[WorldMaker]

One very different answer to this: we've lost a lot of "boring but living wage" jobs with little to no supervision. Einstein had a lot of time to think and sketch and write formulas at jobs like the Swiss Patent Office. How many jobs do you see around you that you can do that and survive? We've seen an incredible rise in "bullshit jobs" but we've also elevated corporate surveillance to incredible heights and much of these "bullshit jobs" are about filling the employee's time with meaningless tasks that don't offer opportunities for distractions, not even culturally useful distractions like math or science or art.

Maybe the next Einstein is currently being asked to at least wiggle their mouse every 30 seconds to pretend they are busy on corporate spreadsheets, spend at least four hours in meetings each day, and aren't even allowed pencils and papers to sketch on at their desk because it is a PII or other corporate secrets exfiltration risk. Good luck to them stringing together a coherent thought, much less a working theory to revolutionize physics.

[btrettel]

I was a USPTO patent examiner twice before. The job today is not as you describe, and I doubt it was as you describe in Einstein's day either.

By Einstein's own words, being a patent examiner was a lot of work [1, pp. 102--103]:

> he complained about the workload: "I have a frightful lot of work. Eight hours at the office each day and at least one private lesson, and then I have my scientific work." [26] Once he had settled in, though, he found his forty-eight hours per week at the office tolerable. When his friend Habicht was not entirely satisfied with the school service, in which he had landed after completing his studies, Einstein suggested that one day he would smuggle Habicht in among the "patent slaves" and tried to commend the work to him by observing that "along with the eight hours of work there are also eight hours of fun in the day, and then there is also Sunday." [27]

As a former patent examiner, I know precisely what he meant when he described himself as a "patent slave". I basically had a quota to meet, and it was quite challenging to do and meet any reasonable quality standard.

You can find sources like [2, p. 4] that indicate he did do some research at the Swiss patent office, but it's a secondary source:

> Rudolf Kayser, Einstein's son-in-law writes in his biography on Einstein, "He soon discovered that he could find time to devote to his own scientific studies if he did his work in less time. But discretion was necessary, for though authorities may find slow work satisfactory, the saving of time for personal pursuits is officially forbidden. Worried, Einstein saw to it that the small sheets of paper on which he wrote and figured vanished into his desk-drawer as soon as he heard footsteps approaching behind his door.

I don't doubt that he did some research there, but it probably wasn't much judging by Einstein's own words and my own time as a patent examiner over 100 years later.

[1] A. Fölsing, Albert Einstein: a biography. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1997.

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.3904

[southernplaces7]

Thank you. A comment that puts some half-invented "factual" opinion into perspective with genuine and sourced details is always appreciated. If anything, most people today have more leisure time than was remotely the case in Einstein's youth, but they often fill it with a complete surfeit of blandly trivial distractions, and in some cases, evade responsibility for this detail by claiming that they're somehow suffering excessively under corporate wage slavery.

[Ekaros]

Second view might be that there is lot more distractions.

Every computer worker have internet and probably phone. With all of the social media, and endless ways to waste time. So even if Einstein would have time, they would be occupied on wasting their time on HN or something else. You might have been able to bring a book or day's newspaper to office, but after you are done with that?

[johnnyworker]

> Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.

> He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled.

> And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

-- Chuck Palahniuk, "Lullaby"

[zuzuleinen]

Yes, it looks like people spend too much time in focus mode than diffuse mode.

The diffuse mode is the one that gives us creativity.

[bluedino]

>> we've lost a lot of "boring but living wage" jobs with little to no supervision. Einstein had a lot of time to think and sketch and write formulas at jobs like the Swiss Patent Office. How many jobs do you see around you that you can do that and survive?

Aren't you describing most office jobs? Don't a lot of people in our industry say they do "1, maybe 2 hours of real work each day"?

[JohnFen]

> Don't a lot of people in our industry say they do "1, maybe 2 hours of real work each day"?

Yes, but that doesn't mean people have 6 or 7 hours of free time every day. It means that 6 or 7 hours of the day is absorbed by work activities that don't contribute to the actual work.

[MichaelZuo]

Not from my understanding, it's very rare for peripheral activities to take up multiple hours every day on average, in a well oiled team at least.

Of course there will always be Dilbert esque situations but the vast majority of actual or potential super-geniuses I imagine would have at least a few hours of actual free time per day, on average.

[JohnFen]

It's true that if you just add up the minutes, then peripheral activities don't take up the majority of the time. But you also have to take into account the cost of context-switching. An hour-long meeting costs more than an hour of time because you have to ramp back up to speed afterwards. On average, this takes about 20 minutes. When you add in all of the distractions through the day -- meetings, people talking in the next cube, people stopping by for a "quick question", that sort of thing, that ramping-up can absorb a ton of time.

[MichaelZuo]

Not for actual or potential super geniuses similar in situation to Einstein at the Swiss patent office.

By definition they spend very little time and effort on 'context-switching'.

[aatd86]

At what age was he there though?

What about the Pascals, Newtons etc.?

These people were ultra precocious.

Nowadays, people navigate toward soft or practical science such as Comp.Sci or Medicine (as practionners)...

Scientists from yesteryear seemed to be more self-driven too.

[helij]

The rest is admin, meetings and actually thinking on how to solve the problem (this one is actually 24/7).

[sitzkrieg]

to that point, you may enjoy this

https://www.pearlleff.com/the-power-of-free-time

[Borg3]

Very well said. Im currently (most of time actually) have a great job, where I have quite a lot of free time (DC admin). Thanks to this, some of that time is spent on R&D of my own tools. And this creates nicely feedback loop. I have better tools, so I do my job better and more effective, creating more free time that I can spend on R&D.

[lencastre]

Maybe what worked for the real Einstein isn’t working for the next one, geniuses exist and may be more common than we think, but opportunity, necessity, and nurture perhaps steered them from even realizing their own potential, or even knowing they have it.