Is Peter Thiel’s “stagnation thesis” partially caused by increase in Genius-phobia?

In this article I want to dissect a thought that Peter Thiel often presents and I want to discuss it from the perspective of Genius-phobia.

Thiel often presents the case for technological stagnation outside of the realm of bits (in atoms, biotech, etc) and usually attributes it to a general rise in conformity thinking.

He says that 100 years ago if one slept and woke up 20 years later one would be in a completely different world. But nowadays if that happened, one will wake up into a world where aside from the screens not much has changed.

Over the last few decades geniuses who had some impact on technological progress were Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos.

But overall the progress has slowed down and the number of geniuses seems to have decreased.

My thesis is that since the 2nd Industrial Revolution there has been a significant decline in the number of geniuses or more specifically the genius rate (geniuses per capita).

This is primarily because that additional technological connectivity has created many more sources of harm towards geniuses and since many people are envious of geniuses this has significantly affected the lives of geniuses.

It is not a coincidence that Einstein’s son ended in a psychiatric clinic or that Ford’s son committed suicide.

Looking at genius rate historically, the 2nd Industrial Revolution although was a tipping point for genius rate decline, it was not as significant as the French Revolution.

One negative side effect of the French Revolution was that it took away significant protection for geniuses, who in the past were fully protected by monarchs.

As DaVinci was protected by the King of France, Goethe was protected by the Duke of Weimar, etc.

After the collapse of monarchies the new governance structures did not take the role of genius protection, hence it led to geniuses being exposed to significantly more harm.

This harm vector began slowly growing after the French Revolution until it tipped with the connectivity of the 2nd Industrial Revolution. After that the decline in genius rate accelerated.

Following the harm vector tipping from the 2nd Industrial Revolution, on the European continent specifically, two anti-genius regimes Stalin’s and Hitler’s dictatorships had a big effect on genius rate decline, as these regimes specifically targeted geniuses.

Hence from the 2nd Industrial Revolution tipping point through the two World Wars, the genius rate has plummeted to ~1/8 of pre-2nd Industrial Revolution levels.

That is analogous to a genocide!

To be continued…