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It's an overriding myth because it seems to fulfill our fantasies of the hero's journey, and makes for a better (dare I say cinematic) story. When I had looked at it recently I came to a similar conclusion that it's not just the genius herself that's important, but being part of a productive genius cluster - https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/eureka-on-the-clustering-of-geniuses

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Jun 23, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

It sound trivial, but it may help to split the arguments for/against a lone genius into two parts:

1) "lone": How much did the "lone genius" directly discuss the idea with others?

2) "detached": How absurd or "out of the box" was the idea compared to the general scientific insight of that time? Were there other people around having similar ideas? Would someone else have come up with the same idea a few years later?

As you discuss, Einstein had very limited direct discussions with other contributing scientists when he developed special relativity. So he was clearly "lone". Nevertheless, according to Einstein's himself, his special relativity theory was not detached from the scientific community, and in hindsight he speculated that others would have come up with the same idea within a few years without him. "There is no doubt, that the special theory of relativity, if we regard its development in retrospect, was ripe for discovery in 1905." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity

It was similar for calculus, which was developed independently by Newton and Leibniz. This doesn't mean that those people were not geniuses. Not at all! It needs a genius to recognize what is "in the air". But there are often several geniuses, all of them capable of getting the idea, and only one of them will be first. Yet the discovery can be a "heureka" moment to the person who has the idea.

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Jun 23, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

my 2 pences:

-Einstein is the good exemple why lone genius does not exist (imho), his theories are breakthrough over existent ones, but you have to know what geniuses before you have wrote.

-Ramanajuan is probably what's a lone genius looks like

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Jun 23, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

Can you provide any evidence that "The myth of the lone genius" prevents "geniuses" from doing their work. None of the quotes that you provided from proponents of the myth seems to support this or your conclusions 4-6. In fact, you seem to be mis-reading the quote “hard slog of large armies of individuals, each making—at best—a tiny step or two forward” as an army of the Randian masses, rather than an army of highly intelligent individuals who spend a lot of time thinking deeply about their various subject matter.

I pose a counter question, has the cult of the individual, which has been a dominant ideology in the United states since the Reagan years, helped promote scientific progress by providing support for geniuses. I would say no, since this ideology is closely linked with conservatism which has worked tirelessly to cut spending including that on spending on scientific research. Lack of funding is a real impediment to spending a lot of time thinking deeply about your chosen topic.

Cheap shot:

"The problem here is that the myth of the lone genius is itself a myth. History (ancient and recent) is full of geniuses who came up with a revolutionary idea largely on their own"

This sentence reads like "Of course the myth of the lone genius is itself a myth. Look at all these myths of lone geniuses they are full of geniuses.

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I guess I had always wondered about the "lone genius" idea in a way that focused more on the "genius" part than the "lone" part - to what extent were the originators of historically important ideas replaceable? Was relativity something someone else would have come up with within the next five or so years anyway, or was there something specific to Einstein that made him uniquely able to come up with it?

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To me, the question is "Are certain advancements inevitable once preconditions are met?" If Einstein had been hit by a truck at age 3, would we now have a theory of relativity from someone else? My gut instincts is that the answer is yes. But short of experiments bumping off geniuses and waiting, it's going to have to remain in the realm of thought experiments :-)

More to the point, I see the Myth of the Lone Genius as push back against the human brain's tendency to over-value the remarkable and conflate exceptional competence in one area with competence in all.

Like most noble lies, it's designed to make us look at things a little more rationally than our brains would prefer. It's also not terribly likely to succeed. The brain gets what the brain wants.

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Jun 23, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

"Maybe I’m overthinking all of this - does the myth of the lone genius really affect anyone’s thinking in any substantial way?"

Yes - anti-lone-genius management is an active part of corporate thinking. I was discussing this article with a few friends and they all feel that the "myth of the lone genius" informs their workplaces.

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Jun 23, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

Otto Rank wrote in 1932 about the cult of genius in Art and Artist.

"the value set on great artists depends on the predominant ide-

ology of their time; if it is still collective, that artist will be regarded as the greatest

of his time, and the finest representative of it in the future, who has expressed the

collective elements in their purest and most vigorous form. If on the other hand the

general ideology is interwoven with individualistic tendencies, as at the Renaissance

and in the succeeding “age of genius,” the greatest artist will be he who embodies

this individualized collective ideology in the purest form which means, who has most

definitely impressed on traditional forms the stamp of his personality, or (speaking in

collective terms) individualism. The highest type of artist is he who can use the typical

conflict of humanity within himself to produce collective values, which, though akin

to the traditional in form and content because in principle they spring from the same

conflict are yet individual, and new creations of these collective values, in that they

present the personal ideology of the artist who is the representative of his age.”

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I'm not really sure exactly why anyone would want to believe in either side of this. People are different, aren't they? There are plenty of examples of people achieving breakthrough work largely independently and also some great collaborations.

One thing I have noticed: The more alone you are the better your reality testing needs to be to avoid becoming a crackpot. And reality testing can be startlingly domain specific. This might be a driver of the debate.

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Jun 25, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

I think this is mostly a "you didn't build that" kind of ideological statement. Essentially an attempt to disperse praise for egalitarian reasons.

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I agree, and though I would even say that current (academic) culture is becoming worse at encouraging critical thought in general, I want to play devils advocate on why the myth may be inconsequential or even good for mental health: Revolutionary ideas require breaks with conventions and preconceptions, and critical thought of the highest order, so the myth filters those unfit to spend their time doing this and keeps them sane and in society. Revolutionary thinkers are pulled where they need to go by their confidence in their idea or direction of thought, so the myth rightfully filters out those who are less confident in their idea (or capacity for revolutionary thought) than they are in what others/society prescribes them (the myth).

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The thing is, the lone genius is a common trope in TV and movies (and Atlas Shrugged) and thus promotes idea #4 which you attribute instead to the idea that "lone genius is a myth".

The trope portrays geniuses as so smart and so fast and so prolific that a puny human with a low IQ like 125 has little hope of having any relevance in comparison. Which is why I think of "lone genius" as a dangerous myth despite the fact that I myself behave like a lone genius (spending years developing various open source software and ideas, alone, with my puny IQ-125 thought processes)

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Jun 28, 2021Liked by Roger’s Bacon

This is an interesting take. It made me wonder that perhaps what we call the proverbial 'Eureka moment' isn't just a very particular kind of luck. This rare luck is very particular because the proto-genius must be in a rather specific place and time both physically and --perhaps most importantly-- a social or professional place and time in order to bump into the right idea, and mots critically have that idea taken seriously enough by others.

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First, you need to put away your thesaurus and get your terminology straight: "myth", "cliche", "archetype". Which one of these is the concept of the "lone genius", exactly? Is it supposed to be all three, or even more?

Second, you need to learn what a straw man argument is. Almost no one has ever believed in the scarecrow you raise, nor has it had any influence on practical activity. The debate, assuming there is one, is over just how solitary a given individual is who produces great work. At times in your very confused piece you seem to get this, sort of, but your palpable a priori bias against the very idea (descending to profanity is a common giveaway) gives your rant very little credibility.

As to your erroneous assessment of genius in purely social and collectivist terms, that will have to await another day. I'll give you a hint, though: Read Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", sometime.

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Jan 4, 2022Liked by Roger’s Bacon

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere in the comments already but I have heard several times that Mullis' breakthrough was related to his use of LSD, and came to him during/after a trip.

This also reminds me of current research on psychedelics and creativity (see e.g. the REBUS model by Carhart-Harris and Friston), in which psychedelics are related to "prior relaxation" from a Bayesian brain perspective, allowing the user to relax preconceived notions and gain new perspectives on reality.

Coincidentally, this also fits the narrative of the unfavourable turns Mullis later took, which could relate to a overly relaxed/creative take on reality.

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