Not sure that the Cosmic Pez Dispenser of Picassos would have produced a similar Guernica painting five years later. Insights are historically situated, as you say. Any of these players, in a different milieu or time would have different insights, but insights they would have.
This doesn't say anything about mapping propensity to insight to some average relative "intelligence" (as if it were measurable by one scalar or located in one place). Even the village idiot has a good day now and then; it's just that the crowd (or what we call "The Crowd") hasn't engineered itself to listen. The argument that insights will happen anyway in effect says it doesn't have to. C. Günther Greindl wrote: > Hi, > >> Orlando here, >> What >> is it that allows Newton or Einstein or Picasso to see something >> essential that no one has seen or understood before? > > I guess the time is just ripe (viz.: enough knowledge has accumulated > and is lying around for a new synthesis) at certain moments for > intelligent guys to have insights. If it hadn't been Einstein or Newton, > then it would have been another bright person 5 years later. > > The intelligence of these people in relation to other people is usually > overrated. > > See this lovely post by Eli Yudkowsky on OB about Einstein, the village > idiot, and _real_ superintelligences: > > http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/my-childhood-ro.html > > Cheers, > Günther > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
