this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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To be fair, back then they knew orders of magnitude less stuff. The span of their knowledge was comparable to, like, a modern middle schooler. Super impressive don't get me wrong, but this was back when you could just learn basically everything humanity knew about a subject like "chemistry" if you had a reasonable amount of free time and gumption.
I could name every Pokemon back in 1998, I think a lot of people could, or at least get most of them. That's a different feat today. Don't compare yourself to past polymaths too much.
I mean, it's more like comparing oneself to present polymaths, who are similarly impressive except for the "contributing new knowledge" thing.