descriptive claim
Before calculators and computers, being a good mathematician or physical scientist required doing substantial computation by hand or mentally; that requirement later ceased to hold.
Adam Becker · Every Exponential Ends — Silicon Valley Forgot — Adam Becker · 20 Aug 2026
In their words
The transcript segments this claim was taken from
“or a good physical scientist you had to be good at doing that kind of work with pencil and paper or in your head and then that stopped being true and in some ways you know that was a loss of certain things but on on the other hand”27:57Report a misattribution
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