims eureka. Sartre sips a cocktail and proclaims eureka. Pollock splatters paint on a canvas and proclaims eureka. Cage listens to traffic sounds and proclaims eureka.
Either this is a symptom of decadence (picking low hanging fruit), a Chelm-like turn away from the Real, or it’s a masterful pivot. Maybe it’s both. Go where there’s an opportunity. Scientific knowledge is more competitive, more crowded, but experience remains quite open. In the realm of experience (and representation thereof), there’s more room for genius.
To cap eureka is to be Malthusian. But even if knowledge is limited, synthesis, or what we do with it, is quite open-ended.
Or to put it metaphorically (and provocatively): Knowledge has a low (and for some, negative) birth rate. Experience has a high birth rate, and in addition has a high adoption rate and immigration rate. Alexander and Hoel might be right that certain kinds of genius are in decline, but they can’t say that genius itself has declined.
Genius is in the Network, Not the Individual
Scott Alexander suggests in point 2 that genius is not in decline, it’s just not to be found in the individual, but in the network. From an individualistic point of view, it appears that genius is dead; in fact, genius is alive, but now found in the interstices of teams and groups. If this is the case, then genius needs a re-definition, or rather, the debate about genius turns on whether we take it to be a fundamentally individual virtue.
Arguably, the person who organizes and builds teams is the meta-genius, not the solo inventor. 20th century was the century of Einstein. But the 21st will be the century of the DAO (distribute anonymous organization). The meta-Einsteins are those at work at the systems level, creating better ways to share knowledge.
The old model defined genius in terms of “content.” The new one will define it in terms of distribution.
The Revolt of the Public
Martin Gurri has well described the way that new information technology has radically shifted power away from the center to the border, from elites to the masses. Genius used to be appointed by gatekeepers. Today’s geniuses are anointed by the hive-mind. Activist organizers, be it of Arab Spring or Black Lives Matter or the January 6th Insurrection exercise a genius for mobilizing crowds. This is not the genius of scientific or artistic discovery, but is a kind of communications genius. Populist politicians who know how to mobilize crowds—whether you like or dislike their cause—know how to tap into the eureka of social energy.
Those who know how to win “information wars” are geniuses, whether or not their tactics are good.
To bemoan the death of the genius is often simply the protest of the center against the border.
We don’t see genius today, because it comes in a cruder form than a patronized composer. Joe Rogan and Rupi Kaur, Wael Ghonim, and countless influencers you’ve never heard of, have a genius for finding their people.
The Endurance of Fundamentals
But social geniuses come and go with the times. Those who don’t win popularity contests, but remain married to ideas, have a greater chance of durability. The fact that our world has become so socialized and politicized is an obstacle to purists who want nothing to do with office politics, crowd-flattery, or self-promotion. One reason that genius, in the Enlightenment sense, may be in decline, is that ours is a superficial culture more focused on image and story than the thing itself. In such a climate, the pure ones remain in oblivion.
Long-Termism
Whether the reasons are cultural, economic, or something else, it’s rare to find people today who have life projects. Most people think in terms of one year or five. The internet has shortened not only our attention spans but also our existential spans. That sort of short-termism is at odds with the dedication needed to create compounding results over a life-time. Mainstream culture frowns on the idea of a Beethoven, as Alexander notes in point 3. But the reason is more complex than just the tall poppy syndrome. Beethoven is gauche not because he is “better” than the rest in terms of musical ability, but because he is single-mindedly devoted to one thing.
If we want more individual geniuses, we need to invest in more contrarians—those who take a life-long view rather than a five year view. But we also need to look for genius in different places than we are used to looking.
Some geniuses are simply going to be hidden no matter what. Some are experimenting with new forms. Some are social geniuses. Some are building new technology. And some are compromising with market and cultural forces, subordinating their pure aspirations to instrumental ones. This last point is not a new one. Patronized artists have long worked on commission. But perhaps the pressures are greater now than ever before.
Conclusion
It’s not obvious genius is in decline.
Genius is not a stable concept.
Culture is an obstacle to genius, but not just at the level of perception.
The biggest obstacle to genius is the psychological battlefield where would-be geniuses submit to forces that would make them conform.
The internet increases the opportunity for discoverability, but it also intensifies the mimetic conditions for mediocrity.