One Einstein Is Worth A Legion Of PhD Drones
China keeps on graduating more Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Engineers than anywhere else in the world. We're lagging behind China because their universities are pumping out more science graduates. They're not pumping out more innovators. It's not like the students that are coming out of those universities in China with their science degrees are going off and doing PhDs and doing innovative stuff. Quite the opposite, because they've been trained in a particular way.
They've been trained to memorize this textbook, respond to this exam, and they actually can't think outside of the box. They've been trained that this is what's true; this is the unquestioned correct way of thinking about science. And that might be good for being able to imitate, as we see, but it's not going to be the thing that enables you to push forward the frontier in technology, let alone fundamental physics or anywhere else.
So, I don't care what the statistics are on how many science graduates they've got. That makes no difference. Give me 10 innovative, creative young physics graduates over 50,000 physics graduates that all are able to pass the exam with a hundred percent efficiency any day.
Yeah, one Einstein is worth a legion of drones with PhDs in physics. It doesn't matter. Creativity, by its nature, goes zero to one, and no amount of throwing bodies at the problem will get you there. That's just the nature of mimetic evolution, and it's just the nature of creativity.