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Comment by ComputerPerson | Hacker News Reader

The mathematics are above my intellectual capacities, but I still find the man and his lifestyle fascinating. Though I admit his heart attack probably wasn't a coincidence, sadly.

I wonder if national, institutional, or otherwise "eccentric" sponsorships (encouraging a similar migrant-madman approach to academic cultivation) of some of the folks on HN wouldn't lead to meaningful discoveries in CS.

I often see comments that some of the users here long to "make a computer do neat tricks all day", and I can't help but think meager sponsorship could go a long way in this area. Existing grant structures, being much more traditional, are constrained by their cost.

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> I wonder if national, institutional, or otherwise "eccentric" sponsorships (encouraging a similar migrant-madman approach to academic cultivation) of some of the folks on HN wouldn't lead to meaningful discoveries in CS.

The problem is that Paul Erdos was eccentric but he was also Paul Erdos. I'm not saying you're implying that, but I feel it's a similar line of thinking to how popular culture often romanticizes autism and Asperger's because some very smart people are (allegedly) affected. The same group includes people who need 24/7 care.

Computer science at the frontier is as specialized and hard as mathematics, you need years of study to truly understand a field well enough to make meaningful contributions. You can try sponsoring me if you really want, but I don't think you'd be spending your money wisely in expectation.

FWIW I've worked in two different academic labs, both of which would have benefited from a runaway worker barreling down random paths, as long as they were being productive in some capacity.

> [...] as long as they were being productive in some capacity.

I'm afraid you only know that after the fact.

You might also like TempleOS, or at least the context and history behind it.

I guess that's the crux of the issue

> Though I admit his heart attack probably wasn't a coincidence, sadly.

He died aged 83...

I didn't know that. A poor assumption I made that his amohetamine use shortened his life significantly.

Most drugs aren't as unhealthy as the government wants you to believe.

When Gwern needed a fellowship to come to SF he got one. When he had his “great idea” it was funded. The truly unique people out there find a way. Any government bureaucrat will just find the Jason Ardays of the world.

That's survivorship bias. If there are truly unique people who never get a chance to do what they would be good at, we don't hear about them.

Private sector bureaucrats are no different from government ones. The fundamental issue is that if you have a system, it's going to fail outliers. Almost by definition. And the situation is even worse if the system uses metrics for making decisions.

Well, if the statement is "we need some eccentric thinkers" then survivors suffice. We have some eccentric thinkers. If the statement is "we need more eccentric thinkers" then I think I'm going to demand the rigor of "explain why we need to increase the quantity and why your proposed intervention is the best way to get there with evidence behind it".

Honestly, I think our extremely liberal disability benefits scheme achieves this to a large extent (albeit possibly with downsides for both the recipient and society).

Look at all of the crazy stuff made by unemployed trans people/autists over the past decade, disproportionately from countries with strong welfare states.

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