this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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And Newton and Einstein had none of these motivations. Galileo neither.
You compare with your situation, but it has nothing to do with befote. Not because we're not at war, but because we live in a capitalist distopia. Because capitalism won the war.
All the discoveries you're talking about could be motivated by the thirst of knowledge or making the world a better place. But the only single motivation we have left today is making money for our overlords, that is the key change.
It is not that war fuels discoveries, it is that greed does not, and greed is the only allowed motivation in our society. The only one that will receive money anyway.
Take Internet as an example : it was funded because of war and fear, but those who made it only had hope and naivity to make it, which is why it is so insecure, and why so much is done since 20 years to lock and dominate it.
Huh? Plenty of people still doing R&D for free (open source software folks for one; scientists without grants are also nearly working for free sometimes). Capitalism hasn't killed innovation, only biased it towards things that generate money, but there's still plenty of innovation just because they have a thirst for knowledge.
But say you're already working on something you find interesting. Now you're told that if you keep going at it, you could save millions of lives. Are you not going to put in 10x effort? I know I would. I reckon most people would.
You act like I said that war is the only motivation for research besides capitalism. I did not. I said it accelerates scientific advancement. The direness of the situation is what fuels people to go beyond their usual limits. A lot of people just work better under pressure. You can do things that are not in any way healthy for you long term if you're under enough pressure.
I'm pretty sure there's no evidence of war accelerating research beyond the effect of funding research more.
War itself doesn't, pressure and motivation does. War causes pressure and motivation. Humans thrive under pressure. It puts you in hyperfocus mode, which makes you way faster at getting anything done.
No. Humans don't thrive under pressure. This is merely a totalitarian idea.
Where'd totalitarianism come in now?
I like how you're downvoting each of my comments as if that makes your arguments more valid. I'll go ahead and do the same to you now.
Look, a relatively massive chunk of research is done by people who aren't neurotypicals. In particular, nearly every good software engineer has ADHD and so do a LOT of scientists, etc.
Without deadlines, nothing would ever get done because we'd all be working on 50 other projects instead of what needs to be done
When so many people have adhd you should question whether it's a mental condition or a societal condition.
And you're just saying bullshit. Just because you can't work without deadlines doesn't mean deadlines are necessary. That's just management lies to extract "productivity" at the expense of everything else.
Free softwares wouldn't exist if your theory had any truth to itself. Art wouldn't exist either.
That is a totalitarian idea because it only leads to totalitarian behaviours. Like the ones we have in so many companies where engineers are monitored like they're children and given unrealistic deadlines under the pretense they're lazy or procrastinate. None of this actually work. There is absolutely zero evidence it does.
You are generalising over something that's wrong. That is the problem of your thesis.
It's a mental condition. It's been researched plenty. I didn't say much about deadlines. I said most people who might have a hard time focusing more than 3 or 4 hours of their 8 workhours a day otherwise, could probably focus 16 hours a day knowing they're saving millions of lives. Is it sustainable? Hell no, but it gets you rapid innovation.
At the same time what I'm gathering is that you personally would never be motivated to work harder just because other people's lives are at stake.
You completely missed my point.
Some people are not more efficient under pressure, they collapse or overheat. Putting pressure on people don't always work to extract more productivity. That's all there is.
And if you think it works for everyone, then the next step is for some asshole to weaponize the idea. Which is what they do in many companies : putting pressure on people to extract more productivity. And it does not work.
Some people work better under pressure. Some people work better when they have no pressure. Adhd is irrelevant to that.
I wasn't saying that adhd is not a real illness. I'm saying there aren't so many people with this actual illness. Like women didn't suffer from histeria in the past. Some certainly were crazy. Most weren't. A difference is not an illness is what I'm saying.
It does, they're called start ups. Ever wondered, how a team of like 5 or 10 can build a completely sufficient product and then later on the same company has 10,000 employees and the overall quality seems to have gone down?
But that, again, works not just because communication is easier within a smaller team, but also because there's proper motivation: Stock options. Which goes with my point that having something to fight for is what makes people more productive. Deadlines or "Stock price go up" is not something to fight for unless you have a decent holding of stock or at least stock options. It's someone else's money and it doesn't help you in any way.
Startups don't work better than bigger companies. You're daydreaming!
You seem like a liberal utopian. It's useless to talk with you. Your consideration on people are completely crazy.