Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Indeed. Moreover, in the usual way of things interest is detectable and importance isn't.https://twitter.com/royalsociety/status/1121021070507749381 …

Maybe that applies in math, but it doesn't in fields I've known: econ, polisci, compsci, & physics. There's a vast wasted world of academics working on relatively unimportant problems they find interesting.

Their self-reporting of what they find interesting contains vast systematic errors due to social and psychological factors.

Then in what sense is "interest is detectable and importance isn't"?

Setting aside one's own curiosity in favour of what one (or someone) thinks important is a common and harmful. The reverse is far less often actually done. It's more often something one is warned off, pressured out of, or disabled from doing.

Some people's intrinsic motivation is supposedly 'curiosity' but mine has always been practical human benefit (can we use this science to make something valuable).

Perhaps it's like that scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "I'd much rather be happy than right, any day." "And are you?" "No. That's where it all breaks down, of course." Practical human benefit discoveries are unpredictable, so curiosity is the only way to get either.

Thats just a slogan; you don't have data or theory to support it.