Society paid academics just barely enough to survive and do math (and probably we optimized that amount a little bit too far toward minimal), so you had to really love math and not really love anything else to do it.

OAI pays lots of money for doing math, and doing math makes them lots of money (or they believe it does), so your love for math has to be upper-bounded by your love for money. Loving math helps, of course, but not loving math is okay too, because you can substitute that with your love of money. But when money and math conflict, your love of money has to win.

I contend that:

1) Within the process of doing math, the second type is better in some metrics (eg speed) while the first is better in others (eg readability of prose);

2) On the first order outcomes of doing math, the first type is better (eg elegance of mathematical objects)

3) On the second and higher order outcomes of doing math, the first type is better (eg respect society has for the field, sustainability on long timescales)

How to weigh each order when choosing a winner is a decision each civilisation gets to make.

This comment box is sadly too small to contain an argument for why higher-order should matter more, but it suffices to say here that only caring about higher-order outcomes is “having your head in the clouds, hoping to catch a glimpse of Heaven” and only caring about lower-order outcomes is “making a deal with the devil, your soul ends up in Hell”.