Poincare missed special relativity because he knew too much: the leading physicists of the day were prisoners of their own expertise.

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• The story that Einstein could not keep up with quantum mechanics is almost exactly backwards: his philosophical objections were correct and should have been taken far more seriously. SCSean Carroll22 Apr 2024similar wording
• A theory gets abandoned when the old explanation becomes visibly insufficient: special relativity made Newtonian gravity's action at a distance impossible, and that was the forcing function. MNMichael Nielsen7 Apr 2026similar wording
• Physics will be unified again as it has been before; the obstacle is that relativity and quantum mechanics already explain almost everything we can measure. TTTerence Tao14 Jun 2025similar wording
• Einstein's equation is much smarter than Einstein was: it knew about black holes, gravitational waves and the Big Bang while he did not. SCSean Carroll22 Apr 2024similar wording
• He used to think explaining AI's results would be the mathematician's remaining job; he now expects AI to explain better than most humans, so that is not what is left. GSGrant Sanderson30 Jun 2026similar wording

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