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Comment by sktrdie | Hacker News Reader

The true problem is time, at least in fields like CS where expensive instruments aren’t really needed to do research (not as much as other fields).

You need the freedom of time and being able to fully dedicate yourself towards a specific study if you want to make any real contribution.

And I’d say that academia is struggling at doing science nowadays also because you’re stuck doing all kinds of other things with your time rather than actual research.

It’s hard to tell what the right formula is for being a productive scientist and surely everybody’s free at doing it.

I have a feeling that something like Universal Basic Income would give this freedom of time to crowds that can lead towards more people doing science and hence more discoveries.

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The comment on Universal Basic Income makes me realize that perhaps I've thought about UBI all wrong. So often people talk about the average (or perhaps median) societal output (if we can somewhat crassly call it that) of folks on UBI.

But if it could lead to a breakthrough akin to Borlaug's wheat varieties, which according to the article is responsible for saving .5 billion lives, then that alone would justify the entire program.

I am strongly for basic income because I know for a fact that if I got UBI I would heavily contribute to OpenStreetMap and other libre projects, and I would publish the occasional paper in the field that I studied at university.

As it is, I already do those things, because as a digital nomad I only have to work 2–3 days a week – I make a Western salary but I stay in cheaper countries. By why should the ability to make those alternative contributions only be available to "rich" people like me? It isn’t fair that other nerds who want to contribute like that are instead forced to take energy and time-sapping jobs, jobs that arguably contribute less to humanity in spite of purely economic arguments.

The other perspective is you can't always do work on interesting, fundamentally game changing problems. Some people maintain infrastructure and keep things running, and while those jobs can at times, look boring, thankless, and energy zapping - someone needs to do them.

Honestly there are plenty of people working in the most mundane areas of life doing exciting, novel things. The difference is no one notices it, until someone happens upon it, learns from it, combines it with their understanding, aggregates, synthesizes, culminating in recognition. Information is fundamentally open, we stand on the shoulders of giants, etc. When you come to an awareness or an epiphany, think of how you got there. Some of it comes from you, but a lot of it comes from things that aren't you. That's the problem with recognition. Sometimes the giants you stand on are the people you don't agree with.

Computer scientists stand on each other's toes, and so on. Falling too deeply in this awareness is like swimming in a sea of your own conscienceness, but it's important to remember, be thankful, humble, and try to give back more than you take. There are plenty of nerds out there working on interesting problems. They just don't look sexy on the outside because the interesting parts are all at the core of the technology, stuff you learn from, but don't know how to see well enough, quite yet.

> I have a feeling that something like Universal Basic Income would give this freedom of time to crowds that can lead towards more people doing science and hence more discoveries.

Agreed. When I was in graduate school I remember thinking that if we had UBI, everyone would become a scientist. I'm sure this was biased by my own interests, but the work often was truly thrilling. Sadly, it is very difficult to find opportunities in academia or industry to pursue work that one finds meaningful without major strings attached.

Most of my graduate school colleagues have left research. I'm a research scientist in industry, but it is increasingly obvious to me that this is relatively rare, particularly given the intellectual freedom and institutional support I am provided. And certainly much of my time is focused on work that has benefit to the corporation, versus open ended projects.

"if we had UBI, everyone would become a scientist"

But then if everyone became a scientist (or whatever else they wanted to do) living off UBI, then where would the UBI come from?

The robots, of course! Joking aside, though, I believe the idea is that, because UBI is subsistence-level, there's still an incentive for those who can earn more (presumably by producing something) to do so, such that they can afford greater luxuries.

Although I'm not categorically opposed to UBI (for some definition of "B"), I am indeed, often concerned that proponents are taking their own personal attitudes and experiences, extrapolating to all other humans, without fully considering less appealling parts of human nature or potential negative emergent/systemic effects at scale.

if we had UBI, everyone would become a scientist

Very few people want to be scientists. To see why, just replace "scientist" with "nerd", because for most people those are synonyms.

Moreover, anyone who wants to do science can become a grad student. That's at least 5 years of "basic income", and access to mentors/tools/resources. All you have to do is to find a lab that does what you're interested in.

> anyone who wants to do science can become a grad student

A grad student is an apprentice. This article is about a less taken path for a master. As a former PhD grad student, I can say most grad students are not in a position to conduct independent research. Most get attached to some funding obtained by someone more experienced than them, and then spend most of their time getting up to speed until they are able to write their own papers on that topic. But this leaves them a very narrow set of skills. This is why most academics go through a postdoc.

write their own papers on that topic

As long as that topic is what they would like to research, I don't see a problem. And if it's not, then they chose a wrong lab/advisor.

But this leaves them a very narrow set of skills

I developed a pretty wide range of skills as a phd student. From developing device models in Spice, to Tensorflow. In fact, I wish I focused on a subset of those skills.

I never heard of a grad student program that pays you to do your research project. The ones I've seen, always offer a choice between paying you to work on someone else's research project, or you get to work on your project but you don't get paid; you do get access to facilities, but you have to pay an exorbitant fee for this. Am I missing something?

That's why I said you have to find a lab that does what you're interested in. I have done just that, and for the last 5 years as a phd student I've been paid mostly to do what I would do as a hobby otherwise (read/implement deep learning papers), and try to advance state of the art.

from my own experience, this is the exception, though. even in CS, if you pick some of the more theoretical problems or a not-so-hot area, you might not get funding - (almost) no matter how good you are. and that's CS. move to other subjects like sociology, linguistics, history, and you will find that barely anyone gets funded.

I haven't heard about anyone in any PhD program in US who's not funded one way or another. Sure, you might need to TA a class, but it's usually not that hard, and leaves plenty of time to do research.

That's the opposite of my experience and understanding as a fresh PhD. In my field, social science, PhD students 100% own their research agenda. We get paid via a combination of grant (i.e. free money) and RA / TA work (i.e. money you work for). The better the program, the more of the money is free. And you always have the option to apply for external grants to fund yourself. In my (very fortunate) case, I rarely work on others' projects for more than 5 hours a week.

My friends in the natural sciences are more tied to the projects of their supervisors. But in the end they are still expected to be a mature researcher with their own agenda.

Caveat: I'm only certain that this is true for top-50 programs.

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