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

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

#121

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #118

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 importan…

Your "point" is a self-serving framing the issue of working on important world problems versus working on adtech as one of feeding the family versus not feeding the family (starving). You want us to believe "I have no choice". That may be your perspective. Whether it applies to anyone else is questionable. If there are really lots of people working in adtech who are in some sort of "forced labour" arrangement, where if they take another job, their children will starve, then we perhaps we should try to help them. The whole idea is silly. There are millions of people around the world who really are suffering who truly cannot feed their families, for real, and you want us to believe that people who work on adtech, who have the skills to be working on more important things, are among them.

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

#122

Post by ok_dad » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #120

ok_dad wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can see that, but I don't want to get into the implications for taxes and such, that's a polarizing topic. Wherever it comes from, it's necessary to support people with good ideas (and even some bad ones).

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

#123

Post by generalizations » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #121

generalizations wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 importan…

Your "point" is a self-serving framing the issue of working on important world problems versus working on adtech as one of feeding the family versus not feeding the family (starving). You want us to believe "I have no choice". That may be your perspective. Whether it applies to anyone else is questionable. If there are really lots of people working in adtech who are in some sort of "forced labour" arrangement, where…

a) You came up with the example of feeding the family, not me. I'm just using it.

b) I think you have a vastly inflated sense of how much a programming job impacts the world, especially compared to the immediate impact we have on our kids.

c) Stay off the personal attacks, they just make it look like you couldn't come up with anything better.

d) Twice now you've told me what I'm saying. Are you sure you actually know?

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

#124

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 12:42 AM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #123

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "point" is a self-serving framing the issue of working on important world problems versus working on adtech as one of feeding the family versus not feeding the family (starving). You want us to believe "I have no choice". That may be your perspective. Whether it applies to anyone else is questionable. If there are really lots of people working in adtech who are in some sort of "forced labour" arrangement, where…

a) You came up with the example of feeding the family, not me. I'm just using it. b) I think you have a vastly inflated sense of how much a programming job impacts the world, especially compared to the immediate impact we have on our kids. c) Stay off the personal attacks, they just make it look like you couldn't come up with anything better. d) Twice now you've told me what I'm saying. Are you sure you actually know…

Instead of stating that you believe that working on adtech is not such an important issue, which is a perfectly valid point view though I may disagree with it, you accused me of "discount[ing] the importance of family". How is that not a personal attack.

You suggested a false tradeoff between not working on adtech and "the importance of family." There is no such tradeoff. A person might even have more time to spend with the family by doing something different.

Forget about the family feeding justification example. It comes from past HN commments I have seen where people are apparently having a crisis of conscience about what they are actually doing for "work" and looking for acceptable "justifications".^1 The question is why work on adtech versus something else. There is a choice. No one is being forced to work on ads. That is the point of the example.

As for the "vastly inflated sense of how much a programming job impacts the world", that should go the parent commenter as he believes he could be doing something important to the world if he was not working on adtech. We cannot assess whether or not it is "inflated", because adtech is consuming his time and energy and denying him the chance to even try.

What I am suggesting is that simply not working on adtech could itself be something important because, from the computer user perspective, adtech is a pervasive nusiance. It is fine to disagree, and even accuse me of being biased towards users instead of developers, but accusing me of "discounting the importance of family" is disingenuous and, IMO, dishonest. There is no such tradeoff.

Programming jobs can and do have an impact on the world. Consider the environment. The energy consumption of datacenters built to store the results of personal data mining for the purposes of advertising. The energy-intensive minerals extraction for mobile phones that are deliberately intended to become "obsolete" after a commercially desirable period. The auto emissions fraud, e.g., Volvo.

1. Another one is "Well if I don't do this, someone else would just take my place." You just can't make this stuff up.

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

#125

Post by chii » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

mirker wrote: post #112

jaredklewis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

as mentioned in the other thread - the grant needs to compete with existing salary, or the OP would need to sacrifice potential income.

I dont think 100k for 6 months is ridiculous, because this is basically the starting salary for a grad engineer at a FAANG tech company. More, if they have experience.

What's actually ridiculous is "PhD income is $40k or less a year" - i think people (such as yourself) is so desensitized to low income as to feel normalized about it!

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

#126

Post by waltbosz » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #106

That's commendable, I love it. As other commenters said, I'd absolutely love to break my back working on improving the status quo [through free open source] but I am not paid for it. Like damn, I couldn't even convince some colleagues to use `just` as opposed to `make` and the migration path is trivial for most normal development cases (not talking about old Linux libraries or the kernel, of course). Takes literally…

> Initiatives like in the OP give me hope that at least some generous people would take a look and say "hey, that makes it easier for me to donate / fund efforts"... but I am not holding my breath. Our current society does not optimize for any of this.

I've recently discovered first hand that there are people who will give money away for little to nothing in return. Two examples:

1. I have a friend who makes over $300K/year as a ship's captain. She has way more money than she needs. One this she does with all her disposable income is fund kickstarters.

2. Last year, a random stranger spent $200 to buy gifts for my 3 kids just because my wife replied to a facebook thread on the topic of "what does everyone's kids want for Christmas". The woman wasn't even the OP on the tread. I'm not sure why she picked my family, I guess she just was charmed that my kids wanted sleeping bags.

> Finally, the biggest problem is discoverability.

This is true. Especially, when the concept of software development cost is so difficult to explain to a layperson. One can easily grasp the creative value of funding a Kickstarter for a graphic novel. How do you get non-technical person excited about software?

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

#127

Post by fuzzfactor » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

ssalazar wrote: post #78

nickff wrote: post #4

This is an interesting premise, but I'm not sure that the pool of potential grant recipients will be a very good one. The problem that I foresee is that people working on these sorts of projects seem to fall into two broad categories: -People who don't want to work for someone else, but lack vision and exist on social proof. These people will be attracted to the grant funding, but unable to use it to create something…

VCs aren't primarily looking for brilliant visionaries, even if its a popular narrative--the (high) risk/reward profile of a business venture is at least as important to them as the character of its founding team. The thesis behind Moth Minds seems to be that there is a lot of interesting/valuable* work that could be done that doesn't fit any of the typical funding models (VC, small business loan, burn through person…

Way back before the digital age when software was still an insignificant component of an overall technology spectrum, this was so long ago that it was a completely different economic landscape too.

There was a prominent recognition in major companies that for positions where a visionary ability was needed, they offered a considerable amount of compensation intentionally as "temptation" to keep the moths drawn to the flame rather than spreading out in an unforseen direction to do their own thing.

Whether that was starting a new business or going to a place like Bell Labs where you would be more likely to pursue your own strongest interests, this was all balanced out based on the need by the biggest payers for the most visible and persuadable high-performers.

This was actually a limiting factor.

Now the remaining less visible & persuadable high-performers of the same caliber are way harder to come by precisely because of the visibility issue, even though there are many more of them.

This is a vast resource that could potentially be leveraged to overwhelming benefit by an alternative paying force that has been absent from the landscape for all practical purposes.

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

#128

Post by zelphirkalt » Sat, Dec 04, 2021, 3:55 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…

> [...] It is like suggesting casino receipts are what make the modern world spin.

One thing is for sure: Some people inside the casino do make parts of our world actually spin.

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

#129

Post by webmaven » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #24

webmaven wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I accept your model of reality, there are some pretty big problems that a grant could address: 1) the categories of 'brilliant' and 'delusional' aren't mutually exclusive, especially since both are spectra rather than binary. They aren't entirely orthogonal, however. 2) 'brilliant' and 'delusional' are each qualities that are very hard to evaluate except in hindsight. 3) Finally, it is possible for someone wh…

I agree with you on all three points; I was trying to point out that there's an adverse selection problem that the post doesn't seem to take into account. Even most VCs have a very difficult time making money by finding brilliant visionaries, and they have a number of factors working in their favor.

Right. Most attempts to select winners end up filtering out the high-risk candidates that also represent the highest potential impact should they succeed (which also makes applicants fudge their proposals to seem lower risk high reward). So, you need to consciously allow the selection of some candidates randomly from a pool that only filters out the obviously deranged or fraudulent (in other words, quality of proposal counts, perceived odds of success does not).

There are a number of research funding agencies that are starting to use just this sort of grant funding lottery, the OP seems to be groping toward something similar.

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

#130

Post by webmaven » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 8:14 AM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #51

physicsgraph wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow what you're proposing, but in case it is tangentially related to a project I work on, I'll describe what I did. Write down every quantitative expression in Mathematical Physics. Assign a unique numerical ID to each expression. Identify the relations between each of the expressions to create a graph. Does that graph feature any patterns? Is there a path from any expression to every other expressi…

Rather than a numeric ID, the variables as well as the operations are represented by primes, as Godel described. The resulting number's geometric properties might provide some insight into the properties of the original system. The trick is figuring out which primes to use initially, and how to interpret the resulting number. ....but my gut tells me there is something there.

The only reason to use primes is to ensure that compound expressions are implicitly and uniquely related to their components. But with the magic of modern computers, this is unnecessary, as we have plenty of data storage and information representation implementations that simply store the relations explicitly (not to mention indexing them, enforcing uniqueness constraints, etc.).

In any case, the geometric (or perhaps you meant topological) properties of the objects are independent of the specific primes used, so "figuring out which primes to use initially" is a bit of a non sequitur.