The comment on Universal Basic Income makes me realize that perhaps I've thought about UBI all wrong. So often people talk about the average (or perhaps median) societal output (if we can somewhat crassly call it that) of folks on UBI.
But if it could lead to a breakthrough akin to Borlaug's wheat varieties, which according to the article is responsible for saving .5 billion lives, then that alone would justify the entire program.
I am strongly for basic income because I know for a fact that if I got UBI I would heavily contribute to OpenStreetMap and other libre projects, and I would publish the occasional paper in the field that I studied at university.
As it is, I already do those things, because as a digital nomad I only have to work 2–3 days a week – I make a Western salary but I stay in cheaper countries. By why should the ability to make those alternative contributions only be available to "rich" people like me? It isn’t fair that other nerds who want to contribute like that are instead forced to take energy and time-sapping jobs, jobs that arguably contribute less to humanity in spite of purely economic arguments.
The other perspective is you can't always do work on interesting, fundamentally game changing problems. Some people maintain infrastructure and keep things running, and while those jobs can at times, look boring, thankless, and energy zapping - someone needs to do them.
Honestly there are plenty of people working in the most mundane areas of life doing exciting, novel things. The difference is no one notices it, until someone happens upon it, learns from it, combines it with their understanding, aggregates, synthesizes, culminating in recognition. Information is fundamentally open, we stand on the shoulders of giants, etc. When you come to an awareness or an epiphany, think of how you got there. Some of it comes from you, but a lot of it comes from things that aren't you. That's the problem with recognition. Sometimes the giants you stand on are the people you don't agree with.
Computer scientists stand on each other's toes, and so on. Falling too deeply in this awareness is like swimming in a sea of your own conscienceness, but it's important to remember, be thankful, humble, and try to give back more than you take. There are plenty of nerds out there working on interesting problems. They just don't look sexy on the outside because the interesting parts are all at the core of the technology, stuff you learn from, but don't know how to see well enough, quite yet.
But if it could lead to a breakthrough akin to Borlaug's wheat varieties, which according to the article is responsible for saving .5 billion lives, then that alone would justify the entire program.