I was pretty struck by how per capita output isn’t obviously going down, and it’s only when you do the effective population estimates that it does.
Could this suggest a 4th hypothesis: the ‘innate genius’ theory: about 1 in 10 million people are geniuses, and at least since around 1400, talent spotting mechanisms were good enough to find them, so the fraction of the population that was educated or urbanised doesn’t make a difference to their chances of doing great work.
I think I’ve seen people suggest this idea—I’m curious why you didn’t include it in the post.
You’d need to think something like geniuses tend to come from families with genius potential, and these families also tend to be in the top couple of percent by income.
It would line up with claims made by Gregory Clark in The Son Also Rises.
To be clear, I’m not saying I agree with these claims or think this model is the most plausible one.
I was pretty struck by how per capita output isn’t obviously going down, and it’s only when you do the effective population estimates that it does.
Could this suggest a 4th hypothesis: the ‘innate genius’ theory: about 1 in 10 million people are geniuses, and at least since around 1400, talent spotting mechanisms were good enough to find them, so the fraction of the population that was educated or urbanised doesn’t make a difference to their chances of doing great work.
I think I’ve seen people suggest this idea—I’m curious why you didn’t include it in the post.
This seems implausible to me, unless I’m misunderstanding something.
Are all such geniuses pre-1900 assumed to come from the aristocratic classes? Why?
If no, are there many counterexamples of geniuses in the lower classes being discovered in that time by existing talent spotting mechanisms?
If yes, why would this not be the case any more post-1900, or is the claim that it is still the case?
It’s not exactly a nice conclusion.
You’d need to think something like geniuses tend to come from families with genius potential, and these families also tend to be in the top couple of percent by income.
It would line up with claims made by Gregory Clark in The Son Also Rises.
To be clear, I’m not saying I agree with these claims or think this model is the most plausible one.
Understood, thanks. Yeah, this seems like a bit of an implausible just-so story to me.