No, not to embrace it. But to ask and answer the more interesting question: "How do we differentiate between hobbies that changes the way the world does things, and hobbies that don't?"

Let's say jacques_chester was right. It was fluff and self-congratulatory. What comes of it? There's nothing to take home there. But if we had moved the discussion to the more interesting question (that the OP failed to cover, but we also failed to discuss), then that has pretty wide implications of how we might tackle our life's work.