• brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    I can’t speak for any individual, but let’s draw up a theoretical scenario:

    You’re the world’s highest contributing cancer researcher, responsible for breakthrough after breakthrough. You’re 80 years old and you want to retire next year. You earn $1 million a year. in order to collaborate with other researchers, specialized piece of software must be used. Given you’re brilliant, you could certainly take a training course and learn it in eight hours - $4000 worth of your time. Instead you scan your paper notebooks and send the copies to an intern who spends an hour a week transferring the data into the software. If the intern is paid $50 an hour, cost savings are $1500 over the year. more cancer research gets done.

    Highly specialized people who can learn everything and do have access to all necessary tools are not necessarily idiots for evaluating and deciding to make certain trade offs. recommend looking into opportunity cost.