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The reward structure we live by is oriented towards extrinsic motivation even when work produced by intrinsic motivation is known to be of higher quality. Ther

by namank 14y ago

The reward structure we live by is oriented towards extrinsic motivation even when work produced by intrinsic motivation is known to be of higher quality. There goes a story that Edison was taught this lesson when he tried to sell his very first voting machine. He was told, "we don't want it if we can't mess with it". That's when he is suppose to have decided to only work on projects that people wanted. Then there is Tesla - worked on projects without much regard to their social or economic relevancy. Do not make this into a debate about Edison vs. Tesla, this is just to show how fucked up is this world we live in. I think all of us, hackers, hustlers, and designers, have made a similar choice at one time or another when we've decided to do it for the x or be true to yourself.

jacoblyles 14y ago
The problem with intrinsic motivation is that people use it as an excuse to exploit other people.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  The problem with intrinsic motivation is that it often makes itself unaccountable to getting results. And I don't mean economic results, I mean results of any kind. This is actually one of the reasons I'm in CS grad-school right now rather than anything else: I could spend my life hacking away at Cool Stuff as open-source projects, joining open-source projects, coding whatever for a day job. I could. But I've already done hobby stuff in realms that intersected partially with research, and found that it's just too easy to completely bullshit myself if I don't have real research training. So I'm here getting the real research training, in hope of writing things that are less prone to self-delusion and bullshit. No word yet on my final career plans, because the grandparent was definitely right about one thing: I do my best stuff when intrinsically motivated and I find money-motivated careerism more of a burden than anything else.

by namank 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago

The problem with intrinsic motivation is that people use it as an excuse to exploit other people.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
The problem with intrinsic motivation is that it often makes itself unaccountable to getting results. And I don't mean economic results, I mean results of any kind. This is actually one of the reasons I'm in CS grad-school right now rather than anything else: I could spend my life hacking away at Cool Stuff as open-source projects, joining open-source projects, coding whatever for a day job. I could. But I've already done hobby stuff in realms that intersected partially with research, and found that it's just too easy to completely bullshit myself if I don't have real research training. So I'm here getting the real research training, in hope of writing things that are less prone to self-delusion and bullshit. No word yet on my final career plans, because the grandparent was definitely right about one thing: I do my best stuff when intrinsically motivated and I find money-motivated careerism more of a burden than anything else.