[posterboy]

Interesting thought. We are after all posting under a link to John C. Baez.

But the thought is ultimately naive. The pedastol we put these people on doesn't grow with the number of people alive. I don't know what model of a social network you would need to make that calcjlation. The measure of genious that should obviously be part of that theory, but I am sure such measure does not exist objectively.

Besides, I'd argue that with an evergrowing body of knowledge and tooling necessary to weild it, the requirements and constraints for a genious today are different from the times that you want to compare. For a measure and linear growth you would need a linear space to begin with.

Really though, I just wanted to say that there is a ton of smart people out there. Shoulders of giants and all. Which should be a humbling thought.