History Memes

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.

Put down your phone and step away from all screens and see how much bandwidth your mind has

That Persian guy also couldn't multitask because basically nobody can multitask well. He got good at all of those things by doing one thing at a time.

Explanation: Altair ibn Rashdun was a Persian polymath who, in 737 published the book : Kitab Al İfrit, Salaam Takvim, which was the first written discovery of me making this shit up.

What a terrible missed opportunity to make money for shareholders

There's a plaque somewhere in Dublin that said "Blah blah blah lived here; scientist, engineer, financier, manager..." For like 20 professions. As it happens, their son became a famous poet, can't remember the name right now, and he made his own plaque right below it, which said "Blah blah blah Jr lived here; author, poet, wit."

I couldn't help but feel that one of them was dramatically more successful than the other.

Comparison is the thief of joy

Meanwhile ignorance is bliss, I'm dumb as shit, and happier than a pig in muck