Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lhh 4271 days ago
When a scientist makes a new breakthrough that adds a lot of value to society, X by definition is large (X = value created). "Value" doesn't necessarily need to be monetary, it could be lives saved or some other metric, though eventually I think most big breakthroughs do become monetizable in some form, and his point is that the inventing scientist generally captures very little of that X.