https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teren ce_Tao Is there really

every prof i had in college grew up with a professor for a parent

>>7714536
>implying Newton was a genius
I want this meme to stop. Newton was not a genius. He only did highschool math and physics. Calculus is NOT higher math.

>>7714544
le hooky fish face

>>7714536
I have never understood why Terrence Tao is the pinup. By his own admission, he doesn't think he has contributed enough to the literature to be put on high ground.

Why not Jacob Lurie, who has published a lot more novel material by the same age? Just kind of strange.

Just grab a bottle and enjoy the feeling of being forever a no one.

>>7714536
It depends. If your only objective is be as succesful as people of that kind, not only you should quit science, but you should quit EVERYTHING in life because there will always be people better than you at what you do.

Therefore, this was just an elaborated way to suggest you to kill yourself, OP.

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You can get a bachelors degree sure

It should be obvious to you that only a select few are suitable for research at a national labs-scale level. As Macho Man said, the cream rises to the top.

>>7714568
I assume because of the fields medal. Although I personally prefer Lurie's work because I work with groups and not harmonic analysis.

>>7714544

Have you ever heard of context?
Try reading a history book to gain some, faggot.

Let me guess: you think Newton was sitting around differentiating polynomials. He revolutionized physics. He developed new mathematics to express his ideas. He laid the foundation for later works.

You obviously have no understanding of what these historically great figures were capable of.

You're one of those guys that thinks
> HUrR-- GausS wuzn't smarrt. Ef eye Cud have goned bake in tyme, I cud hav solved it 2.

You exist in a system that is a product of great thinkers past. Until you've done something original that is so culturally significant that it becomes common knowledge and worth knowing centuries later, calm down.

>>7714600
Calculus is so simple, inventing it wasn't that big of an achievement. Any child could have done it. Deal with it, brainlet. I have respect for Gauss or Riemann, they actually discovered something non-trivial. Newton on the other hand just formalized the obvious.

>>7714607
I bet you think that people in the stone age were really stupid because they didn't know how to use fire.

>>7714633
I think he only means that calculus is not that impressive. Sure, I respect the guy for coming up with it but I find Calculus to be the most boring branch of mathematics. While I find solving problems in other areas fun and engaging, calculus just gets tedious.

>>7714633
People in the stone age used fire

>>7714641
Not in the entirety of the stone age. There was a time before man discovered fire.

>>7714633
Are you saying people in the stone age weren't stupid as fuck?

>>7714655
Considering that the homo sapiens is been around for thousands of years, they probably were as smart (or at least were capable of developing the same level of intelligence) as today's people. The difference is that they didn't have the same knowledge and nutrition that we have today.

>>7714666
>denying evolution that hard
Can't tell if trolling or retarded.

Intelligence has been rising significantly over the last few thousand years, in particular after the industrial revolution. The average human from 300 years ago would be considered clinically retarded by today's standards. This is not a matter of culture or knowledge, but of innate intelligence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

>>7714670
I would claim the Flynn effect is more so due to accumulated knowledge and standardized schooling/culture. IQ testing is fairly notorious for being based on a certain set of cultural standards, and much of what is on the tests is going to be learned in school (not explicitly but through fostering the critical think skills).

I assume you meant this as "if you took a child from 300 years ago and raised it now" rather than "a random adult from 300 years ago." Of course in the latter case, it would unlikely that theysould have formal schooling, so I doubt our current IQ tests could accurately apply.

It doesn't take a genius to contribute something meaningful. Just learn to think outside the box, and make your own way.

its slightly helpful when your mom was a mathematics and physics professor

>>7714670
The Flynn effect is not g-loaded. It is not an increase in intelligence.

>>7714736
Also helps when your father was a pediatrician who specializes in advanced education.

T. T. was literally nurtured, trained and disciplined during his entire childhood and adolescence to become the perfect math machine.

But that's beside the point of this thread. And the answer is of course non-geniuses can succeed in STEM. You mentioned a classic example: Newton. He wasn't even close to being a genius, he just discovered the right thing at the right time. And if it wasn't him, someone would, in fact Leibniz did develop Calculus at the same time as him. His PNPM was influential, but it's just a compilation of all the Physics ideas that were around at that time. Einstein is another hack who got absurd amounts of praise, yet flat out copied his magnum opus from the work of the actual genius in the story, Henri Poincaré. Same with Thomas Edison, but you already know that.

>>7714607
By that logic, Einstein was a retard because there was a time when he didn't even know that E = mc^2

>>7714670
Completely not true. The Victorians are estimated to have IQs nearly a full standard deviation above the average today

>>7715087
True. According to reaction times (our physiological processing speed) at least, which are large scale factors. Reaction times have gone up approx 120ms. Factors that correlate less with physiological intelligence have gone up due to improvements in education. The Flynn effect just means that the population reached its saturation point for education.
http://ge
.tt/352
reKg/v/0

>>7714666
>>7714670

Most likely, humans in the past had much better spatial awareness and visual processing than us. The monuments and works of art at the dawn of civilization are in part a testament. The decline in art from 19th century grand conceit to the post modernist abstractions of today also signify a shift away from a culture of visual processing. Also, most humans in the past had better working memory. Thanks to computers, our attention and information retention has gone down significantly. So just like the Jews, we would have vastly improved verbal and mathematical abilities but reduced visuo-spatial.

Why is this happening? Humans have always been selected for improved abilities in communication, hunting and tool making. Those who were smart and cunning accumulated the most resources, survived the longest and had the most children. After the industrial revolution, the opposite began to happen. Idiots, who ignore contraceptives and have children despite their inability to support them financially, now have higher fertility rates. On a global scale, people from developing countries with significantly lower average IQ's also have more children.

>>7714792
>T. T. was literally nurtured, trained and disciplined during his entire childhood and adolescence to become the perfect math machine.

So basically he is like the Tiger Woods or Mozart of math.

>>7715697
>Mozart

more like Bach

>>7714792
>discovered
That's not how you spell "plagiarized"

>>7714544
Loled.

>>7715697
Mozart had natural talent, something that is rare in most asian-hover-parent households

>>7714536
>actually using Tao as example
top kek
why don't we look what he thinks of that premise himself?
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/

>>7715712
sure

Calculus seems "piss easy" and "obvious" because it's been refined for hundreds of years. The formalism, clarity, and concreteness of modern calculus is not even very representative of the actual original works by these people. Back then even math symbolism didn't resemble what it is now for example a lot of the time equations were described with words.
These men were lucky in many ways: to have survived, to have had access to resources of knowledge AND to not be dirt poor was very rare.
That being said, they were still very intelligent. Its easier to think of calculus when you've already learned it, than to conceive the idea and lay down the fundamentals and prove it all concisely etc.

Don't even really know what I'm trying to say. I just think its funny seeing all the mad, cocky fucks on /sci/ bash on historically famous people. They'll say discovering calculus is easy and then in the same sentence brag they could do it. If its so piss easy then why brag you could do it? Also the same mad sci kek would insist he be lauded for all of history if he were the one to discover it way back when.

>>7715712
No one had to hover over Tao. It was genetic. He started reading and counting on his own when he was 1 or 2. He 6 year old kids how to read as a six year old. Both his brothers are also high geniuses and have successful careers. A double math major and a R&D leader at google.

It's thanks to Tao's parents that he became productive at all. Most geniuses are left entirely to their own devices, which is good for their intellectual development, but not for emotional and social. Thanks to his support system, Tao didn't end up like Will Sidis (guy Good Will Hunting is based off of).

>>7715814
Sorry major sentence fail. He taught 6 year old kids how to read as a 2 year old*

>>7714607
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

If it was so easy, why wasn't it done until the 17th century? The ideas were touched upon by the Greeks(believed to be Archimedes) three thousand years earlier, but not a single 'child' managed to develop the calculus in the between time. You don't understand how math or science develop.

>>7715833
>why wasn't it done until the 17th century?
Because of the Flynn effect. People in that time were literal retards.

>>7715738
Thumbs up, my sir.
This board is full of people that think
math and science is the baby shit they do in undergrad.. They have yet to realize that something as simple as, say, the formal definition of a limit, took hundreds of years to flesh out. But:

> hurr derpp, Cauchy wuzn't no geenyus! Ef EyE was derr, I cud hayve maked up dat definishun

>>7715838

I'll read about the Flynn effect in a moment,
but I don't think it matters here. The ideas necessary for integration and differentiation were born thousands of years before Newton and Leibniz.

If they were so easy, it shouldn't have taken that long to get calculus down in the rudimentary forms of Leibniz and Newton.

I agree.. When an problem has been floating around unsolved for hundreds and hundreds of years, and has maintained some form of continued interest in being solved, machinery will eventually develop that makes it seem trivial.

If everyone here is such a badass, go prove or construct a counter example for the Navier-Stokes problem.. It's old-school fluid mechanics, right? So Smurt.

>>7714536
Of course. Why would you give up anyways? STEM is interesting, that should be your motivation.

>>7715738
From what I see, most people on this board completely misunderstand the the fundamental point of math. Math isn't based on anything in the present. The process of math is to develop frameworks which may or may not be used in the future. That part is incredibly difficult and requires genius to do. The frameworks developed today will be as easy in the future as calculus is today.

>>7714655
They probably weren't. You have to imagine life without the benefit of education.

I guarantee if we sent you to live with your cavemen ancestors, you'd be dead a week later.

>>7714587
H I G H T E S T
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T

>>7715147
>According to reaction times (our physiological processing speed) at least
This doesn't seem like a good indication of intelligence though. Someone who plays vidya 14 hours a day is bound to have quicker reaction time than say, Stephen Hawking. That doesn't mean the gamer is smarter.

>>7714536
>I will never be able to be even close to as successful as people like that.
Realistically speaking, you probably won't be. They are like the exceptions, not the norms.

It doesn't mean you can't contribute to STEM in a meaningful way. It just requires hard work.

>>7715838
>The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day
>1930 to the present day
>crystallize intelligence test scores
K.

>>7714536
Who cares. At the end of the day, the job of a scientist or researcher is just a job. Heck, I'm a physicist, far from being a genius, still do a good job, enjoy doing a good job, and get paid OK-ish.

Never cared for the whole 'genius' bit, and I'd say 99% of colleagues I had didn't either. It's just a job.

>>7714587
muh test

>>7714536
> I will never be able to be even close to as successful as people like that.
Don't let others success be your downfall.

This kind of thinking really gets me all the time, I keep trying to remind my self that I should be encouraged that others are successful, rather than trying to measure up to them.

take care anon

>duh Flynn effect!
Where are your great achievements, anons? Where are your works that will be named after you and taught to all humans to come for centuries?

Aren't you guys more intelligent than literal retards like Newton and hacks like Einstein? =^)

>>7714536
Ive always found that it is best to simply think of yourself as a high level genius. Its the best way to deal with this kind of insecurity.

Ultimately, even if really are not as smart as you thought you were, it is more likely that you will contribute something if you believe that you have the capability.

>>7714543
But then who was the first prof in their lineage?

Fuck, props to all the self-made academics out there. You all did what I couldn't.

>>7716326
Well my dad has a doctorate in theology and a masters in chem engineering. My mom has a doctorate in political science and a bachelors in meta ethics. My dad was a tenured professor before he quit his job to work in the clergy and my mom is a research professor at a big uni.

My dad's dad was a carpenter who had the brains to be a civil engineer (according to tests) but not enough money for an education. my grandfather's dad was a tomb raider zainichi in Hiroshima.

My mom's mom was a CEO and his dad was a merchant.

But considering the regression to the mean, smart parents are likely to have children that are dumber than them but still above average. y=x + h^2((A+B)/2) - x)

Two parents with IQ 140 would have a child with an IQ of 119.6 given heritability .7 and an average population IQ of 100.

A lot of exceptional people have unexceptional parents. Srinavasa Ramanujan's parents were a common clerk and housewife and he himself was rather impoverished.

>>7716372
I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that like attracts like. Your parents both working in academia for example your dad preferred educated pussy he met in grad-school to something off the street.

>>7715958
processing, not your muscle reflexes.
as in, use single sense, recognize, process, react to that.

Tbh I agree that if you aren't a genius you're probably not going to make waves in the world of STEM, but if your goal is to be revolutionary you're probably going to be miserable no matter what field you choose to pursue. Whatever you do, be it science or business or art, you should do to for personal fulfillment, or at worst for money, and not for the glory/fame of being "the best". Unless you're one of the very few geniuses born every generation, there will always be someone better than you, and it's something the rest of us have to learn to live with.

>>7716585
I understand that, which is why I suggested a gamer, and not an athlete.

>>7714544
10/10, didn't see coming.

>>7714600
>>7714633
>>7714639
ITT, people falling for most obvious troll of all time.

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>>7714536
The success of Tao remains to be seen.

also, it is unlikely that you will be better than average if you do not have parents who teaches you maths in your childhood

>>7714536
is tao better than grothendieck?

>>7717084
dear god no

This thread is cancer jesus fuck.

>>7717825
Casual math fans are the worst.

>>7717856
As opposed to?

>>7714536
Of course you won't come close. But who are you living for? Some abstract ideal, or for yourself? Are you a filthy commie?

>>7716898
Ok so I guess a breakthrough prize and a fields medal aren't "success." I guess being one of the youngest tenured professors at UCLA and working with Erdos as a kid doesn't count as success.

>>7714536
>being jealous

Why bother doing anything? We're all going to die, right?

>>7714587
I thought this was an issue of acrosstheboard underfunding tho

>>7719071
Yep. Become a nihilist/apatheist and just forget it all.