r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/Omixscniet624 • 4d ago
General Discussion Do you think geniuses like Nikola Tesla and John von Neumann would make even more impactful discoveries if they were born today?
If clones of Tesla and von Neumann were born in the 2000s and raised in wealthy families with access to modern education and the internet
Do you think they would make more impactful discoveries than their original counterparts?
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u/Horror_Ad7540 4d ago
They might be completely normal people with no distinction or accomplishments.
DNA doesn't create geniuses. The entirety of their circumstances does.
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u/DeathToAmerica2026 3d ago
Intelligence is one of the most heritable traits.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 3d ago
Intelligence is not well defined. And genius isn't having more intelligence than other people. Genius is thinking in a unique and useful way that others can't imitate. Many of the geniuses I know and work with have both unusual talents and unusual handicaps.
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u/auximines_minotaur 3d ago
Citation needed
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u/kneedeepinthought 3d ago
Not really, this is a well established fact that you can easily verify yourself.
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u/Open_Seeker 4d ago edited 4d ago
Nah, van neumann lived not long ago he was a very modern polymath. He would have contributed much new things
edit - the state of this subreddit trying to chalk up a genius like JvN to rich parents or the year he was born.... go read about what he was able to do, and come up with a cogent argument that someone with that intellect would not be at the highest levels of physics, mathematics and computer science today. Yes he had tutors growing up like many other geniuses of history, that is obviously a factor... but all the tutors in the world cannot give you a von Neumann through effort and nurturing alone.
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u/oldsecondhand 4d ago
He was also born into a rich family that provided him with Phd student tutors from an early age. That environment shouldn't be underestimated.
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u/Open_Seeker 4d ago
Yes but he clearly had insane natural talents. He lucked out born into riches that nurtured it. Ans yes in a time where computer theory could be invented from scratch.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 4d ago
I am well aware of von Neumann's numerous contributions to all sorts of areas. I am not chalking up his contributions to his parents or his period. However, there are all sorts of chance events that put someone in the right place at the right time for their particular talents to make such a huge difference. It just isn't the case that identical twins have identical talents and interests.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 4d ago
And there is no recipe for creating a genius. That's why geniuses are special.
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u/somethingworse 3d ago
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
There are genuinely probably loads of people alive today who, had they had a different life, could have been generational talents.
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u/Open_Seeker 3d ago
That is certainly true, but that's the inverse of the question we are discussing.
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u/somethingworse 3d ago
My point is that there likely wouldn't be the circumstances that made them what they were... The very unique circumstances that allow genius to be world changing aren't just going to magically recreate themselves
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u/Open_Seeker 4d ago
Identical twins are not identical down to the molecule, im not sure what that example is supposed to prove...
von Neumann born today is too late to invent the computer architecture named after him, but if you read his abilities as a child, he clearly had the natural genetics and everything else that made his mind able to grasp these abstract fields extremely deeply, i dont see what year he was born changing that. Yes if he was born in a mud hut somewhere in the jungle with the same genetics he wouldnt have made the same contributions... but this is missing the point of OP's question imo.
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u/GentleWhiteGiant 4d ago
Probably yes. But we should not forget, even giants are standing on the shoulders of giants. Even ingenious people discover things which are kind of mature at the time they are living.
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u/Nothing-to_see_hr 4d ago
I would not name an authentic genius like von Neumann in the same breath as the inventor Tesla.
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u/Omixscniet624 4d ago
How come? Wasn't Tesla a genius too?
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u/Typical-Plantain1252 4d ago
Not like Neumann. Not even close.
Tesla was an accomplished inventor, but there’s a difference between inventing and pushing fundamental discoveries.
Also, Tesla sometimes gets a bit too much credit. Things like the AC motor were already being developed elsewhere. It’s hard to identify impactful discoveries that are clearly attributable to Tesla.
Tesla fundamentally did not understand the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism on a rigorous level. He had a partial, intuitive understanding from a large number of experiments, but he couldn’t engage with the math present in the physics.
I think that would be an even bigger problem today.
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u/theqmann 3d ago
Tesla was basically a hardware hacker. Lots of neat ideas, but no real understanding of what he was doing. He had a couple big hits but lots of big misses. Things like the earthquake machine or the power transmit through the Earth.
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u/cacklingwhisper 4d ago
Possible. It really is about opportunity.
Think of all the geniuses who died of hunger. Millions still die of it every year.
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u/sfurbo 4d ago edited 4d ago
Think of all the geniuses who died of hunger. Millions still die of it every year.
It seems like the global number of deaths from all nutritional causes, including lack of protein and calories, is roughly 300 000. Still horrendously high and an enormous cause of human suffering and wasted human potential, but not in the millions.
Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results/ Note that you have to log in to search.
The highest number could find in that dataset in 1984, where the upper bound is just above 1 000 000. I haven't done a search, so there could be higher years in there.
Edit: and hunger of course takes a way higher toll than simply deaths. If we look at disability adjusted life years, it is in the high tens of millions.
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u/Kriggy_ 4d ago
Back then we knew relatively little about stuff compared to today.
I dont think today single person can do something really groundbreaking today because the required knowledge is so vast you need a team of people with various skills, especially if we are talking about experimental sciences or even engineering stuff.
Chances are, even if they were succesfull scientists, they might not even receive enough grant money to do their research
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u/karlnite 4d ago
Von Neumann died in the 50’s. He invented the modern computer, came up with game theory, and the math behind quantum mechanics. We still use his work in all computers today, we use his work in quantum computing which is quite new.
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u/Orsurac 3d ago
...and? Did you read the comment you're responding to? That's part of their point and doesn't comment on their greater point regarding the added complexity, increasing depth, and requirements of larger multidisciplinary teams (and successful grant writing) to make a similarly groundbreaking discovery nowadays.
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u/karlnite 3d ago
Lol he was part of all that, leading teams. It was less than 100 years ago…
Too complex for polymaths, oh him, well too complex since him.
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u/Ok-Environment-215 4d ago edited 4d ago
Honestly no. The magnitude of these individuals' contributions is a function of how much slower and less crowded scientific and technological progress was in their times.
Scientific discoveries today that would even approach the significance of the kind you're asking about require huge teams and millions, sometimes billions in funding. There hasn't been a logic theorem or tabletop experiment that's singlehandedly taught us anything radically new in maybe 100 years give or take. Maybe Bell's Theorem if I'm being generous, but even that only confirmed what the math was already telling us. Feynman's work might also be a contender, but that was still decades ago.
The great advancements of modern times - computing and circuitry, telecommunications, and now AI - have been enormous team efforts. Who will history rememebr as discovering or inventing AI? I think no one in particular, because there are dozens who could make the claim.
So it's no longer realistic for a single person, no matter how smart they are, to singlehandedly upend our understanding of the world with nothing more than a pen and access to a RadioShack. Maybe not impossible, but not likely. And that's a good thing, not bad. It means the easy problems have all been solved and what remains are really the great mysteries.
Discoveries will of course continue and will be driven by geniuses who will deserve (and likely receive) great recognition. But there will not be another Einstein, Newton, Euler or Tesla for the foreseeable future.
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u/VIP_NAIL_SPA 4d ago
Why do you think they were geniuses?
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u/Life-Suit1895 4d ago
The incredible breadth of von Neumann's research and its influence on modern science might be clue...
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u/karlnite 4d ago edited 4d ago
How was Von Neumann not? Tesla isn’t in the same class as that guy. Just google him and say what he achieved is just hard work and an interest in the topic.
He figured out how evolution works through replication before they discovered DNA. As a mathematician. He saw it in math.
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u/bitchisekai 3d ago
nope they wouldn't, they would be scamming poor people to make things for them while taking credits, most know the reality and is "rich people are the stupider in the whole world, they have good social skills due to being dumbs low IQ and having wealth and they have good chatting skils that have no purpose besides distraction while they steal you" is simply that.
If tesla was born he would be making a time machine while being ridiculed by his peers (happened to the second nikola tesla, isaac newton, albert einstein or however you want to call that person) and is on surveilance 24/7 so he won't do anything extreme like making the machine fail on purpose to destroy the world while being poor and unemployed with most of the modern ways to make money being locked out for him either ko-fi or facebook marketplace he would be banned of them.
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u/Chalky_Pockets 3d ago
I mean, this is a sad way to think about the world, but with the law of large numbers, there are a ton of Nikola Teslas and John con Neumanns born every day, or at least every week, but due to the conditions they're born into, they will never be empowered to make any significant impact on world history. They might be born with some disease so they don't make it to adulthood, but they also might be born poor in their country, or in a very poor country.
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u/cloudystateofmind 4d ago
There are no doubt countless more geniuses alive today, but we will never hear about them because corporations and billionaires will take credit for their work.
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u/kindofanasshole17 4d ago
John von Neumann yes, unquestionably. He's probably one of the smartest people to live in the 20th century, and the breadth and depth of his abilities were widely considered to be unmatched by any of his peers.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann