I agree with that. What I am contesting is that what you and OP describe is such a bad thing wholesale. Holmes should definitely be punished, and the engineerin

I agree with that. What I am contesting is that what you and OP describe is such a bad thing wholesale. Holmes should definitely be punished, and the engineering/dreaming trade-off corrected. No question about that, it seems she was outright lying, not just "chasing dreams". My point is that hype and chasing (improbable, stupid, exploitative) dreams are a spectrum, not a binary. Calls for appreciating "real value" (WTH is that? who defines?) and "removing hype" bring painful memories — it's not just a philosophical point for me, coming from the Eastern block. These feedback cycles are shorter than you think. The objective function of what we should optimize for is unknown, but I'm sure 100% "honest engineering labour" and "good at engineering" and 0% hype would be a terrible, short-sighted, deadly idea. We need dreams and inertia to escape local minima, we need the collective goal correction. That's the silver lining in this Holmes case too: the public debate brings about such correction. I voice the dangers of over-correction.