Re: [Fwd: QOTD: Moderately Gifted.]

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 10 2001 - 09:43:45 MDT


måndagen den 9 april 2001 20:46 Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de quoted
someone who quoted Kurt Vonnegut:
> "... simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing
> press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately
> gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years
> ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern
> communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but
> world's champions.

I don't think this is true in all areas. Sure, why listen to your local good
singer when you can get the song from the brilliant singer on radio? But for
example in science all the Salieri's are doing the necessary and important
grunt work of filling out the system; the scientific Mozart's may break new
ground, but they are too few and unreliable to make anything truly solid.



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