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I assume Carmack can pick up a lot about a new technical topic in a few years, similarly to how Bill Gates could learn a lot about vaccines and healthcare in a few years. "Hi, I'm (rich and nerd famous person) calling for (expert in field)." Probably spending most of that time being tutored by that experts PhD students.

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I'm sure he can, but has Bill gates done actual groundbreaking research into vaccines, or just made intelligent decisions about what kind of research to fund? I think the latter.

Sometimes real progress is made only by finding the proper place to "push" on an otherwise stubborn problem that won't budge.

Sure, I guess. My point is that Bill Gates is going something quite different from John Carmack (funding research outside his area of expertise, rather than doing the research himself), so that the comparison is not very illuminating.

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