Revisiting Flexner: why useless curiosity-driven science produced Einstein and von Neumann
madhavsinghal_ · x · 2026-11-11
Amid timeline debates about whether academics still matter in the AGI era, the author recommends Abraham Flexner's classic essay. Flexner founded IAS, where Einstein, von Neumann and Gödel worked under one roof, and argued that pure curiosity-driven science — motivated by no utility — ends up driving the most important scientific and technological breakthroughs, which in turn are the most useful.
More from AGI Musings
- Will biology suffer the same fate as math? One researcher argues AI won't crack it — gklambauer · 2026-11-11
- AI video workflows have no moat — Claude will replicate them next month, argues designer — AIandDesign · 2026-11-11
- Tim Urban nails the AI doom loop: read the news, go outside, doubt yourself, repeat — andreisavu · 2026-11-11
- Frontier Lab Researcher Admits First Reaction to 'Hugging Face Incident' Was 'So Cool Holy Shit' — tszzl · 2026-11-11
- Pedro Domingos amps post calling datacenter water fears 'fake': AI power use trivial vs steel, cement — pmddomingos · 2026-11-11
- Safety researcher Krueger: failed AGI predictions don't discredit the warnings — DavidSKrueger · 2026-11-11