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This question's gauche, but: given the prevalence of $400k++ comp packages for ~30-year-olds in Big Tech, why aren't there lots more "gentle[wo]man scholars"? i.e. people quitting to do non-remunerative creative projects I can think of some, but shouldn't there be thousands?

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Ben Reinhardt

@Ben_Reinhardt

Jan 28

Speculations, mostly hoping to summon Cunningham's law: - We celebrate people who use that $$ to then do <startups/vc> not scholarship. - The person you need to turn yourself into to get to that point is not the sort of person who gentlescholars - Too much work to reach frontier

Rhys Lindmark

@RhysLindmark

Jan 28

Came here to say something like #1 Need more legible things for gentlescholars to signal their progress over time. Startups/VC have Series ABCD, all of which is networked optimized (mention your party round on Twitter).

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and

Hm. I get the impression that historic gentle[wo]man scholars didn't care that much about signaling their progress. Lots of important work published/discovered posthumously, etc. But I could believe that expectations and/or felt needs here have changed.

1:35 AM · Jan 28, 2022Twitter Web App

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My impression was that yes it was less about progress, but that doing the thing at all was highly regarded.

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I’m not sure that it’s legibility of progress so much as just having a name for it, having some understood rhythms and patterns so that people who aren’t doing it yet can catch a vision for what it might be like. Hard to choose/want something that can’t be envisioned.

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· Jan 28

Replying to @andy_matuschak

I did this and I think one of the barriers is a lack of a framework to describe what one is doing. Independent scientist sounds like ~ crackpot. I've gotten a few editors come back to me about a lack of affiliation saying i must have an affiliation. Still managed to publish tho

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You're not wrong! This reminds me of "work in an opaque DARPA box." It makes me think: how would we even see the gentle scholars rn if their goal is to be hidden? 😂 They're antimemetic!