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Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
361–370 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#362Academic research/funding is broken - it'd be cool if there was a way to create something to fix the incentives. I think that's kind of the goal of YC research in a narrow sense, but it'd be interesting if there was a way to align the incentives so scientists collaborated more instead of hiding research so they don't get 'scooped'. At this same time this could get rid of the academic journals that charge huge amounts…
Science Exchange (YC S11) is solving this problem. The basic idea is that instead of the "authorship bartering" model that's pervasive in research today we move towards a market-based collaboration model. Basically we encourage researchers to collaborate because it's financially lucrative to do so. By making researchers wealthy they're able to release themselves from being dependent on prestige publications for gener…
This sounds like a good idea and is solving part of the problem (getting funding), I suspect solving prestige will be harder though - it's not just money that drives it (YC may be in a unique position to be able to grant prestige).
Scientists want to be published in 'Nature' because it's good for their career (citations) and respect from peers. If there was a way to fix that incentive where it was more prestigious to do the research in the open and by collaborating (like FOSS development) that would be a big win.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#363AGI. It's nearly impossible to get a big company to invest in AGI due to the historically bad ROI. That's also the reason there probably won't be a successful startup in this space for a while. The private sector is not particularly great at exploration where ROI is uncertain. OpenCog is a great start, but it would be nice to have another project in parallel that utilizes different ideas.
Google are investing quite a bit.
I would say they invest heavily in narrow AI like Apple and Microsoft, Amazon, etc. However, AGI is rarely dealt with.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#364http://sens.org/ . Humans need more lifespan, badly. I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent. I’d also have said basic income. Good to know you’re on it. Meta-research. Academic publishing is obsolete, and knowledge should not be paywalled. How many researchers already make use of https://www.reddit.com/r/scholar or http://sci-hub.io/ ? Bacteriophages. Antibiotics are running out, while phag…
I couldn't agree more about funding SENS related research. I think focusing on extended lifespan misses the point though (although it's a nice side benefit). The diseases of old age cause more suffering than everything else combined. Seeing people I love deteriorate to a state of constant suffering is unbearable to watch. Seeing signs of ageing in myself hammers home just how helpless I am to do anything. I don't und…
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Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#365http://sens.org/ . Humans need more lifespan, badly. I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent. I’d also have said basic income. Good to know you’re on it. Meta-research. Academic publishing is obsolete, and knowledge should not be paywalled. How many researchers already make use of https://www.reddit.com/r/scholar or http://sci-hub.io/ ? Bacteriophages. Antibiotics are running out, while phag…
I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent.
But, why? Nothing about "AI safety" is remotely useful. It would be like researching "alcohol safety" (something everybody has access to and nobody can restrict) or researching how ants can influence "human safety" (tiny things trying to influence massive things). It's nonsense no matter which way you think about it unless you just want to write SF novels.
Open-source infrastructure.
Sadly, we don't need "research" to study how it works, we need direct payments to contributors. As a "startup culture" we need to stop the trend of billion dollar companies using free open source labor to reduce corporate costs and boost corporate profits while paying highly skilled professional volunteers nothing.
Yudkowsky Ambition
A key part of _research_ is you need to have a plan of attack. Saying "We're going to fund research into antigravity, time travel, and zero point energy" sure sounds like fun, but it's an absolute waste of time.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#366Corruption. Bureaucracy is responsible for a lot of corruption. Getting things done in the government is meeting a lot of people and filling a lot of forms. Bribing is sometimes the shortest path to get work done. Having interoperable data systems, forms that can be filled online and an easy way for citizens to understand the law and fill the papers without a human touchpoint would make things much more seamless and…
So the root problem is oversized bureaucracy, corruption is a consequence?
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#367Gene therapy - It is known that modified virus vectors can fix DNA. I believe this approach can be used to cure wide variety of diseases related to gene mutations.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#368Stack Risk. We need to know how much CPU power entities have at their dosposal. If statistics aren't available, find data centers and energy breakdowns backout those costs and use sqftage to find amount of servers. COmputing power growth rate is likely biggest metric tp assess how the tech industry is doing and possibly better at measuring an economy than GDP. The risk asdociated with having elephant flow like owners…
Stack Risk. We need to know how much CPU power entities have at their dosposal.
That's actually a great idea and almost impossible to make reliable.
We could measure "stack risk" for registered, 100% above board companies with their own data centers and employees, but we can't really measure the risk of some guy in eastern europe with access to a 1 billion node, globally distributed and illegal obtained, Android bot net.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#369Academic research/funding is broken - it'd be cool if there was a way to create something to fix the incentives. I think that's kind of the goal of YC research in a narrow sense, but it'd be interesting if there was a way to align the incentives so scientists collaborated more instead of hiding research so they don't get 'scooped'. At this same time this could get rid of the academic journals that charge huge amounts…
My startup, Thinklab, is trying fix the incentives. The concept is to partner with science funders and help them distribute their money in a way that rewards scientists for openly sharing their work in real-time while collaborating with each other over the Internet. The first simple step is requiring researchers to openly post their proposals in order to get funding. A portion of funding is then set aside to reward v…
I think that's cool and could lead to more collaboration/others also being able to easily reproduce experiments too (assuming the tool for them collaborating over the internet is really good and they want to use it).
The tricky part is that the current system may act as a filter where the best people will still try to hide their methods and get into the existing Journals because it's best for their career - so you'll get lower quality requests for funding.
I don't understand why Universities don't work together to push towards open access, but I guess they're interested in Journal prestige too.
As a side note there's also the issue with papers hiding critical components of their research so they can't be reproduced (so they can make companies later) - this is really not in the spirit of science.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#370There are still millions of UK people - young and old - who either do not use computers at all or are barely beyond beginner stage, and therefore cannot make intelligent, relevant use of it. See statistics at http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access-quarterl...
This is despite the work of Martha Lane Fox's Digital by Default project, very generously government funded and rewarded by a seat in the Lords. The obvious solution was not acted upon, and I would like to put it to you, having already done small scale research on it.
Anita Pincas a.pincas@ioe.ac.uk Univ. College London