There should be more cash prizes for solving historical mysteries
resobscura.substack.com
resobscura.substack.com
What we have is another case of "youngsters should work in science as volunteer with their parents money, so we don't need to pay for it".
In the best case one of them will produce a small result, hit the end-of-the-road signal and (most probably) will move away. The other try and quit after investing X hours by the small chance of future reward and none of the social benefits that came with real work.
My bet is that none of them will use that cash to pursue a career to turn into a professional in history. The real experts are getting very old and would need replacement, but if the job offer is the equivalent to "buy lottery tickets with your money and time with the hope to win 10k", it just can't compete. The real lottery requires only money and offers a bigger reward without effort.
Is a non efficient way to generate knowledge, because you are burning most of the talented people in the process, and is also anti-economical as a society.
Why not have both? I.e. academics and students dedicated to the fairly monastic career of being a professional historian (which I am), but also prizes which seek to bring in experts from other fields with different skillsets who may approach the problem in an original way.
Obviously there is a limited amount of funding for anything. But surely some of the billions being donated every year to the general funds of elite universities like Harvard would be better spent setting up specific, goal-oriented prizes modeled on the Vesuvius Challenge.
Best for whom?
I'm not sure it's best for the employer since they then live or die based on the abilities, insight and inspiration of that one employee.
Equally, I'm not sure it's best for the employee who becomes singularly focused on that one problem to the exclusion of all others. If they want to diverge down an alternate path for a bit they (likely) cannot.
Of course in one sense work-for-prize is not efficient. We may as well argue that FOSS programing is not efficient. But FOSS exists not because of effeciency, but because it allows people to scratch an itch (usually unpaid.)
Prizes allow specific goals to be prioritised within that community. Say, for example, an expert at ocean currents notices a prize for decoding a historical text. Sounds like a fun hobby. Figures out that it contains tide tables.
Employment is clearly a good thing. Scanning in old archives could easily be done by an employee. But there's a place in the world for more than just formal employment. The existence of prizes does not negate employment. Rather it might attract folk into a "hobby" of sorts.
So in modern times, are we creating a culture where people are going to be enamored by and intellectually curious about the past? Or one where people might have little interest in such or even regard it with disdain?
This solves the problem in two ways. The first is by creating people who will find a way to make things work, in spite of adversity. The other is by making your suggestion happen naturally. A person grows up with a love of history but, perhaps out of necessity, is unable to pursue it in earnest. However, they become successful in other fields, and then naturally choose to become a patron of their passion, for the next generation.
Despite the Indiana Jones fantasy, Archaeologists typically live in their cars or in tents, and historians in an unheated hovel. If you’re at the top of your field, you can earn £40k.
Both are fields I am sincerely interested in, and was as a kid, but would never in a million years dream of working in, because I like having shelter and shoes and teeth.
I mean the analogy doesn't really work because the calculation of the risk has to take into account number of people competing for prize.
Furthermore if you are going to do the lottery you only have chance to buy ticket, if you are going to compete for history prize you also have the importance of the idea you will demonstrate. Obviously people are apt to think their own ideas are really brilliant but that evaluation would go into deciding if it was useful to pursue that path.
But I would think winning this kind of thing might actually be more important not to be a historian but as a CV brightening bit for a job in a more lucrative field also requiring intellectual ability and analytical rigor.
Not far removed from "We don't pay anything to our interns at our Manhattan offices, because it's such a great opportunity for them (and not incidentally it keeps out the lower classes)".
These sorts of weird scrappy things are compromises that can hopefully help reinvigorate a culture appreciation for history and build collaboration with science and technology, which may provide enough interest to justify a bit more institutional funding.
I want history to be well funded. But it isn't. And it is perceived as an evil discipline by a stunning portion of our voting population. This weird side stuff helps.
Doing what is essentially advanced computer vision is a very different type of problem from decoding Linear A.
The Herculaneum Scrolls are a case where we have a relatively self-contained source of information and we "just" need technical skills, which historians probably lack, to extract it.
Deciphering Linear A or the Indus Valley script is a case where the information is simply not available in any given artifact (or any set of artifacts that someone can study in a short period). No amount of technical prowess or brilliance from an "outsider" is gonna magically add that information.
The only way you can hope to unravel that mystery is with deep expertise in the archaeologal and linguistic CONTEXT. That takes years or decades to build up. Which irequires exactly the opposite kind of funding: stable employment in an opportunity-rich environment. Not a one-off prize.
First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857417 - Oct 2023 (207 comments)
$10k modest? I think that is more than most bug bounties, even quite serious ones. Part of the reason the payouts are low or why this is not done more often, is because there is too much work involved relative to to the opportunity cost. It's basic econ. The $40k prize for deciphering a word was an especially 'good deal' but most prizes are worse. It's also cheaper to have an expert on payroll doing work everyday than one-time payouts.
That’s far too much IMO.
this is masked by the fact that there is participation, but it’s excluding people that value their time. people possibly more skilled in solving the problem.
let me merge it with your words: voluntary gambles exclude people that value their time, and waste the time of every party except the person chosen to be the winner
I would make a small correction to your last message: challenges are not gambling in any sense of the word.
okay, reworded since you are allergic to that one word: negative expected value games of chance exclude people that value their time who may be a lot more skilled given the validation of their time.
this is a large population and there exists other incentive model for even better results. hopefully people sit down and consider competing incentive models that work for this specific market.
Also, if the cash prize is what motivates people, they'll be less willing to cooperate and share progress.
(I'm saying "$10k to your favourite charity" would work almost as well as "$10k for you").