[Disclaimer: Sheer idle speculation, not important or rigorous]
I am generally a fan of the innovation-as-mining hypothesis. However, even within the broad tent of that hypothesis, there is room to debate e.g. whether there has been a recent, temporary slowdown in progress due to cultural or genetic factors in addition to the usual ideas-getting-harder-to-find factor. I have two ideas here that I’d be interested to see explored:
1. You say
Finally, this hypothesis implies that a literal duplicate of Beethoven, transplanted to today’s society, would be a lot less impressive. My own best guesses at what Beethoven and Shakespeare duplicates would accomplish today might show up in a future short post that will make lots of people mad.
What about a duplicate of John von Neumann? Maybe our modern geniuses like Terry Tao are his equal, but I sometimes wonder if he was a class above even them.
2. One argument you make against the Golden Age hypothesis is that typically the golden age is also the first age, which is a suspicious coincidence. IIRC, I read somewhere that average human brain size has shrunk over the last ten thousand years or so. I dunno if that’s true but suppose it is. Given the correlation between brain size and IQ, one might wonder whether selection pressure for intelligence—or some important component of it—has also diminished in the last ten thousand years or so. If that were true, a version of the Golden Age hypothesis would be more likely, and also would successfully predict that observed “golden ages” in various fields would happen at the beginning of said fields.
[Disclaimer: Sheer idle speculation, not important or rigorous]
I am generally a fan of the innovation-as-mining hypothesis. However, even within the broad tent of that hypothesis, there is room to debate e.g. whether there has been a recent, temporary slowdown in progress due to cultural or genetic factors in addition to the usual ideas-getting-harder-to-find factor. I have two ideas here that I’d be interested to see explored:
1. You say
What about a duplicate of John von Neumann? Maybe our modern geniuses like Terry Tao are his equal, but I sometimes wonder if he was a class above even them.
2. One argument you make against the Golden Age hypothesis is that typically the golden age is also the first age, which is a suspicious coincidence. IIRC, I read somewhere that average human brain size has shrunk over the last ten thousand years or so. I dunno if that’s true but suppose it is. Given the correlation between brain size and IQ, one might wonder whether selection pressure for intelligence—or some important component of it—has also diminished in the last ten thousand years or so. If that were true, a version of the Golden Age hypothesis would be more likely, and also would successfully predict that observed “golden ages” in various fields would happen at the beginning of said fields.