Myth number one, the lone inventor. This is very dangerous because there is no such thing as a lone inventor.
The other two points they attempted (badly) to make were junk, but there's definite some truth in this one, in large part because most (but definitely not all, Hawking managed some very impressive discoveries) things that one really brilliant person can discover have been discovered, and an even higher percentage of impressive or world changing inventions that one superlatively brilliant person can invent have been invented. Instead, especially in engineering, inventing is now all done by teams of people. Bell invented the telephone working with one other person. In vivid contrast, everything I've read about the development of mobile phones or later smart phones involved large teams of dozens or hundreds of people. Sure, one person can invent a new type of packaging or a new way to fold a map, and those can be awesome, but *big* inventions like computers, phones... those now require lots of people.
Also, replacing individuals with teams changes things a lot. IIRC, people in general have difficulty working with people whose IQ score is more than 30 points from theirs (in either direction), and so if you have a brilliant inventor with an IQ north of 160, they are going to have a lot of trouble with team work, since you'd need everyone they are working closely with to have IQs north of 130, which is going to be difficult.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2021-06-30 04:57 am (UTC)The other two points they attempted (badly) to make were junk, but there's definite some truth in this one, in large part because most (but definitely not all, Hawking managed some very impressive discoveries) things that one really brilliant person can discover have been discovered, and an even higher percentage of impressive or world changing inventions that one superlatively brilliant person can invent have been invented. Instead, especially in engineering, inventing is now all done by teams of people. Bell invented the telephone working with one other person. In vivid contrast, everything I've read about the development of mobile phones or later smart phones involved large teams of dozens or hundreds of people. Sure, one person can invent a new type of packaging or a new way to fold a map, and those can be awesome, but *big* inventions like computers, phones... those now require lots of people.
Also, replacing individuals with teams changes things a lot. IIRC, people in general have difficulty working with people whose IQ score is more than 30 points from theirs (in either direction), and so if you have a brilliant inventor with an IQ north of 160, they are going to have a lot of trouble with team work, since you'd need everyone they are working closely with to have IQs north of 130, which is going to be difficult.