The function of research universities used to be to provide a support structure within which individuals could spend substantially their your time doing some mixture of teaching and research. They’re no long really even pretending to do that.
Conversation
Ah, hmm, while looking for an old tweet of mine on this topic, I discovered a 2017 thread that made most of the same points I’m about to tweet today! Both draw on an unfinished blog post that apparently I ought to polish up and publish for reference…
Quote Tweet
Replying to @Meaningness
Research universities used to provide conducive circumstances for thinking—but perverse incentives and administrative idiocies negated that.
1
1
19
Some types of cognitive work, which may be critical for innovative breakthroughs, are apparently *impossible* except under highly specialized circumstances that are mostly no longer available.
This *might* explain why we’re continuing to make progress in “normal science” only.
1
11
39
. and I discussed this yesterday in a tweet thread that unfortunately forked so it's a bit hard to point to, but here's one pointer into it:
Quote Tweet
Replying to @Meaningness and @michael_nielsen
Many of my projects require specific non-ordinary cognitive modes to proceed, and it usually takes me about three full-time days to get myself into the relevant state. Any significant interruption aborts the process.
1
2
22
Some outstanding researchers recognize the problem and go independent, hoping that it’s easier to do serious thinking outside an institutional context than within one.
In this 🧵 explains some of the reasons that mostly doesn’t work:
Quote Tweet
I was briefly calling myself an independent researcher: somebody who self-funds spec R&D on their own ideas. In theory it’s something like indie-research : academic research :: blogging/self-publishing : traditional publishing.
But the idea doesn’t really work.
Show this thread
2
2
20
We urgently need alternative mechanisms/institutions for research support. This 🧵 from crunches some numbers: what would that cost? Answer: surprisingly little, in the scale of things.
Quote Tweet
Thinking about my thread this morning on why independent research is hard, and what it would take to make it possible, and whether it’s within the reach of private investors who ALL complain endlessly about how they have far too much capital and don’t know where to put it. twitter.com/vgr/status/119…
Show this thread
2
5
18
.’s 🧵 also covers many of the issues that come up in discussions of alt-research funding and institutions. This is a common, live discussion among people I talk with often. There’s growing momentum and consensus in the conversation, but will it lead to action?
3
8
I suspect the central challenge here is to find alternative mechanisms for selecting what research/researchers to fund. How do grantors know their money is being well-spent? Who makes those decisions? Is there a way to do this that doesn’t just replicate the existing pathologies?
5
2
12
Replying to
Keeping the admin of assessment on the funder and not on the scientists has been useful in the past (DARPA) and I think may be an interesting current case study for this.
1
The effective altruism community has successfully built a mechanism to get SV millionaires to part with their money for their causes. & 's funding threads seem to be arguing for a kind of "effective science".
1
Not really, that’s a bad comparison at least for what I’m getting at. That’s actually what’s kinda slowly choking traditional research (citation numbers, impact factors, patent counts, ROI mentality). I’m thinking more a kind of disciplined narrative-driven visionary romanticism.
EA does have a strong narrative & vision, so can serve as a useful guide for more romantic efforts in how to get attention. Also, the problem with metrics isn't metrics, but the gap between the metric & what it's a proxy for.
1


