i think one problem with the modern science establishment is that it’s become institutionalized to the point that someone like feynman could never get hired these days. his playful attitude, creative out-of-the-box thinking, instinct to distill and simplify topics rather than overcomplicate is the exact kind of thing missing these days, not to mention his constant involvement in seemingly-unrelated fields (mostly artistic) that lead to unexpected intellectual cross-pollination. many of the most important scientific theories in history came from serendipity: dumb luck, revelations from unexpected avenues, or thinking about things from a completely different perspective. is it possible to encourage/accelerate serendipity? i think yes, by pursuing curiosity wherever it takes you and expanding your mental surface area, in the exact manner feynman did. unfortunately nowadays the science bureaucracy is allergic to feynmanesque wild card characters, instead of selecting for effective scientists it’s selecting for the best grant-writers and players of departmental political games. then of course the field is designed to crush ambition from the start by putting every new entrant through a years-long grinder of soul-crushing underpaid work on other people’s projects.

the best option now for feynman characters is to go found their own startup or something, it’s probably inevitable (like a sort of entropic law) that bureaucracies eventually bury themselves under so many layers of regulation and protocol that they cannot handle anything besides rigid comformists, illegible characters like feynman becoming completely incompatible with them. from the lack of fresh creative talent the organization eventually becomes ossified, best case scenario it doesn’t get mismanaged into oblivion and continues rent-seeking on its original innovations for decades while sustaining a large employee population of college-educated drones just there for a stable paycheck to support their families.