There should be some kind of official recognition + prize for people providing public goods on the Internet. There exist prizes for free software and open-source projects, but this does not cover even remotely the amount of intangible value people can deliver on the Internet. Examples include: https://avherald.com, but also a lot of open-source projects. and maybe people like patio11, gwern, Lilian Weng, or Bartosz Ciechanowski. Some YouTubers would also likely qualify, but I’m not very familiar with the medium.
Theory of change: just increase the rate of reminders to people that if they are highly competent and passionate about something not directly marketable, the Internet has made it so that they can easily increase the amount of beauty in the world by making their passion a public project.
Counterargument #2: AI obsoletes creation of cool stuff on the Internet.
Response: on the contrary, in many possible futures (esp. with constraints on agency), AI empowers people to deliver beauty to others, by automating all except the things they are passionate about. Motivation becomes more of a bottleneck.
Also, these types of public goods are some of the things that make me most proud of the current human civilization. I’m sure many here will agree. Even if we lose that in the future, I think it still matters, even as some sort of nod to the things we used to value in the past.
Counterargument #1: it might be better to incentivize people to run actual companies that deliver business value.
Response: there is so much value to be created that is hard to capture via current market structures. There are many people passionate about things that fall into this category.
There should be some kind of official recognition + prize for people providing public goods on the Internet. There exist prizes for free software and open-source projects, but this does not cover even remotely the amount of intangible value people can deliver on the Internet.
Examples include: https://avherald.com, but also a lot of open-source projects. and maybe people like patio11, gwern, Lilian Weng, or Bartosz Ciechanowski. Some YouTubers would also likely qualify, but I’m not very familiar with the medium.
Theory of change: just increase the rate of reminders to people that if they are highly competent and passionate about something not directly marketable, the Internet has made it so that they can easily increase the amount of beauty in the world by making their passion a public project.
Tyler Cowen did something like this for covid: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/1-million-plus-in-emergent-ventures-prizes-for-coronavirus-work.html
Counterargument #2: AI obsoletes creation of cool stuff on the Internet.
Response: on the contrary, in many possible futures (esp. with constraints on agency), AI empowers people to deliver beauty to others, by automating all except the things they are passionate about. Motivation becomes more of a bottleneck.
Also, these types of public goods are some of the things that make me most proud of the current human civilization. I’m sure many here will agree. Even if we lose that in the future, I think it still matters, even as some sort of nod to the things we used to value in the past.
Counterargument #1: it might be better to incentivize people to run actual companies that deliver business value.
Response: there is so much value to be created that is hard to capture via current market structures. There are many people passionate about things that fall into this category.