>we have people like Thiel and Luckey misinterpreting Tolkien

Could you provide an example / be more specific about this?

Ok sure but in this sense it is already a rule (most people do not either prescribe these things to their kids or allow them to indulge in them) and what we're debating is how firm that rule.

As it happens, I think I disagree with you. I do value greatness. I value a culture that lauds greatness. The point of virtuosic musicianship isn't entertainment, or at least not a banal thoughtless kind (a symphony is not a substitute good for ragebait podcast clips with a subway surfers overlay), it's inspirational art. The examples I chose are particularly evocative, but there's no real difference between that and a parent who compels or allows their child to become ridiculously capable in some kind of mathematics or literature. Imagine if Terrence Tao's parents had insisted that he carry on with a typical pre-university series of broad survey courses for the sake of making him a generalist! Imagine all the less high-profile examples who were maybe even more important to pushing some practical effort forward.

Making it illegal is a nonstarter because I think it runs afoul of the categorical imperative in exactly the same way. I'm a strong believer in the idea that most progress (again, not intended to have a positive connotation) is made by a small group of people who were almost never generalists. Einstein was not a generalist. Kant, who I've been referencing throughout this conversation, was really not a generalist. The possibility of greatness is just as necessary as a certain number of pliable generalists.

What would the point of living in a world without greatness be? Since I meant that question rhetorically: is there a way to allow such greatness to be achieved without manipulating young people into obsession?

I think about this sometimes. On one hand, is it really "right" or net positive for adults to guide children into some specialized craft at a young age? Even if the kid shows some prodigal predilection (haha) for it, maybe it is the responsibility of their guardians to expose them to a number of alternative interests/possibilities?

It's interesting because the approach of encouraging your kid to foster highly specific skills fails to satisfy the categorical imperative: if everybody did it, nothing would work. Or at least it seems that way... it's probably a safe bet that having a sizable majority of adolescents who are somewhat flexible/aimless and can respond to a variety of market demands in terms of career specialization is a good thing if not a necessary one.

On the other hand, manipulating (not to be taken with a necessary pejorative connotation) a child into this kind of specialization is almost certainly a necessary precondition for greatness. If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess. So if we want a world with those heights of greatness in it, we need to accept that some people are going to compel or allow their kids to be specialists rather than generalists.

I don't disagree but you're moving the goalposts. I never said that they could achieve the profits of a typical tech business, just that they could be profitable. Also, the whole distilling problem doesn't happen if the model is proprietary.

All of those expenses could be trimmed in a scenario where OpenAI or other big labs pivot to focus primarily on profitability via selling inference.