[phtrivier]

They can't exist any more for structural reason.

This generation was classically educated, without TV or social media in their childhood. They spent the time we're wasting on HN reading _books_ and following the discipline their elders learned in WWI. They had plenty of occasions to tinker.

I claim the brains of those generation was structurally different from ours, and we're talking about the best minds of this generation.

It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads" - the reality is that, no, we webshits are not the "best minds".

[antonfire]

> It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads".

"The last generation was better because they read _books_ and had _discipline_ and didn't waste their time on frivolous garbage" is also a trope.

[chrisbaker98]

Doesn't mean it's wrong.

[fastball]

It probably is though. Sure, they didn't have as much distractions, but they also didn't have the sum total of the world's knowledge at their fingertips in the same way we do today.

People having been saying "this next generation is inferior to the last one" since the ancient Greeks. If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario.

[phtrivier]

> If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario.

Been on Twitter, Facebook, or Hacker News lately ?

More seriously, I really fear this kind of stuff is, to some extend, new : https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones...

(Although, maybe it's comparable to the "opium epidemics" of the 1800s ?)

Ironically, I should stop having this kind of conversation... On social network.

[salmo]

This general idea that a previous generation was better because they lead a less pampered life goes back to some of the earliest writing. Yet here we are.

World changing people seem to me to be very much the right people in the right place at the right time. The best way to find them is to try to create those places now.

Opportunities for WWII and post-war era research don’t exist now. Everything with funding is very short term, politicized, and narrowly focused within a micro specialty.

Realistically, I don’t think that will change until it has to.

[govg]

I mean, sure. But at the same time they were constrained by the tools of their time, had no internet for instant information access and spread, and scientific collaboration has never been at a higher level than it is now. There's no reason to believe that people who grow up with instant lookup and massive computational power will somehow be less capable than people whose only tools were pen and pencil. What is possible now couldn't even be dreamed of back then.

[quickthrower2]

Webshits are not working on ads