Eliezer Yudkowsky

So that if you claim to have the potential to do what Einstein did, it is just the same as claiming Einstein's rank, rising far above your assigned status in the tribe.

I'm not phrasing this well, but then I'm trying to dissect a confused thought.

Einstein belongs to a separate magisterium, the sacred magisterium.

The sacred magisterium is distinct from the mundane magisterium.

You can't set out to be Einstein in the way you can set out to be a full professor or a CEO.

Only beings with divine potential can enter the sacred magisterium, and then it is only fulfilling a destiny they already have.

So if you say you want to outdo Einstein, you're claiming to already be part of the sacred magisterium.

You claim to have the same aura of destiny that Einstein was born with, like a royal birthright.

But Eliezer, you say, surely not.

Everyone can become Einstein.

You mean to say not everyone can do better than Einstein?

Um, yeah, that's what I meant.

Well, in the modern world, you may be correct.

You probably should remember that I am a transhumanist, going around looking at people thinking, you know, it just sucks that not everyone has the potential to do better than Einstein, and this seems like a fixable problem.

It colors one's attitude.

But in the modern world, yes, not everyone has the potential to be Einstein.

Still, how can I put this...

There's a phrase I once heard, can't remember where, just another Jewish genius, some poet or author or philosopher or other, brilliant at a young age doing something not tremendously important in the grand scheme of things, not all that influential, who ended up being dismissed as just another Jewish genius.

If Einstein had chosen the wrong angle of attack on his problems,

if he hadn't chosen a sufficiently important problem to work on, if he hadn't persisted for years, if he'd taken any number of wrong turns, or if someone else had solved the problem first, then dear Albert would have ended up as just another Jewish genius.