many drugs were discovered, evaluated and approved without understanding at all how they worked.

iirc back in the day chemists synthesized a whole bunch of random compounds, observed their effects (in mice etc., or even the chemists tasting them!) then did clinical trials to measure safety and efficacy.

high-throughput screening of chemical libraries on in vitro assays is the modern version of this. "rational" drug design, which uses understanding of mechanisms to design chemical structures for a specific purpose, largely failed back in the '80s.

I can't understand what the post-docs are suggesting.

There will always be a %age of humans who will be curious how the universe works including LLMs. Delusional to think those humans are only incentivized by degrees, or money.

Humans were curious and started the intelligence / learning explosion much much before money and degrees were invented.

once everyone lives to 200 yo there will be no need for post-docs - afterward we can just upload PI's brain to some AI.