[aswanson]

Wow. Henry Ford or Steve Jobs. So, the discovery of the nature of cognition, a scientific endeavor that has stumped tens of thousands of the most brilliant people who ever lived for thousands of years, is on the order of setting up assembly lines and setting up shiny packaging for other people's engineering work. I learn new things here everyday.

[coldtea]

Not to mention that neither Steve Jobs nor Henry Ford were dellusional or grandiose in the Kurzweill sense.

They were rather pragmatic and market based -- not foaming at the mouth for some pie in the sky tech of 2100.

[StavrosK]

Heh, not only that, but it implies that discovering the fundamental secrets of the universe isn't "sufficiently ambitious" compared to making things more efficiently or making easier-to-use gadgets.

[kbenson]

It depends. If that discovery is a logical next step in the continuation of our current understanding, then yes, it may be less ambitious than something that positing something a few steps removed from what is currently provable, and attempting to fill in those gaps, whether it be a discovery in the scientific sense, or just achieving something heretofore thought impossible.

It's easy to forget that sometimes a discovery will languish for a long time (or even be forgotten and rediscovered) before someone invests time and effort in determining how it can usefully be exploited.

Who deserved credit "discovering" the assembly line? Adam Smith, who wrote about division of labor in 1776, or Eli Whitney, who implemented it manufacture muskets, or Henry Ford for using it to such great effect that he changed how industry operated? Or maybe the first Chinese Emperor, who's creation of a terracotta army is said to have used techniques reminiscent of assembly lines? Or perhaps the Venetian Arsenal? How many times in history was it discovered again, but never put into practice?

Another example, I really don't care who discovered it was possible to go to the moon, I do care about the people that acted on that discovery and actually did it.