What areas are left for major breakthroughs by a "super genius" ?

[Trent Wray]

I could really use some good input by anyone willing to post.

I am in a conversation with another person who is claiming that science will only continue to progress with massive funding and technological resources, and that our knowledge will now no longer increase significantly without it. He is referencing the "great man theory" of science verses the "institutional theory" of science (at least, that's what he's calling it. I'm ignorant of those terms).

In considering the "great man theory" .... where a "super-genius" arises and advances progress without the necessary need to simply advance by funding and resources only, the question arose:

What areas of scientific exploration are left for a "super genius" to arise and shake things up? Many? Few?

The one I am conversing with argues there are none.

And in trying to define "super genius" ... it's assumed that one of the traits of the super genius would be their ability to cause a paradigm shift or "shock the scientific world" with their insight and scientific knowledge, etc and so forth ... or at the very least, shake it up in a real-world way that actually proves useful and not just in theory.

Thoughts?

 

[randman]

resolution of quantum physics with general relativity.....I don't really think it even takes a super genius but a very creative one to see the varying possibilities

There are tons of things to advance on though that may or may not require a paradigm shift. Just the technical advances alone could be staggering:

development of quantum computers

perhaps even a conscious machine

the use RF and EMF to be so precise as to obliterate cancerous tumors through resonating frequencies

artificial wormholes or some other means of long-distance space-flight

abundant, cheap non-polluting energy (energy from the vacuum maybe?)

advances on nano-technology and superconductivity to produce a multitude of exotic materials for every day life with various novel abilities such as changing shape to preprogrammed forms

teleportation

Is there any limit?

 

[ThunderChunky]

A great man still needs funding and resources.

Science and math are becoming increasingly specialized, so any breakthrough will likely have a more narrow impact than in the past. For example, will we ever come up with a mathematical breakthrough as important as calculus? I suppose it is impossible to predict...

I see AI as being a transformative breakthrough, but it will probably be developed by incrementalism.

 

[TjW]

Roadrunner capture and consumption.

 

[geni]

I could really use some good input by anyone willing to post.

I am in a conversation with another person who is claiming that science will only continue to progress with massive funding and technological resources, and that our knowledge will now no longer increase significantly without it. He is referencing the "great man theory" of science verses the "institutional theory" of science (at least, that's what he's calling it. I'm ignorant of those terms).

In considering the "great man theory" .... where a "super-genius" arises and advances progress without the necessary need to simply advance by funding and resources only, the question arose:

What areas of scientific exploration are left for a "super genius" to arise and shake things up? Many? Few?

The one I am conversing with argues there are none.

And in trying to define "super genius" ... it's assumed that one of the traits of the super genius would be their ability to cause a paradigm shift or "shock the scientific world" with their insight and scientific knowledge, etc and so forth ... or at the very least, shake it up in a real-world way that actually proves useful and not just in theory.

Thoughts?

Within chemistry I can see someone coming up with the equiverlent of palladium cross coupling in other areas of organic synthersis. That wouldn't really shock people though although it would shake things up.

If you want something that would shock people and shake things up then a proof that P=NP would probably qualify.

A counter example to the Riemann hypothesis perhaps but at this point it appears that may be beyond a mear "super genius".

Obviously there is a considerable amount of room for turning areas that are not currently sciences into sciences.

 

[mike3]

Hmm. I just saw this:

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2289409/

Could this be the actual realization of such "super genius" who could do this? And perhaps who could construct the real "theory of everything" for physics?

 

[geni]

Hmm. I just saw this:

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2289409/

Could this be the actual realization of such "super genius" who could do this? And perhaps who could construct the real "theory of everything" for physics?

Source is the daily mail so probably not.

There are already smarter people than him working on the problem and they have a higher level of background knowledge.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Hmm. I just saw this:

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2289409/

Could this be the actual realization of such "super genius" who could do this? And perhaps who could construct the real "theory of everything" for physics?

Source is the daily mail so probably not.

There are already smarter people than him working on the problem and they have a higher level of background knowledge.

Jacob Barnett seems to be for real:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011103200369
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Barnett

I hope he achieves great things.

As for a real "theory of everything" for physics, we already have theories so abstruse they cannot be understood without extraordinary dedication, training, and intelligence. Relatively few people will ever get themselves into a position where they could even begin to contribute at that level. Those who do may not be super geniuses on the level of Jacob Barnett, but it would be a stretch to say they're normal.

The institutional side is important also. Without institutional and social support, the super geniuses would never get the training and opportunities they need.

Sadly, some super-intelligent people drop out or never get those opportunities. Some become legends in their own mind or on the Internet.

 

[quarky]

There were people in the past that got things right before the rest of us were willing to accept it.

 

[andyandy]

What areas are left for major breakthroughs by a "super genius" ?

I'm working on a couple of things - will let you know soon

I think it's an interesting question - certainly the days of Renaissance Men are over - there are so many very intelligent people working in very specialised fields that i don't think you could span them like previous geniuses have done.....

but it's one of those questions that we'll not know until someone does something that no one else has thought of....which is pretty hard to predict because by definition no one else has thought of it.....

Unifying QM and general relativity to a single theory would be good - that was even beyond Einstein

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Source is the daily mail so probably not.

There are already smarter people than him working on the problem and they have a higher level of background knowledge.

I'm not sure if this is really on topic, but what problems in the past were solved by 'super geniuses'?
As far as I'm aware most problems have been solved by the incremental work of a lot of very clever people, with the one who puts the final piece into place (or the best self publicist) getting his name in the history books.

Also what proportion of child prodigies revolutionise their fields, and what proportion burn out and end up barking at the moon by the time they are 20?

 

[andyandy]

I'm not sure if this is really on topic, but what problems in the past were solved by 'super geniuses'?
As far as I'm aware most problems have been solved by the incremental work of a lot of very clever people, with the one who puts the final piece into place (or the best self publicist) getting his name in the history books.

Also what proportion of child prodigies revolutionise their fields, and what proportion burn out and end up barking at the moon by the time they are 20?

Good question....an associated one, who is the biggest super-genius of all time?

Einstein?
Newton?
Da Vinci?

Someone who's passed into relative obscurity?

 

[Trent Wray]

I'm not sure if this is really on topic, but what problems in the past were solved by 'super geniuses'?
As far as I'm aware most problems have been solved by the incremental work of a lot of very clever people, with the one who puts the final piece into place (or the best self publicist) getting his name in the history books.

That's a good point, and easily an arguable one. Even looking at Einstein, da Vinci, perhaps Tesla ... they didn't just appear out of nowhere with god-like abilities compared to the rest of those around them. Their advances were based upon incremental ideas.

However clearly some innovative "super geniuses" stick out from which further studies opened up widely. This thread assumes we could categorize such people that stick out in such a manner. IOW, they didn't just come along and add a lowercase "i" in front of the word "Pod"

Another thing to consider are "Clarke's Three Laws". Although they aren't truly "laws" .... are they necessary traits of a super genius?

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

[JJM 777]

science will only continue to progress with massive funding and technological resources
(...)
What areas of scientific exploration are left for a "super genius" to arise and shake things up? Many? Few? The one I am conversing with argues there are none.

Science often progreses through lucky accidents. The antibiotics. The linoleum. The so many things.

 

[NoahFence]

Hopefully someone will come up for a cure for tinnitus....

 

[andyandy]

Hopefully someone will come up for a cure for tinnitus....

Have you checked out the tinnitus thread? TRT helped me....

 

[pgwenthold]

How to catch a Roadrunner (or in this case, a rabbit)?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I'm not sure if this is really on topic, but what problems in the past were solved by 'super geniuses'?
As far as I'm aware most problems have been solved by the incremental work of a lot of very clever people, with the one who puts the final piece into place (or the best self publicist) getting his name in the history books.

Excellent question and remark. I'll throw out this list, which is heavily weighted toward math and physics. We can then debate how much of this was just a matter of putting the final piece into place.

• What is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter? Answered to three significant digits by Archimedes (c 287-212 BCE), who also described an algorithm for calculating pi to any desired precision; he also invented the bilge pump.
• Do heavy things fall faster than lighter things? Answered by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642); he also introduced the idea that physical laws should be described using mathematics, invented the telescope, and revolutionized astronomy.
• What kind of mathematics can describe the motion of objects? Answered independently by Isaac Newton (1643-1627) and Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), who both invented calculus.
• What is that calculus stuff talking about? Answered by Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), who invented the concept of a function; he also invented modern trigonometry and a bunch of other things.
• Which regular polygons can be constructed via compass and straightedge? Answered by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855); he also invented modular arithmetic, proved the fundamental theorem of algebra, conjectured the prime number theorem, developed methods for least squares approximation, stated the normal distribution law (involving what is now called the Gaussian distribution), and invented the notion of Gaussian curvature.
• Getting back to that calculus stuff, what are integrals really? Answered by Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866); he also developed non-Euclidean geometry and invented differential geometry, tensors, and the Riemann curvature tensor.
• With respect to the basic laws of electromagnetism, are we there yet? Answered by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), who added the final piece to what are now known as Maxwell's equations; that final piece predicted radio and other electromagnetic waves.
• How and why does the Galilean rule for adding velocities break down when things are moving really fast? Answered by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who was inspired by Maxwell's equations; he also invented general relativity (using Riemann's math) and received a Nobel Prize for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect.
• Part of Hilbert's sixth problem: How can we axiomatize quantum mechanics? Answered by John von Neumann (1903-1957), who axiomatized Hilbert spaces; he also invented modern game theory, proved the minimax theorem, invented the merge sort, invented algorithms for pseudo-random number generation, designed the first self-reproducing automaton, and contributed to the Manhattan project.
• Isn't there a better way to do these calculations in quantum mechanics? Answered by Paul Dirac (1902-1984); he also predicted the positron.
• Can we construct a complete proof procedure for first order logic? Answered (in the affirmative) by Kurt Gödel (1906-1978); in addition to Gödel's completeness theorem, he also proved his two incompleteness theorems, and proved the relative consistency of both the axiom of choice and the generalized continuum hypothesis with Zermelo-Frankel set theory.
• Can't we at least figure out whether a computer program will ever stop? Answered by Alonzo Church (1903-1995) and Alan Turing (1912-1954); Church invented lambda calculus, Turing invented Turing machines, and the Church-Turing thesis states their joint conjecture that all reasonable definitions of computable functions will turn out to be computable by both lambda calculus and Turing machines. Turing also worked as a cryptanalyst for the Allies during World War II.

Also what proportion of child prodigies revolutionise their fields, and what proportion burn out and end up barking at the moon by the time they are 20?

Hardly any child prodigies revolutionize their fields. Too many of them burn out. Most become more normal as they grow older.

I can't quantify any of those statements.

 

[quarky]

Chess prodigies provide a neat metaphor. (analogy, if Cuddles is here)

They are really, really good at chess.
It doesn't necessarily translate 'down' into useful smarts for day to day life.
Same with math prodigies.

Pre-computers, there was certain freak shows that demonstrated (exploited) some super-genius math geeks. Some could recite Pi to 50,000 digits.
A feat beyond the beyond..
yet, essentially useless, except as a circus side-show thing.
Now that computers know Pi well beyond 50,000 digits,

Poor feckers don't even have a good side-show career.

 

[randman]

Chess prodigies provide a neat metaphor. (analogy, if Cuddles is here)

They are really, really good at chess.
It doesn't necessarily translate 'down' into useful smarts for day to day life.
Same with math prodigies.

Pre-computers, there was certain freak shows that demonstrated (exploited) some super-genius math geeks. Some could recite Pi to 50,000 digits.
A feat beyond the beyond..
yet, essentially useless, except as a circus side-show thing.
Now that computers know Pi well beyond 50,000 digits,

Poor feckers don't even have a good side-show career.

Useful for day to day smarts? I bet it did and does, they just didn't pursue applying those same gifts elsewhere in some instances. Chess is a good example. It is so time-consuming to become a grandmaster and win tournaments that it crowds out other pursuits.