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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting premise, but I'm not sure that the pool of potential grant recipients will be a very good one. The problem that I foresee is that people working on these sorts of projects seem to fall into two broad categories:

-People who don't want to work for someone else, but lack vision and exist on social proof. These people will be attracted to the grant funding, but unable to use it to create something interesting.

-People who appear to have vision, and are either brilliant (and often very driven) or delusional (and often lazy). Most of this group is delusional, and will never succeed. The brilliant ones are so driven that they will often succeed without assistance.

Even venture capitalists are bad at finding brilliant, driven visionaries, so I'm not sure how this individual plans to sort the wheat from the chaff.

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The world is full of smart, curious, active people who are neither brilliant nor delusional.

One problem we do have is that (in the States, especially), our culture is geared around individual careers.

Meaning we don't have a supportive culture for people creating stuff on their own - or really a strong culture of forming small supportive teams.

I do think the tech world (and, even if you really oppose it in general, the crypto world) has a lot of people forming teams to do cool stuff. So that's a culture which is a counterexample to what I just said.

Given such a generally atomized (or actively unhelpful) culture, you're more likely to have a few breakouts ("brilliant") and a lot of more normal folks who can't make it ("delusional").

Nevertheless, I think giving grants to free more people up to start figuring out how to do creative work on their own (or, better, form networks and groups to support them socially) is a very good start.

In other words, it's not about just sorting the wheat from the chaff - it's more about helping more people to start muddling their way to a happy and helpful place.

With that said, I'm glad you've surfaced this concern, as it is certainly a common one.

I think that you're suggesting something like weego did in another comment, which seems like a worthy goal, but is a bit different from what the proposal seemed to outline (at least in my reading).

I 'run' my own micro arts fund providing support for people in MH communities that would like supplies or tools to help as part of their ongoing rehab or change of career as a way of getting back into a life that means something.

The answer really is if you expect a measurable outcome from small-scale investing in people then don't do it, you're in the wrong space. If you view your investment as a path to the outcome you have in mind for them then don't do it, you're in the wrong space.

If you believe that a person deserves opportunity that might otherwise be blocked from them by what the privileged of us would consider incredibly low bars (money) and are willing to possibly not ever know if it made a difference or where that took them then it might be for you.

Yes, this sounds right!

If you approach it with the mindset of "let's free this person up for a while and see if this helps them do something cool" then you're more likely to be happy with the outcome.

This is not a job, after all, which would allow you to get a measurable or specific outcome - it's a grant!

What you’re describing seems clearer and much more likely to succeed than the plan in the post. It sounds like you’re talking about enabling others to self-actualize, which is definitely a worthy goal (but not what the post seemed to be trying to achieve).

I work in similar area. Giving them space and time to stream their creativity into some tangible artifact is the first step. This can be cash or a long chat on random topics. Some talented folks resign in their life due to day-to-day grind. They have to be reignited to tap into their creativity. It is mind-blowing to see simple tools, processes, and a little bit of encouragement can go a long way. Providing space and time for creativity is a good means to a better end - whatever the end may be.

I put this together as a concept. There are so many tiers of "low bar", I think a lot of people just need a very basic safety net.

There is so much real estate sitting essentially empty and the boomer generation is starting to downsize to smaller places because their homes feel empty and have become unrewarding to own.

After my parents died when I was young I would have killed for a middle class teen/twenties life.

https://www.middleclasspaas.com/

That has to be one of the most uplifting things I've seen in a long time!

The common answer to the world's problems these days is more along the way of "just have an idea, then fund it, then sell it and then I'll be happy for you if it solves my problems first".

Civilization is a group endeavor, so called Democracy even more so.

Seems very niche, but I like this idea. Why not have an agency for lonely/struggling people who want to get together and develop some kind of symbiotic relationship with each other to do so? There's risks, but those are always present. I hope it works out.

Even if I accept your model of reality, there are some pretty big problems that a grant could address:

1) the categories of 'brilliant' and 'delusional' aren't mutually exclusive, especially since both are spectra rather than binary. They aren't entirely orthogonal, however.

2) 'brilliant' and 'delusional' are each qualities that are very hard to evaluate except in hindsight.

3) Finally, it is possible for someone who is brilliant and non-delusional to still fail (or be 'insufficiently driven' and give up rather than dying in poverty), or to succeed with no-one noticing (because they lack resources or skills for self-promotion).

There is no way to reliably sort the wheat from the chaff, except to give them space and time to succeed or fail.

I agree with you on all three points; I was trying to point out that there's an adverse selection problem that the post doesn't seem to take into account. Even most VCs have a very difficult time making money by finding brilliant visionaries, and they have a number of factors working in their favor.

Right. Most attempts to select winners end up filtering out the high-risk candidates that also represent the highest potential impact should they succeed (which also makes applicants fudge their proposals to seem lower risk high reward). So, you need to consciously allow the selection of some candidates randomly from a pool that only filters out the obviously deranged or fraudulent (in other words, quality of proposal counts, perceived odds of success does not).

There are a number of research funding agencies that are starting to use just this sort of grant funding lottery, the OP seems to be groping toward something similar.

> The brilliant ones are so driven that they will often succeed without assistance.

That might be true, but the level of success might change dramatically based on assistance. Founders know this, and may choose that path despite being capable of success regardless.

I completely agree, the problem is that the adverse selection problem makes finding these people difficult, and often uneconomical (not just unprofitable).

> The brilliant ones are so driven that they will often succeed without assistance.

but brilliance for truly novel things is usually only revealed in retrospect. Might as well say "the ones who succeeded are driven and brilliant because they succeeded"

also, you are implying lazyness is a vice (because work is virtue?) however lazyness is also whence the value of comfort (i.e. of making things eaiser) comes. I'm saying there's a positive side to lazyness. (similar to "drive" or ambition, there's pros and cons to it).

That is some pretty strong armchair folk psychology. I'd rather put the run-off-the-mill social Darwinist economics talk aside and focus on ways to evaluate a grant recipient's progress, with a positive attitude and helping them along the way. Startups also often fail, individual grants will not be different from that, and not everyone needs to be a brilliant genius to achieve something.

>”Startups also often fail, individual grants will not be different from that, and not everyone needs to be a brilliant genius to achieve something.”

I agree, but I’m trying to point out that this plan has an adverse selection problem coupled with some other issues.

Maybe you're right, it's difficult to judge from that web page. It depends a lot on how they intend to carry out the funding process and the web page doesn't say much about it. I assumed it's something like Patreon, which works well for some people, I've heard.

VCs aren't primarily looking for brilliant visionaries, even if its a popular narrative--the (high) risk/reward profile of a business venture is at least as important to them as the character of its founding team.

The thesis behind Moth Minds seems to be that there is a lot of interesting/valuable* work that could be done that doesn't fit any of the typical funding models (VC, small business loan, burn through personal savings, Patreon, tips, etc.). Like Xerox PARC type projects or PhD research without the gatekeeping. This kind of work doesn't exactly require a singular brilliant visionary, but it helps to provide a financial incentive to lure someone with a unique vision from a comfortable tech salary.

*for flexible interpretations of value

Way back before the digital age when software was still an insignificant component of an overall technology spectrum, this was so long ago that it was a completely different economic landscape too.

There was a prominent recognition in major companies that for positions where a visionary ability was needed, they offered a considerable amount of compensation intentionally as "temptation" to keep the moths drawn to the flame rather than spreading out in an unforseen direction to do their own thing.

Whether that was starting a new business or going to a place like Bell Labs where you would be more likely to pursue your own strongest interests, this was all balanced out based on the need by the biggest payers for the most visible and persuadable high-performers.

This was actually a limiting factor.

Now the remaining less visible & persuadable high-performers of the same caliber are way harder to come by precisely because of the visibility issue, even though there are many more of them.

This is a vast resource that could potentially be leveraged to overwhelming benefit by an alternative paying force that has been absent from the landscape for all practical purposes.

change your definitions of success & take off the pre-judgement blinders?

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