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Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in

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

#71

Post by slimsag »

I've written and thought a lot about the need for a platform that enables investment in individuals and projects[0], so I'm REALLY happy for any initiatives that look into this.

I work on a game engine[1] and am slowly acquiring GitHub sponsors. When I think about these platforms, I think about them relative to the status quo: GitHub sponsors, Patreon, Kickstarter.

From what I can tell Moth Minds isn't an investment platform but rather a "generous donor creates a grant program, people apply and get an effective donation" program. I'm left wondering: am I missing anything? How does this differ from someone donating to individuals on GitHub sponsors, Patreon, Kickstarter, etc.? It seems the primary thing is that the donor doesn't need to find individuals to sponsor (which is great) but not the massive game changer I hope to see in our future.

That said, still very interesting work Molly-thank you for exploring this! I wish more people were thinking about this!

[0] https://devlog.hexops.com/2021/terrifying-parallels-between-...

[1] https://devlog.hexops.com/2021/mach-engine-the-future-of-gra...

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

#72

Post by robotresearcher »

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…

> maybe we should just fund legit grant seeking PhDs.

We already do, through the NSF, DARPA, DOJ, NSA, NASA, etc.

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

#73

Post by slimsag »

ryanmentor wrote: post #56

This is spiritually and practically compatible with the grants work we're doing at Gitcoin :) Come get involved and we can scale this up! gitcoindao.com

I don't fully understand your approach here, but I would like to.

How is this different from individuals donating to people e.g. developing software via GitHub sponsors, or donating to artists they like on Patreon, or funding development of physical products on Kickstarter?

The best answer I can come up with is that gitcoindao tries to ride the "DAO", "Web3", "decentralized" buzz words.

Unless the goal is really to have investments to people on gitcoindao give real-world returns, using a DAO to skirt SEC securities regulations?

How do you plan to resolve the issue of basically just crypto stuff being sponsored with this? seems like another missed opportunity if it only applies to the crypto community, but not surprising

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

#74

Post by imagineerschool »

slimsag wrote: post #73
ryanmentor wrote: post #56

This is spiritually and practically compatible with the grants work we're doing at Gitcoin :) Come get involved and we can scale this up! gitcoindao.com

I don't fully understand your approach here, but I would like to. How is this different from individuals donating to people e.g. developing software via GitHub sponsors, or donating to artists they like on Patreon, or funding development of physical products on Kickstarter? The best answer I can come up with is that gitcoindao tries to ride the "DAO", "Web3", "decentralized" buzz words. Unless the goal is really to h…

It's not just crypto, and it's not just software. The grants round that opened today can be seen here: https://gitcoin.co/grants/#match-pools

It includes grants for climate change and grants for longevity.

To answer your question, the difference from kickstarter is that grants for public goods don't produce products - they produce public goods.

It is possible to have many cynical takes, but if you scratch the surface, you'll see that funding public goods really is what this is all about.

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

#75

Post by challenger-derp »

hyperpallium2 wrote: post #42

UBI will do this. Lots of freeloaders, but at pretty much the same cost as at present. But it's instructive to look at communistic/socialistic states, which pretty much had this. Anecdotally, Joscha Bach talks about his father, being able to do his own thing in that environment, without needing it to be practical. And perhaps that's the crucial thing: without incentives, ideas are not made practical, where they can m…

> UBI will do this.

I get where you're coming from but UBI is not the same as funding individuals for the simple reason that funded individuals arrive at an amount greater than UBI funding -- economic firepower that's duly needed when competing for resources whose supply is far outstripped by demand (e.g. GPUs for academic compute competes with crypto miners).

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

#76

Post by smusamashah »

ok_dad wrote: post #30
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…

For something like this, if you have a good idea, why not explain it and make the idea public so someone with more time can research it? You'll only lose the chance to make a big name for yourself, and if it pans out you'll still get some credit, and the human race will have advanced in knowledge. It's not like you're giving away a possible formula to nuclear fusion. What's the downside I'm not seeing?

What platform would be the most suitable one to publish ideas in a way that a future researcher can pick it up and work on it. A blog post on internet? That will just get lost in the internet noise. What you are suggesting is probably writing a white paper on it.

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

#77

Post by JetAlone »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #34
weego wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 'run' my own micro arts fund providing support for people in MH communities that would like supplies or tools to help as part of their ongoing rehab or change of career as a way of getting back into a life that means something. The answer really is if you expect a measurable outcome from small-scale investing in people then don't do it, you're in the wrong space. If you view your investment as a path to the outcome…

I put this together as a concept. There are so many tiers of "low bar", I think a lot of people just need a very basic safety net. There is so much real estate sitting essentially empty and the boomer generation is starting to downsize to smaller places because their homes feel empty and have become unrewarding to own. After my parents died when I was young I would have killed for a middle class teen/twenties life. h…

Seems very niche, but I like this idea. Why not have an agency for lonely/struggling people who want to get together and develop some kind of symbiotic relationship with each other to do so? There's risks, but those are always present. I hope it works out.

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

#78

Post by ssalazar »

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 personal savings, Patreon, tips, etc.). Like Xerox PARC type projects or PhD research without the gatekeeping. This kind of work doesn't exactly require a singular brilliant visionary, but it helps to provide a financial incentive to lure someone with a unique vision from a comfortable tech salary.

*for flexible interpretations of value

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

#79

Post by chubs »

I'm working on an open-source project that I think should show some value if we can get it off the ground.

My concern is that this sponsorship model is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: You can't attract sponsorship at early stages, because all you have to show is 'hopes and dreams'. But once it's done, you don't really need sponsorship as much: it's done and I'll move onto the next project. And to get from the early stage to a viable project, a friend and I really need to spend i guess 6mo full-time. I fear part-time will take forever and likely lead to project abandonment due to lack of momentum.

So i'm not really sure what to do, I'd really like to see it succeed.

(the project is github.com/soniclang/sonic)

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

#80

Post by hyperpallium2 »

challenger-derp wrote: post #75
hyperpallium2 wrote: post #42

UBI will do this. Lots of freeloaders, but at pretty much the same cost as at present. But it's instructive to look at communistic/socialistic states, which pretty much had this. Anecdotally, Joscha Bach talks about his father, being able to do his own thing in that environment, without needing it to be practical. And perhaps that's the crucial thing: without incentives, ideas are not made practical, where they can m…

> UBI will do this. I get where you're coming from but UBI is not the same as funding individuals for the simple reason that funded individuals arrive at an amount greater than UBI funding -- economic firepower that's duly needed when competing for resources whose supply is far outstripped by demand (e.g. GPUs for academic compute competes with crypto miners).

True, though I think the most ground-breaking stuff is done by people without expensive equipment. e.g. Crypto algorithms themselces weren't prpven using expensive equipment. Tycho had the expensive telescope, but Kepler used his observations to make the breakthrough.

The reason is that if you must use expensive equipmemt within the ongoing process of your trial-and-error, it is not just expensive, but exorbitantly expensive.

Though... I guess youe example of- GPUs aren't that expensive, and can facilitate the reaearch process. OTOH I'm not sure there are breakthroughs being made that way, more iterative progress - the enabling breakthrough, of Deep Learning by Hinton, didn't need GPUs.

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