* SBIR and STTR, for those unfamiliar with it, is a rather sorry-ass federal small business innovation grants program that in theory should sustain indie research, but in practice ends up subsidizing military-industry complex subcontracting layer
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My own future ambitions beyond indie writing and publishing are pretty modest, so I can self-fund most things I care to research on the margins of non-research stuff and don’t need anyone besides me to care about outcomes. No desire to shoot for John Carmack level goals.
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I was very lucky btw, to have so many options, and a generally cheerful and positive mindset exiting academia, feeling good about myself and my choices. The university system traumatizes and destroys 4-5 people for every 1 it shapes positively. It’s ugly out there.
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted David Anderson
Clarification: I only considered CAREER grants rather than the vastly larger total funding pie because bootstrapping the”startup” phase is the hardest part of research. My speculative assumption is that if that’s solved, enough will succeed that larger pie will emerge organicallyhttps://twitter.com/Danderso13/status/1196040865170546688 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Several people seem to be misunderstanding this part of my argument. The CAREER grant is a good calibration point even though it’s only a tiny fraction, because it’s what creates new research CAPACITY in the university system out of new PhD ranks. That’s what I’d like to see 3xed
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I seem to have accidentally joined a mini-wave of commentary on indie research. Here is
@nayafia describing her experience, a kind of edge case between the sort of indie research I’m talking about and existing institutional margins.https://nadiaeghbal.com/phd1 reply 1 retweet 16 likesShow this thread -
Venkatesh Rao Retweeted
And here’s a piece by James Gallagher https://twitter.com/jamesg_oca/status/1196080062447149056 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Here’s John Carmack’s announcement which is what got me tweeting. Not sure what gotbthe others thinking about this right now. https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2547632585471243&id=100006735798590 …
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Aside: a few seem to be reading this thread as a proposal for a disruptive attack on the university research system rather than speculations for a parallel system for a potential indie research world. But yes, it could potentially lead to competition, which would be a good thing.
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It’s a ritual in the university world to whine about how research funding is under threat. But from the outside, people would correctly conclude that the system has near-monopolistic access to a vast public funding budget. And my proposal doesn’t even envision touching that.
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If the university research world is concerned about competition from a parallel independent research world catalyzed by private funding and alternate norms, one that currently has vanishingly tiny funding (mostly self-funding) compared to their world, you have to wonder: why?
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I wonder what would happen if I invited people to send me 1-page proposals in a pro-forma for indie mini-CAREER grants and just threw up a page linking to all of them, then promoting that page. I bet I could match at least a few proposals to private funding sources
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