In rebuttal of fun being a high motive (from the cited article):
In the context of scientific research, however, play may never be the right word, at least not publicly. Geim would prefer to call it “adventure” or “curiosity-driven research.”
Fun is a high motive? We don't admit ulterior motives for play because their presence makes us less fun. While loving fun is socially appealing, it isn't high status. Fun-lovers aren't powerful allies.
Anecdotally scientists say this all the time -- people will ascribe super "high" motivations to them for why they did an important work, and they will say that they did it because they found it fun/interesting, more like play than work. This is a very common theme in Nobel lectures.
Hard to say whether the similarity is superficial or deep, but playing around with an object seems similar to "unsupervised learning".
https://research.googleblog...
On the other hand having time for elaborate fun is a way to signal abundance of resources.
Mandatory reading seems to be Homo Ludens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
In rebuttal of fun being a high motive (from the cited article):
In the context of scientific research, however, play may never be the right word, at least not publicly. Geim would prefer to call it “adventure” or “curiosity-driven research.”
Fun is a high motive? We don't admit ulterior motives for play because their presence makes us less fun. While loving fun is socially appealing, it isn't high status. Fun-lovers aren't powerful allies.
There are gradations between play, competition, gaming, gambling, and entertainment, many of which involve skill and/or money.
Anecdotally scientists say this all the time -- people will ascribe super "high" motivations to them for why they did an important work, and they will say that they did it because they found it fun/interesting, more like play than work. This is a very common theme in Nobel lectures.
Eg http://www.slate.com/articl...