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Comment by robohoe | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me how many Founding Fathers were part-time scientists back in the day.

This is probably what many of us would do if we weren't so easily distracted by digital apparatuses.

Many of us could not be brilliant polymaths. Also, they did have wealth via slavery plantations that allowed them fancy tutors, expensive libraries, and top class educations.

And there was just simply a lot less to know.

You may know more than them, yet you merely stand on the shoulders of ever taller giants. Discounting the expense and difficulty of knowledge at the time isn't very illuminating.

I'm not disputing that. I'm responsible for zero new discoveries and if some of these polymaths were alive today, they would be far smarter than I am. However the "a lot" they knew about dozens of subjects combined is less than what somebody who is learned in one of those subjects would have to know today. It's impossible for somebody to be working on, say, string theory and also be an expert in two other subjects. There's simply too much to know.

I mean, look at Elon Musk and John Carmack. Pretty good counter examples to the narrative that you can't be good at more than one domain. Yes, they're very smart, but they're also very focused and driven individuals.

And then there is Gell-Mann (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann) who modestly said he knows a lot about lots of things (which is btw correct)

There may be more that is knowable now than back then, but I doubt you or I actually know more than an educated person back then. We just know different stuff.

> There may be more that is knowable now than back then

That is not true. I guess you mean in the sense that our horizons have broadened because we have access to so much more information than people used to have, but in terms of things that can be known, nothing has changed. The facts of the universe are the same as they ever were.

That's trivially false by looking at the field of history.

Take a look at the old entrance exams to ivy league schools from back then.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard...

I think many of us could. I imagine as long as you have some minimal level of intelligence and some high degree of motivation. Incidentally, Benjamin Franklin, who did not own a plantation, founded one of the first book lending clubs which would later evolve into public libraries.

http://www.benjamin-franklin-history.org/lending-library/

Many of us could, but would not be. After all, there was a lot of time without any digital distractions. I don't think digital distractions is what keeps us from educating ourselves.

Yeah but today we have Internet. Researching things has never been easier.

This bit is about weather and crops more than it is about science. It is not a surprising knowledge, given that the US were essentially an agrarian society back then.

Well, among people in IT there are many blogs with musings about climate, philosophy, engineering, etc. A lot of content get shared here.

Nothing never: smart people with enough income to have liberty to pursue their passions and means to share it.

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