I've quickly read the blog post. Indeed, every comment here agrees on the recipe : wealthy family, private/personal tutoring and gifted children to begin with.
But it seems, when asking if it can still be reproduced nowadays, no one here mentions the negative factors, the "inhibitors".
I think social medias, tv (less nowadays), an education system less focused on core knowledge and more on "social" trivia, without mentioning a society that just is/seems giving less praise to smart people or intellectual achievements is not a soil from where geniuses can grow.
People love to mention "low hanging fruits" but for music, philosophy or writing, there are no "low hanging fruits", yet I hope no one is gonna question the fact we don't see new Platos, Mozart or Hugos emerging...
Don't we? Or is our culture orders of magnitude bigger and thus the Platos and Mozarts and Hugos go less recognized due to competition from the Kants and Beethovens and Wolfes who are doing their thing at the same time? Did Plato have anything more profound to say than Daniel Kahneman or Sam Harris? Is Tosin Abasi less of a virtuoso than Mozart? How many brilliant writers toil away unrecognized because they can't break through Amazon's stranglehold on self-publishing?
I believe the only advantage our societies have over the previous ones is better technology. I don't think we evolved (much) as a species since Plato's times.
So to answer your question let me ask you one : do you think the names you quoted will still be remembered (and influential) in 100yrs? 1000yrs ? Sam Harris hype already faded after a couple of years and he said nothing special than Mark Twain didn't already say in "what is Man?".
If by "culture" & "orders of magnitude bigger" you are referring to the amount of music,books, ... produced every year : I see it like noise or pollution, making it even more difficult to find potential gems.
But I can agree genius didn't leave the world : it is just that the people who would have been found by institutions or who would have had more incentives to show their work are "out of phase" with modern society and "gone underground".
But it seems, when asking if it can still be reproduced nowadays, no one here mentions the negative factors, the "inhibitors".
I think social medias, tv (less nowadays), an education system less focused on core knowledge and more on "social" trivia, without mentioning a society that just is/seems giving less praise to smart people or intellectual achievements is not a soil from where geniuses can grow.
People love to mention "low hanging fruits" but for music, philosophy or writing, there are no "low hanging fruits", yet I hope no one is gonna question the fact we don't see new Platos, Mozart or Hugos emerging...