"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." -Stephen Jay Gould

I see where this quote is coming from… but Einstein is a bad example. His success was not from golden Stanford opportunities.

Every life decision was him opting out of responsibility and prestige to spend more time on his interests.

So “people of equal talent, and commitment to their work at the cost of all other qualities of life including relationships” looks very different than that quote wants to suggest.

The quote seems quite on the nose to me. Einstein wasn't raised by paupers.

No, he just was forced to be a refugee from his own country. Do we really have to compare suffering?

The context of this discussion is an argument that we need to find the Albert Einstein of the world to help them go to Stanford. My argument is that Einstein never went to the proverbial Stanford. In fact he avoided those things.

Einstein was a patent clerk rather than a professor. He explicitly chose not to “go to Stanford”.

Not always: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-shrinks-b...

>Even at this early age, the researchers found, infants in the lower socioeconomic brackets had smaller brains than their wealthier counterparts.

I have no comment on that but, side note, was every researcher mentioned a woman?