/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15084900
There's a vast gap between modern geniuses are old polymaths. For example, what an undergrad student learns in physics today, is greater than all the knowledge in physics that could be learnt in Benjamin Franklin's time. There's also an enormous bias to exaggerate his intellectual accomplishments because he was a Founding Father. His two only noteworthy achievements is discovering that lightning was a kind of electricity and mapping the gulf stream. If he weren't an FF he would be an extremely small footnote in the history of science.

But the recurring theme of real geniuses is that they have an enormous amount of training at a very high level. Everyone from Euler to Mozart had many years of intense training. There is no theoretical limit to what you can achieve intellectually, if you put in an enormous amount of skilled effort.