alt Hacker NewsThis is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.
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Customers? It's math. This is like a comment a golem built to raise the S&P 500 would write.
It's important to remember that historically many advances have been made without "customer value" in mind. Indeed, freeing oneself from such concerns can open up unexpected avenues for discovery which only later provide "customer value".
Exactly! I have some many colleagues who typically say that they do "math for the beauty" while holding permanent research positions funded by the state.
But "value provided to your customer" is not in itself what the society need. Or at least, it is a matter of opinion and you can probably find theoretical situations where even you would admit that maximizing actions based on the customer needs is not a good thing.
Same here: the value for the society may be more about "making art" than "being a cog in the paperclip factory".
> But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.
Why would you make this comment? Is it envy? They were able to do things only some people can do. They enjoyed what they did and it provided value. Now the fun has been taken out of it and you seem to be saying that they deserve to have no fun? What should they have done? Prove theorems while whipping themselves in case they might have fun? Maybe it's a puritan thing? Customer value is the only value.