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Comment by bitmasher9 | Hacker News Reader

I have a bit of a bias in advocating more for enabling excellence than accommodating average. I will concede we have done a terrible job at sharing the harvest, but it’s often the excellent that are responsible for our harvest being so plentiful to begin with.

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I agree with the perspective, the part I have trouble marrying it back to is the taxpayer funding and the NSF. The excellent & the people who benefit from their work tend to have lots of money and earning opportunities and are more than capable of just funding the research themselves.

If there is a large group of people who aren't benefiting they don't need to be involved in the funding and the organising either. It is a mistake to make research subject to political pressure if there is a significant political faction who doesn't think it is worthwhile for them.

No not all talented scientists are independently wealthy or have the charisma to raise VC funding. What you're advocating for is the return of the era of the "gentleman scientist" where the only people allowed to do science are those lucky enough to be born into wealth (or some other privilege e.g. extreme good looks).

I’ve served as a reviewer for a couple of NSF panels, and one of the things I really liked about the program I reviewed for is that a lot of the proposals included collaborations with local trade and vocational schools to involve and train future technicians and operators in addition to researchers and scientists. I think that’s really important for actually succeeding at the technology transfer goals of NSF, and if I’m reading your comment it does at least partly address delivering direct value for a broader chunk of the population

Expand your definition of "responsible". Not all stories are the Heroes Journey. Its just the one that gets people to accept the most exploitation and work the hardest.

Expand your view of what constitutes excellence.

This is a great explanation for why "no child left behind" is not the right strategy for education.

I can't tell if you actually read the comment that you're responding to because you seem to be ringing the same bell. The issue at hand is creating opportunities for people who are clearly not cut out for white collar work. Framing this as "enabling excellence vs accommodating average" is out of touch and sounds extremely arrogant.

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