I love the work you’re doing. I believe there are dysfunctions in the way curiosity-driven academic research gets funded that have and will continue to have major implications for technological progress and economic development. I’m also sympathetic to the sketch of possible reforms. Increasing competition and closing feedback loops on the performance of funding decisions would likely produce tangible benefits.
What I’m wondering about more these days is how things work at the micro level. In my experience, there is a very clear and observable difference between the kinds of researchers who are driven by curiosity and the kinds of researchers who are driven by a desire to see their work have a tangible impact on the world during their lifetime. VC funding has done plenty for the latter. How can we encourage and help the former?
There is probably a baseline level of curiosity driven research that will happen no matter what we do. There always has been. Many of the people who do curiosity driven research do it despite having to make huge personal sacrifices. Mostly what we need to do for them is keep other people out of their way.
But people are people, and very few can live as hermits forever. I believe that in many cases, the curiosity driven research accelerates as the curiosity-driven researchers find a community of kindred spirits in which they can share their ideas freely. When fear of being scooped and losing funding is replaced by a infinite, positive-sum game of seeing who can come up with the coolest new theories or results, the work tends to accelerate and multiply in a combinatorial way.
Where are those physical environments today? Bell Labs had one. IBM ARC had one. I feel like the Flatiron Institute has one. Where else?
In the end, funding is only part of the answer here.
Curiosity is already a very strong motivator, we just need to enable it and get out of the way. Give scientists funding without making them narrowly constrain their goals, dial down their ambition, or spend half their time writing grants. Then give them the research freedom to pursue that curiosity wherever it leads. It’s not easy but it is pretty simple.
I agree with that. But having seen IBM ARC up close in person in the 1990s, my gut is that there is some critical mass of curiosity—a threshold number of curious researchers all working in the same place—that leads to a kind of magic you don’t see when the same people are more distributed geographically.
I love the work you’re doing. I believe there are dysfunctions in the way curiosity-driven academic research gets funded that have and will continue to have major implications for technological progress and economic development. I’m also sympathetic to the sketch of possible reforms. Increasing competition and closing feedback loops on the performance of funding decisions would likely produce tangible benefits.
What I’m wondering about more these days is how things work at the micro level. In my experience, there is a very clear and observable difference between the kinds of researchers who are driven by curiosity and the kinds of researchers who are driven by a desire to see their work have a tangible impact on the world during their lifetime. VC funding has done plenty for the latter. How can we encourage and help the former?
There is probably a baseline level of curiosity driven research that will happen no matter what we do. There always has been. Many of the people who do curiosity driven research do it despite having to make huge personal sacrifices. Mostly what we need to do for them is keep other people out of their way.
But people are people, and very few can live as hermits forever. I believe that in many cases, the curiosity driven research accelerates as the curiosity-driven researchers find a community of kindred spirits in which they can share their ideas freely. When fear of being scooped and losing funding is replaced by a infinite, positive-sum game of seeing who can come up with the coolest new theories or results, the work tends to accelerate and multiply in a combinatorial way.
Where are those physical environments today? Bell Labs had one. IBM ARC had one. I feel like the Flatiron Institute has one. Where else?
In the end, funding is only part of the answer here.
Curiosity is already a very strong motivator, we just need to enable it and get out of the way. Give scientists funding without making them narrowly constrain their goals, dial down their ambition, or spend half their time writing grants. Then give them the research freedom to pursue that curiosity wherever it leads. It’s not easy but it is pretty simple.
I agree with that. But having seen IBM ARC up close in person in the 1990s, my gut is that there is some critical mass of curiosity—a threshold number of curious researchers all working in the same place—that leads to a kind of magic you don’t see when the same people are more distributed geographically.
Good point, I agree! Something important to creating the right research lab team and culture.