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0 pointsamelius10y ago0 comments

What I'm wondering about is what motivates extremely smart people to work on social media apps and iGadgets, when they know that most people care much more about: food, health, a fair economy, energy, and safety. Why are these smart people not working in fundamental physics, or medicine, or why aren't they thinking up new models for the economy?

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NoGravitas10y ago· 1 in thread

Social media apps and iGadgets are more profitable. It's almost impossible to get paid for thinking up new models for the economy.

ameliusOP10y ago

I suspect that autonomy plays an important role here.

For writing apps, you need only your computer. You don't have to interact with other people a lot.

For medicine, fundamental physics, you need a huge amount of resources, and you need to cooperate with lots of people.

It seems that smart people prefer complete independence.

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