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> My physicist friend once asked me what the point of doing research was if someone like Terence Tao could have figured out everything in my dissertation in a tenth of the time.

That's really mean thing to say

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It's actually a really dumb thing to say and OP's response is the best one because it's a microcosm about how the world works. For every Terence Tao there's probably 20 more people cranking out high-quality work that's just a little less inspired. Their work is valuable and important, and asking that question is devaluing the entire endeavor of human knowledge. It's essentially positing that nobody else can contribute anything if it's not on that same level. It's like asking "why bother competing in marathons if you haven't won any?" Well that's not the point.

Very true but you can go even further than that. Advancing knowledge is a community endeavor. Consider where the field of mathematics would be if everyone except Terrence Tao and a handful of other luminaries stopped doing math research. It would die.

Exactly. It's like saying "why would you bother driving your Honda Accord over there, when I could drive my Corvette there in half the time?"

It still gets this person to somewhere they weren't.

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