Being 'passionate and curious' have nothing to do necessarily with 'making the world a better place'.
If anything it's kind of a personal issue.
Surely most scientific discovery comes along with passion and curiosity, so there's some overlap there, but most work doesn't get done out of either of those things. Most of the things that move the ball forward are a grind.
I only want to hire a plumber with passion, who is making the world a better place one clogged drain at a time. Haven’t been able to find one yet but I’m still looking.
Plumbing, building, electrics all require understanding the current state of the system (eg: house that 20 different cowboys have messed with over the years), and weighing up the different possible solutions - sure there is a measure of simple/straightforward work, but same can be said of software engineering.
We work in a different medium, but at a high level I think the process can look very similar, and there's satisfaction in a job well done
It's probably the same. Some CS people like to work on side projects. So do a lot of plumbers by renovating their homes or tinkering with other stuff in their spare time.
true, but would it be wrong to assume that the following ratio:
(the number of people who are passionate about xyz and curiosity and pure joy are major driving forces) / (total number of people working in xyz)
is probably much higher for cs than for plumbing?