> if John Carmack wants to create another breakthrough technology, he might be better off re-creating id Software’s 1995 chaos

Chaos is not what made them great. It was definitely part of who they were at the time, and thus part of their greatness. If you try to recreate chaos without recreating everything else within which that chaos happened to work, you will be miserable and also fail.

I suspect JC had plenty enough "being on the other side of chaos" during his VR days. It's not fun at all when it's someone else's chaos that you have to endure.

I'd agree you do need intensity in order to create breakthroughs. Not gonna happen in a "don't worry about it" type of environment.