[PopsiclePete]

And yet - why are so few others capable of standing on the shoulders of said giants? Here I am, with more giants' shoulders to stand on, if I wished it, with easy access to vast wealth of information that Newton (or someone living in the 1980's) couldn't even dream of - and yet - my contributions to calculus are precisely zero.

I studied drumming for 6 years and could easily be outmatched (and have been) skill-wise by a 5-year-old with talent.

Are there just no "geniuses" at all? Could anyone paint the Sistine Chapel? Carve out David? Paint the Mona Lisa? Play drums for Led Zeppelin? Invent new fields in mathematics? Is 99.9999% of humanity just ... what? lazy?

[paulpauper]

back in Newton's era there was less competition and the intellectual barriers to entry were lower. Knowing calculus was enough to be a genius. now you need to invent a new type of math. Things have become so much harder that in many instances outside help is necessary. But it also makes genius more necessary too. It just means more help and having more genius.

[PopsiclePete]

There was less competition but it was also tremendously difficult to even see what others are doing, or to learn from them, or to even talk to them....just being in possession of scientific texts was enough to get you killed not too long before Newton's time. That makes his accomplishments more impressive to me, not less.

Here's an analogy.

I'd be more impressed by a medieval European serf if that serf could create the Intel 8086 than by you if you designed the next AMD 32-core processor.