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Claude Shannon was a physicist. He got paid to think about the big century-defining ideas. Engineers are supposed to think about the concrete here and now, that's our whole purpose.

Shannon was an extremely important person, a genius, and one of my heroes. But he didn't build the Bell Telephone System, engineers did.

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Engineers are allowed to think of whatever they want on their own time. Do I need to remind you what Einstein was "supposed" to be thinking about when he figured out special relativity?

nijk, I'd like to upvote your comment, but you've been hellbanned.

For those who can't see the dead;

"We have no need for 7 billion Einsteins. Humanity is a team project."

To nijk: That's good, because we can't have that many. We'll take all we can get. But if potential Einsteins don't bother because of some idea of what they're "supposed" to think about, then we wouldn't get any.

Then again, you probably can't stop them with snide internet comments, so this discussion is fairly moot.

Besides, why wouldn't a Team Humanity of 7 billion Einstein-level intelligences, with the same diversity of specific skills, be better than what we have now?

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