There's repeated mention of academia being broken due to issues such as politics, and mis-aligned interests between researchers and their departments. What have been the changes over time in Academia that led to this?
YC Research
171–180 of 389 posts
Re: YC Research
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
For now they are going to be hand-selected by me (the area we are starting with requires pretty specific domain expertise). Not sure what we'll do in the future.
"For now they are going to be hand-selected by me (the area we are starting with requires pretty specific domain expertise). Not sure what we'll do in the future." Two words: baseband processor. The world really, really needs a fully open baseband processor.
It really does. But that seems like a mission for a startup, not a research organization. The challenges are more engineering and business than science.
If someone wants to apply with an open baseband processor startup, applications are due Oct 13!
Re: YC Research
#173Great idea!
I decided not to go into academia many, many years ago, because a short look revealed that it seems to destroy the love of the subject matter more quickly than just about anything.
Now that I am partly back working on my PhD, I am still glad I didn't make it my main source of income, because now I have the freedom to do real research, rather than gaming the system of academia with minimal viable papers and incremental research re-gurgitating old insights. ("Doing X in Smalltalk" 10 years later: "Doing X in Java" 10 years after that: "Doing X in JavaScript" Sigh).
Re: YC Research
#174Re: YC Research
#175> I’m going to personally donate $10 million Statements like this always turn me off. I guess it's because it breaks the illusion that Sam and everyone else at YC are normal people like most of us. They're not. They're INSANELY wealthy by any reasonable standard.
Agreed. It's important to remember that sama is SV elite (tm) and can afford to throw his money after extremely ambitious and risky projects-- he isn't living the "normie" life. There's nothing wrong with that, but it can be a bit jarring to be reminded of it.
I still think that this is a great (fantastic and maybe even unprecedented, depending on how serious he is about the duration) move by YC, though. I really hope that they nail the concept of research being different from shipping products, though-- the mentality that research is a product that has to be shipped out has largely killed the scientific research community of academia, warping it into a horrendous paper-churn for survival.
Re: YC Research
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like you're using "normal people" as pejorative. I meant it as "is able to relate to the day-to-day experience of most people in this country."
I'm definitely using it as you intended. "the day-to-day experience of most people in this country" is nothing like any of the things Altman, PG, Livingston etc... experience on a daily basis.
I'd wager most HN readers can't relate to the day to day experience of most people in this country.
Re: YC Research
#177> I’m going to personally donate $10 million Statements like this always turn me off. I guess it's because it breaks the illusion that Sam and everyone else at YC are normal people like most of us. They're not. They're INSANELY wealthy by any reasonable standard.
why would you want to be sheltered from such a basic fact of life? Anyway, if it's any consolation, 10m is probably not small change for Sam. His biggest liquidity event so far was 40m for Loopt, so 10m is definitely a considered investment for him. He probably wrote it in an off the cuff manner to set a precedent for the mentality towards the fund. Basically signaling to other investors not to think about putting money up too much since its such a worthy cause
Re: YC Research
#178Very interesting! But exactly how fundamental is this research meant to be? Will there be any mathematicians working on projects not at all related to cryptography or physicists working on projects entirely unrelated to fusion? As an astrophysicist in the thick of applications for jobs in both industry and academia, I strongly identify with the points raised in the article. While I consider my research slightly heret…
> YC has a very high problem flux at this point From this statement and, more generally, YC's focus on creating high-growth businesses, I'm guessing they'll be focused on long-term research with potential to disrupt markets and have practical impact. > So is this initiative meant to keep scientists like me working on the problems we're working on, or is it meant to prevent computer scientists working on a new way for…
> You sound dismissive of scientists (computer or otherwise) working on solving practical problems.
I don't mean to be dismissive of those working on solving practical problems! There's a good chance that will be me in the near future! I suppose my concern is more that people working on those sorts of things already have many more options and resources available to them. I just mean to state that if one grants that research without immediate practical application has some (perhaps qualitative) value for society, then the relative impact could be larger if it were focused more towards that kind of research. But of course the downside to that is that the resulting research...has no immediate practical application.
None of this should be taken as criticism exactly since both strategies have their advantages (and it's not my money anyway), it's just not quite clear from the post what sort of research is going to be funded.
Re: YC Research
#179this is great, I'd love to see something similar to the Kavli Foundation growing from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kavli_Foundation
Re: YC Research
#180> "To start off, I’m going to personally donate $10 million..." Holy cow. That's real money. Sincerely very impressed by the commitment.
Reminds me of a great historical figure of Hungary, István Széchenyi. >Széchenyi gained a wider reputation in 1825, by supporting the proposal of the prime minister, Nagy, to establish the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Széchenyi donated the full annual income of his estates that year , 60,000 florins, towards it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istv%C3%A1n_Sz%C3%A9chenyi
>The height of the bubble was reached in the winter of 1636-37. Tulip traders were making (and losing) fortunes regularly. A good trader could earn up to 60,000 florins in a month— approximately $61,710 adjusted to current U.S. dollars. With profits like those to be had, nothing local governments could do stopped the frenzy of trading. Then one day in Haarlem a buyer failed to show up and pay for his bulb purchase. The ensuing panic spread across Holland, and within days tulip bulbs were worth only a hundredth of their former prices. The tulip bubble had burst.
Florins appear to be pretty steady with the dollar...