Great to see these points being made to a broader audience. My take from a similar investigation into science funding is that there is a common pattern to these really high impact researchers that have trouble getting funding: they’re often doing methods innovation rather than object level progress on some area.* It’s really hard to get grantors to understand the potential value of methods research even though it underlies scientific advancement. Big shots like the aforementioned Nobel winner, Douglas Englebart, and many others push for direct methods research only to have it seemingly fall on deaf ears even given their past accomplishments. I think part of the reason is that the benefits to major methods breakthroughs are basically unbelievable from the perspective of normal scientific work, and that people’s ability to think coherently about hits based research isn’t great. If we want breakthroughs the world desperately needs a billionaire who understands the value of methods work. I was really hopeful for Moskovitz to be this person given his blog posts around Asana and solving the meta problem, but have been disappointed by OpenPhil seeming to move in the direction of other foundations in terms of the range of grants they give out. What I mean by that is that glancing through their grants list, you could transplant most of them to the grants list from other foundations and no one would bat an eyelid. Thankfully there are a few exceptions, and people in methods have to take any concessions they get. The Templeton Foundation is another grantor in this space that at least has tried a little bit.
*Yes, there are arguments to be made about whether methods work is better thought of as something that could be pursued as it’s own thing vs something that must generally arise out of object level work. And I’d be thrilled if that argument *was actually happening*.
Great to see these points being made to a broader audience. My take from a similar investigation into science funding is that there is a common pattern to these really high impact researchers that have trouble getting funding: they’re often doing methods innovation rather than object level progress on some area.* It’s really hard to get grantors to understand the potential value of methods research even though it underlies scientific advancement. Big shots like the aforementioned Nobel winner, Douglas Englebart, and many others push for direct methods research only to have it seemingly fall on deaf ears even given their past accomplishments. I think part of the reason is that the benefits to major methods breakthroughs are basically unbelievable from the perspective of normal scientific work, and that people’s ability to think coherently about hits based research isn’t great. If we want breakthroughs the world desperately needs a billionaire who understands the value of methods work. I was really hopeful for Moskovitz to be this person given his blog posts around Asana and solving the meta problem, but have been disappointed by OpenPhil seeming to move in the direction of other foundations in terms of the range of grants they give out. What I mean by that is that glancing through their grants list, you could transplant most of them to the grants list from other foundations and no one would bat an eyelid. Thankfully there are a few exceptions, and people in methods have to take any concessions they get. The Templeton Foundation is another grantor in this space that at least has tried a little bit.
*Yes, there are arguments to be made about whether methods work is better thought of as something that could be pursued as it’s own thing vs something that must generally arise out of object level work. And I’d be thrilled if that argument *was actually happening*.
(QRI is working on the consciousness meter btw ;)