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Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

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Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#101
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.

Corruption is not rampant everywhere. And perhaps that gets at the root of why some places have functioning modern economies and others do not.

Switzerland, Norway and who else exactly? Out of 100+ countries

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a slippery slope as to whom you disenfranchised to redistributed that cash: but it will inevitably be a large group of people in the middle, not the minority elite you sold the policy on. If some people can't accumulate something they can't do bigger things as creators or create bigger markets as consumers.

You won't disenfranchise anyone, because the investment will more than pay for itself. That's the point. It's just another form of seed funding for ambitious start-ups. And $30bn/yr is absolutely trivial compared to the opportunity costs of an economy geared more to financialisation and regressive wealth extraction than to productive engineering and invention.

To put $30bn a year in perspective, that buys you a basic income of about $10.12 a month in the US for all adults.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#103
post #63

The talent, was originally a unity of mass and money of Antiquity, so people who have talent, means people who have money.

> talent (n.) > late 13c., "inclination, disposition, will, desire," from Old French talent (12c.), from Medieval Latin talenta, plural of talentum "inclination, leaning, will, desire" (11c.), in classical Latin "balance, weight; sum of money," from Greek talanton "a balance, pair of scales," hence "weight, definite weight, anything weighed," and in later times sum of money," from PIE *tele- "to lift, support, weigh,…

Maybe I am missing some subtleties, but why is talent not money?

>The Homeric talent "as money" was probably the gold equivalent of the value of an ox or a cow.[2] Based on a statement from a later Greek source that "the talent of Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric [... i.e.] two Attic drachmas" and analysis of finds from a Mycenaean grave-shaft, a weight of about 8.4 gm can be established for this money talent.[2] The talent of gold was known to Homer, who described how Achilles gave a half-talent of gold to Antilochus as a prize.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#104
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds similar enough to the SBIR/STTR program that many federal agencies already have from the NIH and Department of Agriculture too DARPA. Basically a company pitches an idea to a federal agency which if accepted will give you something like 100k (phase 1) to explore the initial idea and place in you in a pipeline that can lead to much more money if the idea seems valuable and doable (phase 2 and phase 3). Thi…

Yes. Just like that. And Google and Boston Dynamics came out of it. That’s amazing. Now what if the budget could be $30B a year, $1-3MM instead of $100K (which might have been suitable in 1997, certainly not today) and take 2 months instead of a year (or whatever it takes)? :)

You don’t need $1m to see if an idea is feasible. Budget isn’t the issue for those programs, it’s getting enough applicants with ideas that are even reasonable in the first place.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#105
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is just a very basic idea I put out, still, corruption is rampant everywhere anyway. I suspect it would be a net positive to have a ton of Brilliant students getting money for their projects even if half of the money are corrupted away.

I suspect it another millenial fantasy much like basic income et al I suspect giving people with no life experience, exposure to failure or real life dynamics will end badly. The single digit number of success stories in limited domains aren't representative of any real meaning

> giving people with no life experience, exposure to failure or real life dynamics will end badly

By that measure no one could ever become an adult.

Exposure to failure and real life dynamics is exactly what people with no life experience need. At least that's the only way they will gain life experience.

> millennial fantasy

At least millenials are dreaming about a better society and trying to fight for it.

What are you doing besides spitting out unprovoked hate towards a whole generation of people?

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#106
post #9

Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other) My solution is: take a…

If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.

Dynamic alignment. I like it.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#107
We shouldn't worry about finding the talent who can work as researchers, first we should worry about finding the talent who can reliably work as modern farmers or in factories. That is what Africa is missing before it can take the next step towards becoming a modern society.

Re: Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

#108
post #9

Imo Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated, And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don’t make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple’s SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other) My solution is: take a…

If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.

If I had that amount of money I would try to build an army of humanoid robots. However I think the end result won't be much more useful than an animatronic manequin. AGI doesn't exist so even a simple feature like "bring out the trash" would be a million dollar project by itself.
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