I see many /sci/ posters claiming that they've achieved

>>7997355
in the real world success is measured in terms of achievements.

some of the people who don't have them try to bullshit themselves and others.

how fascinating.

You're right. The posters on /sci/ who claim they could have invented calculus are failures who want to cling on to something because their self-worth is determined by how "smart" they see themselves as being. This creates a lot of cognitive dissonance when they are faced the with reality of them being failures in science (not graduating high school, college, not finishing their graduate degree, not publishing breakthroughs in their fields). They try to compensate for this by claiming they were "born in the wrong era".

Just ignore these people. It's not worth it to get into an argument with them.

>>7997355
It seems troubling that some of us value having the ability to regurgitate what we're taught more than that freethinking ability...

words hurt you know :(

>>7997368
A fool thinks himself to be wise. But a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

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>>7997355

You're pretty smart for a gorilla poster.

>>7997386
What's your beef with gorilla posters?

I was watching a programme about how humans started applying mathematics to the world on PBS and they were talking about gravity. Galileo asked the question what's the relationship between distance fallen and time taken? Before I studied physics I had never once thought about this, things just fall, probably twice as far would take twice as long is what everyone assumes and takes for granted. Likewise Newton realized that what makes things fall to Earth is what makes the Moon go around the Earth. I would never have made this link myself. The Moon just pushes itself around is what we plebs would assume. This is real genius; breaking free of common sense, challenging assumptions, making links between things

>>7997376
Someone has to tell you.

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>>7997355
I wouldn't have done shit and I can rightfully and proudly say so because I can't be asked to do a god damned thing.

>>7997470
>"I'm smart but lazy!"

Calculus is easy I'm sure if I was rich i would've contributed to science or math in one way or another. Let's face it there were very few people back then that were actually financially able to devote their lives to academia. I would bet that I am smarter than Newton.

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>>7997474
Problem officer?

>>7997492
This is classic excuse number two
>"If only I was rich"
I'll have you know that Newton was a poor farmer's son and got into Cambridge University on charity.

Serious question /sci/, which discoveries really did come out of nowhere and fuck up prevailing wisdom? Einstein and Newton and Darwin? Or was it all the next logical step?

>>7997536
Galileo's law of falling bodies
Bohr's quantized atom
Hubble's expanding universe

>>7997424
I fucking like you.

>>7997569
aww thanks

>>7997518
You forgot the part that his mom married a wealthy guy and therefor it was possible for him to enter cambridge

>>7997375
Most of the great discoveries came with the Reformation which came about in a large part by Black Death, an enormous yoke was lifted from the populations of Europe and even more so with the new world settlers. In fact this innovation was somewhat forced as people had to think for themselves as a matter of survival.

Those days are long gone and I suspect it will take another large die off for another Renaissance to occur. In fact I could argue we are already well into another dark age, religion rising, Inquisitions, crusading... most of the world lives in poverty and civilization seems to be hanging by a precarious thread most days. We are, after all, just gorillas, all science is a means to an end, that end is subjugation.

>>7997536
Michelson-Morley really did seem to come out of nowhere. Most if not all physicists believed the aether exists.
Darwin probably not, someone else came up with very similar ideas (no, I don't mean Lamarck or anything) around the same time, forgot the name.
Newton's biggest success and his fame mostly came from teaching us how physics would be done in the coming centuries.

>>7997494
yeah, judging by that filename you ripped that GIF from a booru

>>7997355
Because the human population is much larger than it was in the past.
So it stands to reason that there are more modern "Galileos and Newtons" than in the past, it's just that they've been beaten to the punch.

>>7997628
You can get into Cambridge for free today, I don't know why you are making this excuse
>>7997736
>Unprecedented exponential technical growth
>Dark ages
Please fuck off with your "le past was better"
>>7997801
Cumulatively there were more people in the past. Also your argument is "I am smart enough to outsmart a million people but not a billion" My point is you couldn't even outsmart a million.

>>7997835
>Cumulatively there were more people in the past.
Yeah, but not nearly as many people who had the foundation that would allow for newtonian tier discoveries.
The smartest human who ever lived could have just as easily been a wandering hunter gatherer who didn't have the foundations of his predecessors to make any shocking discoveries.
>Also your argument is "I am smart enough to outsmart a million people but not a billion" My point is you couldn't even outsmart a million.
I might not be but others are. I'm not speaking for myself and I never was. I'm already aware I'm a lazy dumb nigger.
I was just explaining why people who claim things like OP said were claimed could be right.
Calm down stop being so angry son.

>>7997846
People have been dropping things for millenia, the Romans could have worked out what Galileo did but they didn't. Why?

>>7997355
>I see many /sci/ posters claiming that they've achieved nothing because all research is now in the hands of big corporations and million dollar equipment
Maybe replace "all research" with "a vast amount of commercially profitable research"

>and that if they were born in Galileo's or Newton's time they would have come up with gravitation and calculus etc all by themselves because it's "basic stuff"
More like:
they would have had a greater chance to make some kind of useful contribution to science fundamentals assuming the basic benefits of modern education were available.

>>7997355
Are you saying there is nothing to this "all the low hanging fruit has been taken" theory ?
I mean you can only "discover" water is two atoms of hydrogen one atom of oxygen one time right ?

>>7997355
Depends on the field, desu senpai. Fields do go in a boom and bust cycle: there is a golden age for them, and you can really be too late for it. It gets especially worse when your field stop being in the exploratory stage, and multiple companies come in with their research team of 20 PhDs and billions in equipment. Good luck trying to achieve or publish anything significant.

>>7997355
Every single one of those posters were just fucking around, you autist. Kill yurself