Dan Ariely, one of the great economists of our time, he and three colleagues, did a study of some MIT students. They gave these MIT students a bunch of games. Games that involved creativity, and motor skills, and concentration. And the offered them, for performance, three levels of rewards. Small reward, medium reward, large reward. Okay? If you do really well you get the large reward, on down. What happened? As long as the task involved only mechanical skill bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. Okay? But once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance. ~ Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Space habitation has huge rewards; the financial and social benefits are huge. But as soon as life, not just one life, but all life, becomes the reward, the reward can not get any bigger. As soon as the consequences of not having space habitation generate the reward of avoid the consequences, space habitation gains a huge incentive. The huge incentive of avoiding disaster will lead to the poorer performance of those in the space habitation field. This will lead to the increase development time of space habitation. Assuming that we are at the point where space habitation is urgent, all the outside of the box thinking will take longer and be of a lower quality.
Resources
Pink, Dan. "Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation" July 2009. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on August 29, 2009. < http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html >
In Case You Skimmed
- If space habitation is urgent, it will take longer to develop.
