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"Is there anyone who died in the last decade you could make that sort of claim for?"

Sure, Toni Morrison. Whitney Houston. Prince. Steve Jobs (slightly over a decade). I don't know, the list goes on? There are plenty of culture shifting geniuses among us. It just doesn't look the same as it did in the 19th and early 20th century.

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None of those people are geniuses.

According to whose definition? If Tolstoy, Marx and Beethoven count as geniuses, I don't see an argument for excluding Asimov, Musk or Eminem.

If Beethoven is on that list, so is Prince. If Thomas Hardy is on that list, so is Toni Morrison. Mozart could write a 5 voice fugato, and Quincy Jones can score out an orchestration without even sitting at a piano.

There is no shortage of exceptional people changing how we think about and interact with the world. Again, it just doesn't look the same as it did in the past. You might not like them -- I really don't care for Thomas Hardy's writing and Freud is largely cast aside these days -- but that doesn't mean they aren't geniuses.

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