Reviving Patronage and Revolutionary Industrial Research

I couldn’t agree more with this article.

I happen to be working on a new way to look at quantum mechanics, based on finite combinatorial objects called multi-way systems, and after just a few weeks I’ve made a very satisfying amount of progress.

Maybe it won’t go anywhere. But if it succeeds, it should generate the abstract algebraic structure of QM — complex Hilbert spaces — from a more elegant, intuitive, general, and natural set of axioms. If it succeeds, it will probably be how we teach quantum mechanics in 50 years. And I’ll have to write the textbook! As a side bonus, it could also reveal quantum mechanical behavior in a much wider set of systems in the natural sciences, unconnected with physics.

Sure, saying all these things out aloud sounds super grandiose and silly. But I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it could work. Obviously it’s super risky, but that’s the only reason I’m actually interested in trying it — the high stakes are what get me up every day, obsessing about it, talking about it, reading endlessly, trying different permutations of ideas, etc.

Now, I’m self funded. I would struggle to imagine someone who would fund me to do this. Or an institution or adviser that would regard it as a suitable topic for a PhD. How on earth could something so ambitious possibly work? Who the hell do I think I am? etc.

But we need hundreds of people doing this — one of them will probably succeed, and it will change the world!

Interesting essay. I read it months ago and am just going off my memory here.

My main problem with patronage is that those who would succeed under it would tend to do "sexier" research and also be better at sales. My own research (turbulent sprays at present) is decidedly not sexy and I can't say I'm particularly good at sales. The status-quo (grants mostly from the government) does have the same problems to a certain extent, but I believe these problems would be amplified under patronage because non-technical folks (who are providing the funding) may not understand the technical justifications for certain lines of research. At least under the status quo grant proposals are reviewed by people who are nominally familiar with the subject of the proposal, though perhaps less so than they should be, and they are under time pressure as well.

This Norbert Wiener book goes into detail about the problem of those with funding knowing less than those who need funding: https://www.worldcat.org/title/invention-the-care-and-feedin...

For this reason I don't think patronage can be more than a part of a proposed new "research enterprise". I'd be happy to see movement in that direction, still.

(And if anyone wants to fund theoretical work in sprays, feel free to contact me! See my profile for a link to my contact information. :-)

I like this, and I'm going to write a rebuttal eventually. The gist is that the bigger a risk is, the more important it is to socialize it. Doing amazing things like solving fusion requires taking big risks. Instead of giving up on collective funding of research, let's try to dream up a method to change the incentive structure so we get the outcomes we want.