It was old hat 1500 years ago, and rediscovered repeatedly. I am suggesting there is a legitimate separation from what people find out in the first few years of research on a topic and what's built after that. So, you really need to pick a deeper topic if you want to defend your argument.
As to survivorship bias, that's huge but it's not just based on good ideas. Copernicus was ~4,500 years late to proposing the sun was the center of the solar system. But, the pop story looks better when Darwin is breaking new ground instead of simply collecting more evidence in support of an old theory.
As to Amazing progress, I would hope the ~1,000,000 active mathematicians are not all wasting their time. But again, the point is we don't need to maximizing the number of Mathematicians, we are well into diminishing returns.
As to survivorship bias, that's huge but it's not just based on good ideas. Copernicus was ~4,500 years late to proposing the sun was the center of the solar system. But, the pop story looks better when Darwin is breaking new ground instead of simply collecting more evidence in support of an old theory.
As to Amazing progress, I would hope the ~1,000,000 active mathematicians are not all wasting their time. But again, the point is we don't need to maximizing the number of Mathematicians, we are well into diminishing returns.