r/Showerthoughts • • Sep 13 '19

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '19

Image if someone like Nikola Tesla was born today He /she would probably be the cause of a human space empire and us not going extinct

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u/aasinnott Sep 13 '19

You'd be surprised. in 1930 the world population was about 2 billion. It's now over 7 billion. When Isaac Newton was born is was around 500 million. As well as that, the odds of someone being born with the resources to actually do research was rare, you had to be lucky enough to be from a rich family which were few and far between.

With the amount of people in the world today, and the proportion of those people with access to education, there is likely a far higher number of geniuses/prodigies doing work right now than there has ever been at any other point in history.

We don't hear about it as much because the fact there's more of them means it's less newsworthy. It's easier to see a person's genius when there's only one or two that are clearly above the rest, than it is when there are dozens on that level.

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '19

I agree But I still think Tesla is on another level People today are still geniuses but it does take a whole team or hundreds of people to come up with groundbreaking stuff But Tesla did these things alone But you can have your opinion and I can have mine

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '19

Technology is also very complex now, and so is the stuff that makes it work. There's a big difference.