3 ms·

It is trendy to say the system is broken. Perhaps we rely on the system more than people used to. Hard work and dedication to learning is what created all tho

• rayiner 12y ago
  > Hard work and dedication to learning is what created all those breakthroughs you mentioned Sure, but hard work and dedication is not a sufficient condition for building a modern scientific society. What's crucial is also building the infrastructure for passing along institutional knowledge to enable incremental advances. The modern educational system is very well-designed to facilitate that. E.g. I studied aerospace engineering in college. You spend 4 years in college + 5-6 years in grad school learning everything about the state of the art. During your PhD you push something forward a little bit. Then you go to Boeing and figure out how to make the turbine blades withstand 5% higher temperatures so you can get 3% better combustion efficiency. And at every step the system is there to keep things moving dutifully forward. Eventually, you'll see you started with a 737 and are staring at a 787.