Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in • Hacker News Board

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#111

Post by jaredklewis » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #61

yosito wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would like $100k to work on the Collatz conjecture for 6 months > I have no credentials Then why would you need $100k to work on mathematics?

> why would you need $100k to work on mathematics? it's to live off, and support dependents while doing something that would not bring in traditional forms of profit. That's why it's usually called a grant, rather than an investment - because the granter isn't going to see a direct financial return (but would want to see a societal return such as knowledge or something cultural etc).

100k for 6 months __living expenses__ would be without question the most generous grant I have ever seen or heard of.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#112

Post by mirker » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

jaredklewis wrote: post #111

chii wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you need $100k to work on mathematics? it's to live off, and support dependents while doing something that would not bring in traditional forms of profit. That's why it's usually called a grant, rather than an investment - because the granter isn't going to see a direct financial return (but would want to see a societal return such as knowledge or something cultural etc).

100k for 6 months __living expenses__ would be without question the most generous grant I have ever seen or heard of.

Yeah, PhD income is $40k or less a year. So 5x above market rate for high-risk research. On top of that, PhD students are well-aligned for the research and have other non-monetary reasons to pursue the research (their PhD requirements).

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#113

Post by R0b0t1 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #109

R0b0t1 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your case I think you would be better served by being able to discuss with a mathematics faculty in a way similar to what happens naturally in academia. I think it's not just money but the ability to more freely go back to school. It is difficult-ish to get the funding for, essentially, self-directed research during the best years of your life, and basically impossible if you don't already have an undergraduate de…

Asking someone with a mature career to formally return to academia seems like a non-starter. In such a case he'd need to pay more money and spend even more time - when all he wants to do is work on this one particular problem.

I know, that's why I'm not asking him to do that. It's just instead of giving him money what he really needs is an opportunity to speak with professionals. The issue is a typical academic career path is usually the only way to speak to those people.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#114

Post by prox » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #33

I would love to work on open source, well designed, free software to control distributed energy resources and building load. Currently I've worked for several companies doing this, but I think that closed source, non free software will never allow us to truly reach the full electrification and decarbonization we need, and the power grid, both generation and transmission, is only getting more complex to manage with th…

I love the idea of mothminds, and I would also love to support projects like these even if it is just little money each month. We need a Twitch like sub model, or maybe this moth minds could help.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#115

Post by ok_dad » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

nefitty wrote: post #87

orzig wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give a sense of scale, how much would it cost to get you to do it? I'd love to help fund it, but definitely don't make fully 2x "Support a family", so it would be intersting to know how many people I'd need to round up.

I would personally forego 60-70% of my salary to work on impactful things I want to work on. Rent paid, dog fed, wife happy. Not much else to ask for.

Exactly, I would do it for just enough to pay rent, food, medical, etc. for my family for at least a few years. I think these days that could be anywhere from 25k to 75k (just a guess) depending on an individual's location.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#116

Post by ok_dad » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #62

ok_dad wrote: post #33

I would love to work on open source, well designed, free software to control distributed energy resources and building load. Currently I've worked for several companies doing this, but I think that closed source, non free software will never allow us to truly reach the full electrification and decarbonization we need, and the power grid, both generation and transmission, is only getting more complex to manage with th…

"... (no add trolls please, it's just an example)." What is an ad troll. Is it like someone who believes advertising revenue "makes our modern world spin".^1 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29186326 That is interesting because advertising spend is probably one of the least certain investments. It's causal effectiveness online is difficult if not impossible to measure. It is like suggesting casino receipts are…

I'm lucky that I can work in an "X" category job still, even if I can't do what I described above. I wouldn't be so harsh on those in "Y" category jobs, though, because I imagine the vast majority of folks are doing that, and maybe only a handful are truly in the "opioid pushing" equivalent jobs.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#117

Post by ok_dad » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #102

koheripbal wrote: post #10

I would like $100k to work on the Collatz conjecture for 6 months. I have an idea that will probably fail, but if I had that money I would quit my job work my ass off for six months to flesh it out. But I have no credentials, no way to write a grant proposal, and even I wouldn't invest in myself. ....and yet if we did this sort of experiment 10000 times over, humanity might make some big breakthroughs because some of…

Unfortunately, availability of money for an speculative work results in emergence of entire industry of scammers, whose only competence is getting grants to do that speculative work. For example, various European Union programmes are overtaken by such people. Also, this is the reason why VCs, after funding a startup, generallly prefer to be breathing down the CEO's neck (instead of a hands-off approach) - they know t…

My wife says a similar thing, and I agree that it's a hard problem to solve to prevent all that cash going to someone who will just play video games for the length of the grant. I guess you still need some signal that a person will work somewhat diligently on the grant work. I still think that it's important to fund that sort of work because there are so many examples of famous mathematicians in history who were just bored rich folks, or folks who had a benefactor and an idea, or maybe just a poor hermit from nowhere.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#118

Post by generalizations » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #81

generalizations wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, if doing Y is diverting attention away from X, or possibly even causing harm, then maybe "not doing Y" is also "something important to the world". I think this kind of analysis discounts the importance of family. Maybe, "not doing Y" is less important than "keeping my family fed".

"I think this discounts the importance of family." Which family. (a) The family of the person doing Y or (b) the families of the persons who fail to ever see the benefit of X or, worse, who suffer harm from Y. If the answer is (b), then not doing Y benefits the most families. Choice (b) fits better with the idea of "doing something important to the world", especially if one agrees that what he is doing now is prevent…

> Which family. (a) The family of the person doing Y or (b) the families of the persons who fail to ever see the benefit of X or, worse, who suffer harm from Y. If the answer is (b), then not doing Y benefits the most families. Choice (b) fits better with the idea of "doing something important to the world", especially if one agrees that what he is doing now is preventing him from doing not something that is important to the world.

This is how you get neglected kids with parental issues. I've seen it happen. If you're going to have kids, they need to know that they are your first priority, and they need to be treated that way.

> You want to discount the importance of not doing Y/doing X.

Nope. I just want to make the point that however important X is, or not doing Y is, the hierarchy should be family > ( X | !Y).

> It is not either-or question. It is possible to keep a family fed without working on adtech.

If you're lucky. But you're sidestepping my point, which is that if you have a choice between not working on adtech and feeding the family, feed your family.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#119

Post by sdwr » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #64

axelsvensson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that would fail. The reason is that Gödel numbers are rather arbitrary, and will therefore be rather far from a form that insights can be gleaned from. They are a representation of a representation, using the fundamental theorem of arithmetic only as a trick to encode any string of symbols into one integer. As an example of just how arbitrary Gödel numbers are, consider the expressions `((3*n)+1)` and `((…

In your example, the Godel number works out to be the same when you multiply them out - but your underlying point is valid that the assignment of primes to variables and operators cannot be as arbitrary as Godel used them as. ...a better example is just "x 1". You could add that ad infinitum to any equation and it cannot change the meaning of the outputted Godel number. ...but remember that getting a different result…

If you multiply it out, then it's just a regular number?

Your idea smells like wishful thinking.

Re: Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

#120

Post by burntoutfire » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #117

burntoutfire wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, availability of money for an speculative work results in emergence of entire industry of scammers, whose only competence is getting grants to do that speculative work. For example, various European Union programmes are overtaken by such people. Also, this is the reason why VCs, after funding a startup, generallly prefer to be breathing down the CEO's neck (instead of a hands-off approach) - they know t…

My wife says a similar thing, and I agree that it's a hard problem to solve to prevent all that cash going to someone who will just play video games for the length of the grant. I guess you still need some signal that a person will work somewhat diligently on the grant work. I still think that it's important to fund that sort of work because there are so many examples of famous mathematicians in history who were just…

Well, we were getting pretty nice results pre-XX century, before any of the taxpayers' money got (forcibly) involved. Why not just continue relying on that proven model (i.e. the rich bored folks, the benefactors and the crazy hermits)? Esp. in math, where there's no need for any equipment or materials, it seemed to work well.