> Which doesn't matter at all in regards to attracting the best minds. The idea that genius is unaffected by money is wonderfully principled but completely ind

> Which doesn't matter at all in regards to attracting the best minds. The idea that genius is unaffected by money is wonderfully principled but completely indefensible, especially since all of your examples gained significant material wealth in the process of winning your approval. Again I'll note your apparent unwillingness to factor in the context of the quote, which specifically is from and about the information technology sector anyway. Finally your anecdotal approach to demonstrating via example suffers from a massive contamination by confirmation bias -- e.g. for all you know the finest minds ARE working on adtech, but nobody's made a Wikipedia page about the fineness of their minds. In other words, your argument restricts itself to the set of people who employ public relations staff. > Please point out the whataboutism in what I said. Your entire post was whataboutism. I don't know how to teach you to see that. I apologize. > It's floated persistently and has been for many years as a serious generalized statement - a lament - about what the best minds are working on (ad clicks, not flying cars). It is a lament, and taken in its original context if you please, you might even notice it's true. A "ha ha only serious" joke in computer science research goes something like "if you want to get funding, look at what the field was researching twenty years ago, and put that in a grant proposal." Progress in the fundamentals of computer science has slowed to a crawl, and the incentives appear to be set to ensure the status remains firmly quo for some time to come.