> That kid is also the one who will figure out why your rocket is malfunctioning, how your car will drive itself, how to fix carbon dioxide, and every other problem that we call a technical problem.
That kid is also the one who will enter academia and spend the rest of their life taking part in intradepartmental warfare as they desperately strive for tenure.
Actually, I think it is a different personality type. The kid who does well at math because rules are provided clearly and success is guaranteed somehow is different from the kid who wants to get to the bottom of it from a curiosity perspective. Both are driven partially by ego but one is more fear driven and the other more joy driven.
Of course, years of academic training might drive the joy out of anyone, but many end up in academics because they just wanted to keep getting the positive validation through clearish rules. These people struggle in entrepreneurship but can do great with corporate advancement.
I think it's a mistake to sort people into such clearly delineated personas, especially if you're going to make judgments about them being driven by "fear" or "joy".
Somebody could be very intrinsically driven by the pursuit of truth, but still appreciate the importance of politics in increasing earnings and status and thus outwardly appear to your 2nd type.
Those same people might "struggle in entrepreneurship" with regards to inventing wholly new ideas, but be good at fundraising or copying. (Let's make it an NFT...) Just something to consider.
Well, I agree. What is the use? Well, inaccurately simple models can sometimes help make complex phenomena manageable. If we roughly assume that there are real variations in people’s motivation (eg variations in curiosity, status-seeking, fear, joy) we can see whether certain variations predict certain kinds of success. If so, we can think about how to support these educationally. If we find that curiosity-based motivation in math is highly predictive of certain kinds of success, we might want to see how to cultivate that motivation through pedagogy.
Not equally, since more PhDs end up in industry than academia.
Also, those in academia routinely consult and solve these problems for industry, they make startups, they solve problems that further advance industry. Many bounce between careers on both sides.
It's silly to think those in academia don't work on and solve real world problems and only spend time fighting politics. Those research grants are for producing research, and those corporate grants are for producing items useful to those companies.
That kid is also the one who will enter academia and spend the rest of their life taking part in intradepartmental warfare as they desperately strive for tenure.
Equally possible, right?