Comment by MarkusQ
13 hours ago
1) I never said the problem was effort; I was trying to explain the strip mining analogy, and it's one of the two anchors that make the analogy work.
2) Mathematicians didn't create this economy; it was foisted upon them by the same managerial mentality that brought us "publish or perish" and "the monthly sales quota".
3) I can't tell if you honestly don't get why the strip-mining analogy resonates, or...?
Here's another analogy: if we suddenly discovered personal teleportation, and marathon runners were complaining that it was ruining the sport, would you say "they're pulling a 180 and claiming that marathon running was never really about getting to a point 26 miles away as fast as possible, but that's contradicted by their revealed preferences"?
The strip mining analogy is better though, because it captures the sense of irreversible goal-loss when a problem goes from being "unsolved" to "solved".
As far as I understand, even with "publish or perish", peer reviewers decide what counts as an important enough paper to be published in a prestigous journal, and committees of peers decide whether or not, say, an expository article on arXiv or a textbook counts toward hiring or tenure. Again, as far as I understand, those things have largely not been rewarded in the past.
I like your marathon example, but maybe not for the reasons you intended. The community of marathoners decides the rules of a marathon. You don't need a hypothetical teleporter; you're already not allowed to use a bicycle, performance-enhancing drugs, or shoes that don't fit the specifications. The rules are updated to adapt to changing technology. Yes, I'm arguing that the strip-mining analogy doesn't make sense because mathematics is in the same situation. There's nothing stopping peer reviewers and hiring/tenure committees from changing the rules about which kinds of effort confer recognition and career advancement.