[dredmorbius]

The dynamics by which nuclear reactor design cease to be "fun" resonates very strongly with yesterday's post on creativity, and in particular on simonsarris's mention of John Cleese's video on creativity. The how to kill creativity bit at the end in particular.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862240

I've got my own thoughts and doubts over the ultimate viability of nuclear energy and of the net potential of technology, but brakes on creativity itself, whether introduced or intrinsic to the system, are of concern.

[memracom]

And what about the guy who though up the Higgs boson saying that he would be kicked out of university these days because he doesn't meet the arbitrary bureaucratic metric thought up by small-minded administrators. I.e. he does not publish enough papers.

These are a few examples of the idiocracy taking root. MBAs running companies into the ground because they fundamentally do not understand the domain in which their business operates. Police incompetence manifested as an increase in paramilitary actions coupled with a decline in common sense. And what about the TSA?

[dredmorbius]

That too. There's been something of a confluence of posts on this topic in the past few days. Not that it isn't a topic that has some attraction here.

Another datapoint: a recently posted (here?) interview of Richard Feynman, shot only a few weeks before he died. What really got me was the mischievous nature he displayed: constantly smiling and joking. Einstein was somewhat similar. God may not play dice with the Universe, but each of these two was, I think, toying with it.