"Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times."
As a mostly recluse myself, I made.my.peace with world. The world is led by men who think the faster we arrive at utility the faster money can be made. True. The falacy on that way is to assume that people like Maxwell, Oersted and many more mentioned in the article would prefer working in teams which is shoveled these days into the fabric of academic collaboration. It's not. Genius people prefer working alone and their discoveries did and do happen while they are left alone. Out society will lose and already lost a lot with the current requirements of collaborarion in academic work. Venture capital provided by prolific no-knowers is also detromental.
It would be better if I had abilities like Maxwell or Oersted, so I have to work harder to make up the difference. Some of that does include working alone, not trying exactly to "simulate" genius but for me it's just great when nobody bugs me for an extended period of time :)
>their useless theoretical work which was seized upon by a clever technician and which has created new means for communication, utility, and amusement by which men whose merits are relatively slight have obtained fame and earned millions.
They're talking about radio when it was still relatively new but spreading faster than ever, and this enhanced amplification of garbage is already recognized as some questionable collateral damage that can develop if you are not careful.
I was fortunate to reach this conclusion on my own when I was a young teenager, which was a lot closer to 1939 than it was to today.
After I got accustomed to building labs from the ground up for a couple decades, I finally built my own for the express purpose of full-time non-directed research. The possibilities are just endless compared to anything else, and if I didn't do it who would? The Edison approach had virtually fallen off the map already by the 1960's with places like Bell Labs and NASA reaching new heights in some of the most admirable ways as only such well-funded institutions can do. But there was still that growing vacuum with its very strong pull.
By the time I started my company Bell was already gone and NASA moonshots were a distant memory. That can happen to the best of them when you depend on other people's money for funding.
Anyway be cautious what you invent and even more cautious about who you disclose it to or "men whose merits are relatively slight" might just become more of a detriment than the scientific progress can overcome and yield as a net benefit.
I feel like the two types of people described in this paper match really well with my experience.
To give an example, I like to code, I code to solve problems. I created an internal tool for my company because it was useful for me and solved a few problems that I was dealing with in a day to day. I shared it with a few coworkers and that was pretty much it.
Once the "useful type of person" (like the one described in the paper) discovered the tool and liked it, started thinking about how we could sell it. That was never my purpose and if anything I would have liked to make it open source.
Also, once you start going down that path, the original project, which you created out of curiosity, is now there to "serve a purpose" and sometimes it becomes too disconnected from its original purpose.
I also believe that's really hard for these two types of people to put in each other's boots.
Could this also be the two types of people we see with AI? The ones that think that AI is horrible because what they like is coding and crafting something vs the ones that love AI because it allows them to build for a purpose
"The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an individual soul bent upon its own purification and elevation is all the justification that they need."
What an article.
Hard to think it was written takes out fingers 86 years ago...?
Really makes me think that the so-called goal of life circles around those points. I can totally imagine a third-place solely dedicated to curiosity. Hard to bring such places into existence with the capitalist hell-hole we're in, but when there is a will...
>Dyson misses the point somewhat about virtual machines and cloud computing, which are much more about relocatable and rescalable computing — rather than having to house and maintain computers to handle the peak computational load, we can run software remotely as a service, and purchase resources on an as-needed basis; the providers of these services can reroute and reallocate resources in real-time without any intervention by or impact on their customers. There’s something here in Dyson’s statement alluding to parallel processing...
"Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times."
Very smart guy. I bought the print copy of this essay here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174761/th...
As a mostly recluse myself, I made.my.peace with world. The world is led by men who think the faster we arrive at utility the faster money can be made. True. The falacy on that way is to assume that people like Maxwell, Oersted and many more mentioned in the article would prefer working in teams which is shoveled these days into the fabric of academic collaboration. It's not. Genius people prefer working alone and their discoveries did and do happen while they are left alone. Out society will lose and already lost a lot with the current requirements of collaborarion in academic work. Venture capital provided by prolific no-knowers is also detromental.
>Genius people prefer working alone
It would be better if I had abilities like Maxwell or Oersted, so I have to work harder to make up the difference. Some of that does include working alone, not trying exactly to "simulate" genius but for me it's just great when nobody bugs me for an extended period of time :)
>their useless theoretical work which was seized upon by a clever technician and which has created new means for communication, utility, and amusement by which men whose merits are relatively slight have obtained fame and earned millions.
They're talking about radio when it was still relatively new but spreading faster than ever, and this enhanced amplification of garbage is already recognized as some questionable collateral damage that can develop if you are not careful.
I was fortunate to reach this conclusion on my own when I was a young teenager, which was a lot closer to 1939 than it was to today.
After I got accustomed to building labs from the ground up for a couple decades, I finally built my own for the express purpose of full-time non-directed research. The possibilities are just endless compared to anything else, and if I didn't do it who would? The Edison approach had virtually fallen off the map already by the 1960's with places like Bell Labs and NASA reaching new heights in some of the most admirable ways as only such well-funded institutions can do. But there was still that growing vacuum with its very strong pull.
By the time I started my company Bell was already gone and NASA moonshots were a distant memory. That can happen to the best of them when you depend on other people's money for funding.
Anyway be cautious what you invent and even more cautious about who you disclose it to or "men whose merits are relatively slight" might just become more of a detriment than the scientific progress can overcome and yield as a net benefit.
I feel like the two types of people described in this paper match really well with my experience. To give an example, I like to code, I code to solve problems. I created an internal tool for my company because it was useful for me and solved a few problems that I was dealing with in a day to day. I shared it with a few coworkers and that was pretty much it.
Once the "useful type of person" (like the one described in the paper) discovered the tool and liked it, started thinking about how we could sell it. That was never my purpose and if anything I would have liked to make it open source. Also, once you start going down that path, the original project, which you created out of curiosity, is now there to "serve a purpose" and sometimes it becomes too disconnected from its original purpose.
I also believe that's really hard for these two types of people to put in each other's boots.
Could this also be the two types of people we see with AI? The ones that think that AI is horrible because what they like is coding and crafting something vs the ones that love AI because it allows them to build for a purpose
"The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an individual soul bent upon its own purification and elevation is all the justification that they need."
art that served the artist, served its purpose
What an article. Hard to think it was written takes out fingers 86 years ago...?
Really makes me think that the so-called goal of life circles around those points. I can totally imagine a third-place solely dedicated to curiosity. Hard to bring such places into existence with the capitalist hell-hole we're in, but when there is a will...
This is by the founder about IAS (aka (Turing's) [*Bazaar-]Cathedral) founding between war & depression, while it was still at 20 Nassau St
Further Quaker background by Freeman Dyson's son George who wrote that book having grown up there
https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2009/george-dyson-tavern-and-meeti...
*IAS was an open-maxxed Bell Labs
https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/700.php
>Dyson misses the point somewhat about virtual machines and cloud computing, which are much more about relocatable and rescalable computing — rather than having to house and maintain computers to handle the peak computational load, we can run software remotely as a service, and purchase resources on an as-needed basis; the providers of these services can reroute and reallocate resources in real-time without any intervention by or impact on their customers. There’s something here in Dyson’s statement alluding to parallel processing...
Paradoxes for outwitting the uni-context..