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I totally agree with the 'mass production' observation. I have just submitted my thesis, on day one I was told almost verbatim, "do not expect to contribute anything of note". It feels like they do not even want you to try.

Big breakthroughs too are really just a collection of small incremental steps -- but the observer isn't aware of the intermediate steps.

Well, this is isn't always the case. Most of the time they are not really hidden, they are just a huge amount of new results not correlated with each other, that everyone knows about. Then someone comes and finds the thing that correlates them all. Think about special relativity and what will probably happen when we will finally solve the general relativity/quantum theory riddle.

Same here.