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/sci/ - Science & Math

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10615338 No.10615338 [Reply] [Original]

The more I learn about physics the more I start to think that there are no out of this world intelligent scientists. Am I wrong in this opinion?

For instance:
Assume that you are moving in a direction with the speed of 0.5 light. A light beam is moving in parallel to you in the same direction. This would intuitively mean that the light be relatively be moving 0.5 lightspeed faster than you. But you know this is false, it has to be moving 1 lightspeed faster than you.

How is this possible?

Time must be moving slower so that you percieve the light is moving faster.


How is this a thought that requires high intelligence?

>> No.10615347

that's wrong though

>> No.10615356

>>10615347
What is wrong?

>> No.10615390

>>10615356
everything is wrong in modern science, that's why you can't be a genius anymore

>> No.10615401

>>10615390
Expand?

>> No.10615416

You can "percieve" light moving slower than lightspeed without light moving slower than lightspeed. Also light is allowed to move slower than "lightspeed" by changing mediums, just not faster.

>> No.10615438

>>10615416
My example was one of a fundamental character but perhaps that wasn't obvious. I imply a vacuum as medium and I imply that perception is not of the psychological kind but strictly materialistic. Your critiques seem like your trying to find faults by trying to change the hypothetical. Obviously you knew what I meant.

>> No.10615447

>>10615338
i agree.

Anyone can be good at anything, provided they spend enough time and effort at it.

>> No.10615454

>>10615338
>How is this a thought that requires high intelligence?
Thing about scientific and mathematical innovation is that the innovations aren't necessarily hard to understand, but they are hard to come up with. You are incapable of accurately perceiving the difficultly of coming up with past innovations because you are not in a time where these innovations did not exist. The ideas in important innovations gets soaked up by many different fields until the point that it may seem obvious even for someone that haven't actively tried to learn about the relevant innovation. Also, results get streamlined by scholars such that they are easier to understand. Compare learning Calculus from a modern textbook to learning it from Newtons Principa.

>> No.10615472

>>10615338
'Light speed' doesn't exist. No physical object can go at such a 'speed'. It is effectively the same as saying 'infinity size' there is no such thing.

>> No.10615473 [DELETED] 

>>10615454
And this applies mostly to genius level innovation, the types that do not exclusively rely on smarts. Same goes for art too.

>> No.10615476

>>10615338
Explain Von Neuman.

>> No.10615477

>>10615454
I get what you're saying and it's certainly true that it's more time consuming to understand something on your own compared to having a clear textbook on the subject. Having said that, see my example above about time dilation. Does that really require profound creativity? It honestly just seems like a logical conclusion in which many fairly intelligent people can come up with given the right circumstances (interest in the subject). Given that speed of light is percieved the same to everyone time must slow down with speed. It's only logical.


>>10615472
Why do you have to be so anal-retentive? 0.5*3*10^8m/s= 1.5*10^8m/s.

Do you honestly not understand an explanation unless the exact correct terminology and circumstances are explained?

>> No.10615487

>>10615476
I don't know him personally but assume this:

Highly intelligent individual (not out of this world but 95 percentile), strong work ethic or interest for math and applied mathematics (area applicable to many fields), born in a timeframe where there were a lot of low hanging fruits.

Now I'm not saying that this individual would certainly expand the field of math/stats as neuman but would it be unreasonable to think that this person would come close to Nueman?

>> No.10615496

>>10615477
>Does that really require profound creativity? It honestly just seems like a logical conclusion in which many fairly intelligent people can come up with given the right circumstances (interest in the subject).
Probably something to that. Very healthy mindset nonetheless.

>> No.10615533 [DELETED] 

>>10615496
Appending:

While it's hard to determine whether paradigm shifting scientific and mathematical innovation is hard, it has certainly been rare.

>> No.10615583

Cont. >>10615496

Now attempting to answer the question in the OP
>Are there really "geniuses"?
Clearly there was certain people that got their name on paradigmatic level (or above) scientific and mathematical innovations, but it is not clear why there was so very few them.

>> No.10615599

>>10615338
The truth is nobody understands reality that well. Many of these scientists give off an image of genius but they don’t know any more than you or I.

>>10615390
Pretty much. Any dumbass can stay in university long enough and be called a scientist.

>> No.10615615

God I hate /sci/
That's not how relativity works. You obnoxious retards should shut the fuck up and read more before talking about things you don't understand

>> No.10615655

>>10615487
It would be unreasonable because there were many people that fit that criteria during the same time.

>> No.10615666

>>10615487
isn‘t he supposed to be at about 200? that would be much more exceptional compared to 95 percentile...

>> No.10615779

>>10615666
Not him, but yes, Von Neumann supposedly was so fast and logical in his thinking that many of his peers compared him those computers that he contributed to creating. Here's from Polya's How To Solve it:
> There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.

>> No.10615884

>>10615779
Would be a great way for me to lose motivation, seriously, why would you even try when that guy could do anything you could do but just 10x faster.

>> No.10615894
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10615894

>>10615779
I feel like these stories are always dramatized though. I’m sure he was intelligent but everyone seems to love a dramatic genius story so shit ends up getting exaggerated over time

>> No.10616099

>>10615884
>Would be a great way for me to lose motivation, seriously, why would you even try when that guy could do anything you could do but just 10x faster.
We need more than 10 scientists and mathematicians in the world. We need hundreds of thousands. Also, you don't need to do many things to help with many things. Imagine Einstein stopped at photoelectric effect, still legendary and super important. He got a Nobel Prize for it. Gödel has his imcompleteness thms and so on. Von Neumann had a shitton, but most of it wasn't huge discoveries.

Sorry, but you will meet people better than you in some metric. Everybody deals with this (some less than others though, there's a funny story about von Neumann that shows this). Everybody has their weaknesses, even the greats.

>>10615894
Probably some truth to that, dude.

>> No.10616145

>>10616099
What story?

>> No.10616202

>>10616145
Can't seem to find it. It's one of the rarer stories about von Neumann. It something like
> Some person P had produced some result R.
> P lies to von Neumann "Please help me with deriving this result R"
> R has three parts, A,B and C.
> Each part had taken P many hours, possibly days of pencil and paper effort.
> von Neumann starts working immeadiately in his head, starting with A, narrating his though process out loud
> Result A almost done in 1 minute, but right before von Neumann annouces, P annouces it himself.
> von Neumann very surprised
> Start working on result B, this one is a little bit hard, almost done in 2 minutes, but once again right before annoucement, P announces it himself
> von Neumann is slighty seething by now
> Start working on result C, this one is the hardest of them all, takes 5 minutes, but once again right before annoucement, P announces it himself
> von Neumann is seething and looks totally crushed

>> No.10616229

>>10616202
Cute story, thanks

>> No.10616249

>>10615884
Because that one guy can't be everywhere doing everything.

>> No.10616498

>>10616202
>some guy tricks vn into feeling inferior
>”look we all have our weaknesses!!”
Die

>> No.10616515

>>10615477
>It's only logical
Not if you're living in a time when such a consideration is entirely "illogical" because of the complex of ontological priors you've inherited from your peers.

The genius part is the ability to successfully deconstruct "obvious" "truth" while remaining coherent yourself. Derrida was a faggot pseud for a reason. You're just smug because you've not tried to create anything genuinely new. Of course it doesn't take a genius to follow.

>> No.10616582

>>10616498
Lol, missing the point. If you read carefully you will see that this was meant to be an example of a person that had to dealt so little with being inferior that he blew up at the slightest indication of it.

>> No.10618268

ehm no fuck I'm a genius and the answer is shit. and loads of shit.

>> No.10618278

>>10615338
>time must be moving slower
Bad troll.

>> No.10618282

>>10616515
This. OP you will have some ground to stand on after you open a new door. You only peer through already opened ones and claim the locks easy to pick. First find a lock and open it for yourself and then ask your question. From a distant perspective it looks easy, but there’s a reason “genius” only comes around every so many years.

>> No.10618287

>>10615390
>>10615447
>>10615477
>>10615599
>>10615894
>>10616582
COPE
>>10615487
>>10615615
>>10618268
BASED. These guys know what's up. Some people are just smarter :^)

>> No.10618642

>>10618287
yeah it's what it is. the question is bad to. It's the usual crap someone would say if they were into crap shot some teacher would give to their students.

>> No.10618662

>>10615447
enough time, like 10,000 hours perhaps? certainly enough time to get good at igon values.

>> No.10618811

>>10618287
>>>10616582 (You)
What am I coping for? Doesn't make sense :p

>> No.10618820

>>10615338
it seems to me that real geniuses are either recruited for black projects, or assassinated/kept out of academia/led away from science

>> No.10618888

>>10618820
nah were there but were not. the majority of geniuses these days rules behind the open world. were here and there and everywhere lurking watching taking care of everyone else who deserves a good life. that's it basically. could say more but yeah. practial info. but we are few. But together were instoppable. So I hope we gather one day.

>> No.10618897

>>10618888
I think a genius could write better than you.
>g8 four8's b8 m8y

>> No.10618899

>>10618888
>were
>nah

>> No.10619008

>>10615338
There absolutely are completely and utterly "out of the world" intillegent people, anon. I am going to go with the obvious: Isaac Newton. I really recommend you read his biography "Never at Rest." That book does a good job of elucidating the status quo in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. In a nutshell, what was believed to be true by all, Aristotelian philosophy, for over 2000 years was now being completely overturned. There were several extremely important people who did so: Copernicus, Galileo, Hyugens, Descartes, and so on. But it was still yet so unclear and nobody really knew where it was going in any way or form. And then came Newton. In just few years of study, he unified all of it and birthed modern science as we know it. While it's true that most of the pieces of the work he eventually did had been at least partially developed (for example, kinematical laws as we know them today was work of Galileo, the model of mechanistic universe was put forth by Descartes and others, people knew how to determine slopes, they had studied conics, knew how to find area under curves or integrate things as we know it today, they had studied infinite series already, and so on.) but it really required the genius of Newton to put it all together and develop the theory in a way that we do even today. He did all that in a few years: the law gravity, laws of motion, calculus, and other math while also making absolutely seminal contributions in optics.

>> No.10619020

>>10619008
(contd.)

I don't think a mildly intelligent human could have done so. Newton studied analytic geometry as developed by Descartes and others without even having a background in Euclidean geometry. He, a man who had never done maths before (literally!), practically mastered all of the seventeenth century of mathematics in just one year. That's not something a person who was not a true genius in every sense of the word could do.

>> No.10619037

>>10619008
(contd.)

While Newton might be a prime example of "out of the world" intelligence whose contributions were also truly extraordinary, there are a ton of scientists who are clearly brilliant and simply cut out of a different cloth. As you go into higher and higher levels of education in more theoretical areas (think pure math or theoretical sciences), you will meet truly scary smart people who have been gifted with both abnormal intelligence and nurturing environment from the get-go. As they say, if you think you are really smart and are also extremely good at what you do, there are at least 1 million people better than you. I think that's a good estimate, but there are some people who could say there are only maybe 10 people better than them in what they do. Those people will certainly be "out of the world" intelligent.

>> No.10619047

>>10618888
Lmao you type like your arms are broken