There are few but they all act like entitled assholes who are out to make money - Elon Musk comes to mind

I think Elon Musk is pretty down to earth for a man of his caliber. I'm kind of a fanboy though.

Maybe. I must admit I don't follow him that much. I just catch the headlines when his company does something crazy with technology or he does something crazy personally

To me he seems like a guy who's genuinely interested in making the world a better place... and also Mars.

Yes definitely Mars. Which some might consider a more nobler goal

See, I think the first part of your comment necessitates the need for the second part of your comment. If most people are on the level of the Kardashians then it might be beneficial to have somebody dumbing-down science for the general population. But this conversation is kind of hijacking your topic.

Science became political. If you believe in science (which is a crazy statement in itself) you're more likely a liberal and if you think science is bullshit you probably voted for Trump. I think this is why your original question can be asked today. Carl Sagan was popular generally. I don't think that be possible today. He'd probably be considered a liberal hero.

This comment also assumes the geniuses are de facto scientist. Personally Salman Rushdie and Paulo Coelho should be considered geniuses

I'm a huge fan of Tyson, but trust me, he's no genius. He's an advocate and an educator, but by no measure whatsoever is he a genius. In broad-topic, long-form interviews, when asked to explain BASIC CONCEPTS related to quantum theory and quantum mechanics, I've seen him give completely wrong answers (after repeated yet unsuccessful attempts at dodging the questions) but look totally convincing and confident, all in his signature animated style. And at the "are we living in a simulation" debate at the museum of natural history last year, he grossly misinterpreted one of the panelist's ideas on "error-correcting codes" as being general, all-purpose "computer code", causing the audience and millions of youtubers to think that at the smallest of scales, I.e. Planck scale, that the universe is nothing more than computer code. He's a good PR man for space and science, thats about it. Don't expect any groundbreaking ideas to come out of his mouth anytime soon.

Oh and his books are basic af.

Depends what you advocate as a genius,

Look at Dr Sebi, who healed people of Aids/diabetes all sorts of diseases with dietary changes and herbs.

In my mind, that man is a genius.

Was Stephen Hawking an exception of how public geniuses are treated in their time and is our perception of how historical geniuses were treated by the public obfuscated by continued verification of their ideas removing controversy?

Newton was autistic AF and would give lectures to empty rooms, IIRC.

It's because organizations/corporations, etc, do so much mental work now that an individual mind can't really compete with it. Our genius' are now more specialized, and known at a more local level. The world now has far more people in it, and advances are made in inches now, rather than in feet and yards.

We evolve quicker when faced with extinction! We are enjoying the good years! Soon as a war comes I’m sure the geniuses will figure out how to kill millions with as little as possible!

What about me?

Contribution to our collective awareness is a byproduct of an increasingly capable person. The label gets thrown around a lot, too much in my opinion, especially in tech space. They do exist, but listing PR machines as primetime examples is hardly useful.

Rather than focusing on geniuses we can identify, my focus is the impact on ideas—is the dialogue elaborated? Can you elevate the concept? Can you elaborate the mechanics? How?...The genius is doing. That’s why s/he’s nearly impossible to see.

Neil D. Tyson? Bitch, please...

There's tons of them all over the place. That's the problem.

In the past a genius was a "rare commodity" (economic constraints, lack of public education, etc), now there's a thousand Da Vinci's out there struggling just for internships.

Can confirm,

One of my friends is a undergrad comp science major and he told he had to go through 3 rounds of interviews for an unpaid internship.

Man that's such a great point.

I recommend reading up on "intelligence" theory cuz what you imagine to be decline in genius level behavior may turn out to be a symptom of a shrinking job market. In your own research have you found anything that contradicts the original claims by the psychologists who invented the concept of the IQ test as a critical method for sorting people who are employable from those who are not. You have to ask yourself where the idea, that it could mean anything but, came from. Claims that it means something other than that have not been shown to be falsifiable, therefore what is deduced from them cannot hold significant meaning.

I recommend reading up on "intelligence" theory cuz what you imagine to be decline in genius level behavior may turn out to be a symptom of a shrinking job market. In your own research have you found anything that contradicts the original claims by the psychologists who invented the concept of the IQ test as a critical method for sorting people who are employable from those who are not. You have to ask yourself where the idea, that it could mean anything but, came from. There's a rich 100 year history to this side of the conspiracy that gets ignored if you choose to swallow their "intelligence" pill. Claims that it means something beyond employablity matrix have not been shown to be falsifiable, therefore what is deduced from them cannot hold significant meaning.

Interesting, do you have any recommended text to support this?

There used to be a time when viral sensational content or identities couldn't simply be purchased. What you consider a genius needs to be on the world stage to count, right? Prior to our current connectivity, renown was earned, not purchased.

Presently, if your father is simply a third generation jewish banker, you have the option to become a world renowned celebrity for whichever entertainment purpose you desire. An idot, a hero, an influencer of billions. For Taylor Swift, the choice was music. For others it may be acting or sports performance.

I am not saying that these examples are in any way 'genius', I am saying that nowadays any person deserving of the big stage for their actual intelligent achievement would get none of the limelight, unless it could be monetized for those who control communication. Geniuses still exist abundantly, our species has successfully commercialized the average person's attention span. A true genius may not captivate audiences beyond a sensational news clip that can generate ad revenue from the subject's ability to grab the masses attention momentarily--and only if it aligns to the content provider's goals.

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The great's only come around so often. If you look at the best physicists of all time that changed how we view the time it took centuries of gigantic break through's spread throughout, and thousands of mini breakthroughs as well that we remember much less.

I firmly believe we're on the cusp of another great breakthrough of finding the TOE. We have all the tools that the best technologies could give us in our hands right now from the LHC to the James Webb coming up soon. We recently discovered the Higg's Boson, and Peter Higgs is still alive (Genius) as well as the discovery of Gravitational Waves. The technologies get a lot of credit for the discoveries but the teams that are working behind them are absolute geniuses that deserve some love too. Which is another point, today a lot of the science is done in teams of people, compared to many years ago when 1 man would fill a chalk board trying to solve some mystery of the universe.

The current generation should be the brightest yet. Millennial jokes aside, the tools and information that they've had access to growing up will for sure birth some of the greatest minds in history. We also have a few promising theories that are just getting started, like the Holographic Universe theory that a lot of the string theory physicists have switched to. The teams working on these theories are absolute geniuses as well.

As a change of the times I think there's more teams working together with technology rather than 1 genius brain doing everything.

The elites no longer can tolerate a popular voice that they cannot control.

• Why look for geniuses when you can just clone them and train them from birth for loyalty to you?
• Why give an extraordinarily smart person a public mouthpiece? Inevitably, they will realize that the elites are not needed.

I think there are more geniuses now than ever before. Especially kids. I’m a teacher and my students are all the only thing that gives me hope.

Check out Miles Mathis' theory that Hawking died after having ALS for about 20 years and was replaced in the 80s with a younger blonde lookalike.

I like your encouragement to decide for yourself what's important, we need more of that.

You don't hear about geniuses because to leftists and liberals being better is UNFAIR. The neo Marxist Frankfort School alinsky following MSM all want everyone dumbed down and given a participation trophy. How do.these.maniacs screaming for equality have any concept.of mental superiority? They are too busy with their moral relativity and moral equivalency. Bleh.