When I was younger I loved ideas for their own sake and was constantly disappointed when I went to have fun with some idea and found that everyone gathered arou

When I was younger I loved ideas for their own sake and was constantly disappointed when I went to have fun with some idea and found that everyone gathered around it viewed it as an opportunity to assert dominance. I fled so many fields because I believed ultimately I would find some place where people were there for the ideas themselves, not for the zero-sum battle for status. Ultimately I left academia and became a programmer because it seemed the ego battle was less a part of the process. I hate the competition-based culture of early academia -- olympiads and whatnot -- for the same reason. The reward isn't in the ideas themselves or the work but in the ranking.