> I'm a _fan_ of competition, so I don't disagree with
> you if you are saying that I think it would be bad for
> excellence to suppress competition to be the Best, to
> be Famous, to be Respected, to be the First. You do,
> however, underestiamte the desire to Get It Right as a
> motivation for creative endeavor of all sorts.
>
=================
By the same token, it seems that a society filled with people who thought that struggling to 'get it right' was a sufficient enough motive for doing creative work in science etc. wouldn't feel the need to be 'the best' or 'the first' anymore than the number 12 strives to be better than the number 63.
"Just as there is no largest positive integer, it may be there is no best theory." [Paul Churchland]
Ian