I guess this is the same dynamic as why movie and sports stars are high status in society: they are highly visible compared to more valuable members of society (and more entertaining to watch). We don’t really see much of highly skilled operations people compared to researchers
I’m reminded about The Innovation Delusion (which I’ve mentioned a bit previously on the EA Forum: 1, 2), and ideas of credit, visibility, absence blindness, and maintenance work. An example of Thomas Edison is good enough that I will copy and paste it here:
Edison—widely celebrated as the inventor of the lightbulb, among many other things—is a good example. Edison did not toil alone in his Menlo Park laboratory; rather, he employed a staff of several dozen men who worked as machinists, ran experiments, researched patents, sketched designs, and kept careful records in notebooks. Teams of Irish and African American servants maintained their homes and boardinghouses. Menlo Park also had a boardinghouse for the workers, where Mrs. Sarah Jordan, her daughter Ida, and a domestic servant named Kate Williams cooked for the inventors and provided a clean and comfortable dwelling. But you won’t see any of those people in the iconic images of Edison posing with his lightbulb.
If I imagine being in a hypothetical role that is analogous to Mrs. Sarah Jordan’s role, in which I support other people to accomplish things, am I okay with not getting any credit? Well, like everyone else I have ego and I would like the respect and approval of others. But I guess if I am well-compensated and my colleagues understand how my work contributes to our team’s success I would be okay with somebody else being the public face and getting the book deals and getting the majority of the credit. How did senior people at Apple feel about Steve Jobs being so idolized in the public eye? I don’t care too much if people in general don’t acknowledge my work, as long as the people I care about most acknowledge it.
Of course it would be a lot nicer to be acknowledged widely, but that is generally not how we function. Most of us (unless we specifically investigate how people accomplished things) don’t know who Michael Phelps’s nutritionist was, nor do we know who taught Bill Gates about computers, nor who Magnus Carlsen’s training partners are, nor who Oscar Wilde bounced around ideas with and got feedback from. I think there might be something about replaceability as well. Maybe there are hundreds of different people who could be (for example) a very good nutritionist for Michael Phelps or who could help Magnus Carlsen train, but there are only a handful of people who could be a world-class swimmer or a world class-chess player on that level?
The issue with support roles is that it’s often difficult to assess when someone in that position truly makes a counterfactual difference. These roles can be essential but not always obviously irreplaceable. In contrast, it’s much easier to argue that without the initiator or visionary, the program might never have succeeded in the first place (or at least might have been delayed significantly). Similarly, funders who provide critical resources—especially when alternative funding isn’t available—may also be in a position where their absence would mean failure.
This perspective challenges a more egalitarian view of credit distribution. It suggests that while support roles are crucial, it’s often the key figures—initiators, visionaries, and funders—who are more irreplaceable, and thus more deserving of disproportionate recognition. This may be controversial, but it reflects the reality that some contributions, particularly at the outset, might make all the difference in whether a project can succeed at all.
I guess this is the same dynamic as why movie and sports stars are high status in society: they are highly visible compared to more valuable members of society (and more entertaining to watch). We don’t really see much of highly skilled operations people compared to researchers
I’m reminded about The Innovation Delusion (which I’ve mentioned a bit previously on the EA Forum: 1, 2), and ideas of credit, visibility, absence blindness, and maintenance work. An example of Thomas Edison is good enough that I will copy and paste it here:
If I imagine being in a hypothetical role that is analogous to Mrs. Sarah Jordan’s role, in which I support other people to accomplish things, am I okay with not getting any credit? Well, like everyone else I have ego and I would like the respect and approval of others. But I guess if I am well-compensated and my colleagues understand how my work contributes to our team’s success I would be okay with somebody else being the public face and getting the book deals and getting the majority of the credit. How did senior people at Apple feel about Steve Jobs being so idolized in the public eye? I don’t care too much if people in general don’t acknowledge my work, as long as the people I care about most acknowledge it.
Of course it would be a lot nicer to be acknowledged widely, but that is generally not how we function. Most of us (unless we specifically investigate how people accomplished things) don’t know who Michael Phelps’s nutritionist was, nor do we know who taught Bill Gates about computers, nor who Magnus Carlsen’s training partners are, nor who Oscar Wilde bounced around ideas with and got feedback from. I think there might be something about replaceability as well. Maybe there are hundreds of different people who could be (for example) a very good nutritionist for Michael Phelps or who could help Magnus Carlsen train, but there are only a handful of people who could be a world-class swimmer or a world class-chess player on that level?
The issue with support roles is that it’s often difficult to assess when someone in that position truly makes a counterfactual difference. These roles can be essential but not always obviously irreplaceable. In contrast, it’s much easier to argue that without the initiator or visionary, the program might never have succeeded in the first place (or at least might have been delayed significantly). Similarly, funders who provide critical resources—especially when alternative funding isn’t available—may also be in a position where their absence would mean failure.
This perspective challenges a more egalitarian view of credit distribution. It suggests that while support roles are crucial, it’s often the key figures—initiators, visionaries, and funders—who are more irreplaceable, and thus more deserving of disproportionate recognition. This may be controversial, but it reflects the reality that some contributions, particularly at the outset, might make all the difference in whether a project can succeed at all.