A tradeoff occurs every time you get feedback. You become slightly more mainstream, slightly more aligned with the zeitgeist. You become marginally more of an exploiter than an explorer , standing on the shoulders of the giants who conceived the paradigm you’re striving to build upon. This is very effective when you want to align your work with... See more
Society which scorns excellence in plumbing because it’s a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.
Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
Edward O. Wilson, debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., 9 September 2009