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Funding for the sciences is always welcome; it's going to be interesting to see what SETI does with this money. Seeing this news makes me wish more donors dona

Funding for the sciences is always welcome; it's going to be interesting to see what SETI does with this money. Seeing this news makes me wish more donors donated to science at the department level, or to every lab in a given department. Money is so incredibly tight in Academia that the entry level job (being a graduate student) typically gives people around minimum wage or less for five years to make a life with. This is an absolutely terrible incentive for attracting some of the best and the brightest to enter the funnel of knowledge production workers (e.g. grad students, post-docs, researchers, and professors.) I don't know how this can be fixed systemically, but donors could help change the incentives and improve the quality of science for all.

deleted 3y ago
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falcor84 3y ago
As an adversarial opinion on this, I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia, and it should do more to funnel them to other, more directly practical, endeavors.
- YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
  Interesting point; thanks for providing the opposite opinion. It's not that no one is applying to grad school, it's that brilliant, creative people with good job prospects are being "pre-diverted" away from the sciences. For everyone who complains about the quality of the scientific literature, the replication crisis, the golden quarter, I think part of it ultimately stems from the way the funnel is set up.
  - nradov 3y ago
    Those problems are real, but they aren't caused by a lack of the best and brightest in the sciences. The problems are structural due to misaligned incentives. Intelligence isn't particularly correlated with ethics or conscientiousness.
    - YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
      All issues are definitely influenced by systemic incentive issues for sure. But is not graduate school in some broad sense competing with the likes of startup accelerators et al.? Don't get me wrong, I think that's a good thing in the abstract. But 5 years of minimum wage while working for someone who likely has paltry managerial skills, with the prospects of an increasingly shaky academic job market. My point is that it's too bad for society that the competition is so drastically one sided.
- dranden 3y ago
  And how would you propose to do that?
- YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that many in the academic pipeline leave for Tech or Finance. My point is that the grad students are the ones who go on to become the professors who direct the research our society relies on.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia As an adversarial opinion on _that_, what seems to have happened is that the "best and brightest" filter in academia is further filtered to "those who also have the well-off family background to support that". See also the Victorian "gentleman scientist". Sure, this filter does serve to cut down on the numbers, but I can see problems with using this filter, e.g. the effect on those excluded, and the biases that it will introduce. I would not call it a good thing on the whole.
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gffrd 3y ago
> terrible incentive for attracting some of the best and the brightest to enter the funnel Maybe they don't want the best and the brightest?
- YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
  I've talked with many professors on the selection committees. They want the best, especially for competitive programs. All of the researchers I've talked with are keen on training the next generation of researchers.
  - gffrd 3y ago
    I’m not saying that the professors aren’t keen for the best—I mean the universities. If the professors don’t leave / the pipeline doesn’t dry up as a result, why pay more?
noqc 3y ago
The donor class often has very stupid or industrially motivated ideas about what kind of research should be done. In the former case, you're mostly just adding another idiot to your list of pseudobosses. In the latter case, what's really happening is that the rest of the funding is now going to end up subsidizing some private research endeavour. This is a form of capture, and should basically be avoided. The current state of the system for graduate students is bad, but it is not improved by allowing private investment.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > The donor class often has very stupid people who are very good at making money make stupid investments? > industrially motivated ideas which drive increased prosperity in our economy > it is not improved by allowing private investment wow. Maybe we shouldn't allow things like inventing semiconductors, jet engines, television, etc.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > people who are very good at making money make stupid investments? Absolutely, particularly when the "investment" is a donation to charity or a university that's more to assuage guilt or plaster a name for posterity than it is for any return. People that do end up with a great deal of money aren't always the sharpest crayons in the sun - many have luck and good advisors.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > that's more to assuage guilt or plaster a name for posterity than it is for any return And you know this, how? > always If you have to insert this word, you've created a strawman.
      - richbell 3y ago
        > > > People that do end up with a great deal of money aren't always the sharpest crayons in the sun - many have luck and good advisors. > > always > If you have to insert this word, you've created a strawman. It's a strawman to say that "something isn't always true?" Really? Come on.
sandworm101 3y ago
It should be dumped into a trust fund, an endowment that will fund some low level SETI in perpetuity. The goal should be to free SETI from having to worry about funding from one year to the next. Funding such projects needs to be measured in decades, not dollars.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Tax-exempt organizations need to spend 10% of their endowments every year in order to keep their status, pretty much for this reason (avoiding perpetuities).
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Then it goes into a trust outside of SETI, but that pays out to SETI. Such things are not uncommon.
WalterBright 3y ago
> Money is so incredibly tight in Academia Given the size of university endowments, and the enormous tuitions, this sounds like misaligned incentives rather than paucity.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Endowments are for statues, new buildings and scholarships, not paying the bills/salaries.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Harvard's endowment is $51 billion. They could build an Egyptian pyramid with that.
    - nradov 3y ago
      They should do it! Desptite centuries of archaeological research we still don't really know how the pyramids were built. A real world test of the various possible techniques would answer a lot of questions. Plus when they're finished maybe the Goa'uld will show up to resolve the SETI issue.
      - mnky9800n 3y ago
        Teal'c! It is your god, Apophis!
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    More seriously, endowments are for specific purposes specified by the donor. Most of the time, this money cannot be spent on anything else, regardless of "need."
- YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
  Yeah, that's why I'm suggesting people donate to departments or labs directly. Who knows how well universities are really run?
Fomite 3y ago
As someone who works in a department that was essentially founded via a gift from some very generous donors, it has been enormously impactful in the nature of our positions, how we approach science, etc. All of them for the better.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

falcor84 3y ago

As an adversarial opinion on this, I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia, and it should do more to funnel them to other, more directly practical, endeavors.

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
Interesting point; thanks for providing the opposite opinion. It's not that no one is applying to grad school, it's that brilliant, creative people with good job prospects are being "pre-diverted" away from the sciences. For everyone who complains about the quality of the scientific literature, the replication crisis, the golden quarter, I think part of it ultimately stems from the way the funnel is set up.
- nradov 3y ago
  Those problems are real, but they aren't caused by a lack of the best and brightest in the sciences. The problems are structural due to misaligned incentives. Intelligence isn't particularly correlated with ethics or conscientiousness.
  - YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
    All issues are definitely influenced by systemic incentive issues for sure. But is not graduate school in some broad sense competing with the likes of startup accelerators et al.? Don't get me wrong, I think that's a good thing in the abstract. But 5 years of minimum wage while working for someone who likely has paltry managerial skills, with the prospects of an increasingly shaky academic job market. My point is that it's too bad for society that the competition is so drastically one sided.
dranden 3y ago
And how would you propose to do that?
YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
It's also worth mentioning that many in the academic pipeline leave for Tech or Finance. My point is that the grad students are the ones who go on to become the professors who direct the research our society relies on.
SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
> I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia As an adversarial opinion on _that_, what seems to have happened is that the "best and brightest" filter in academia is further filtered to "those who also have the well-off family background to support that". See also the Victorian "gentleman scientist". Sure, this filter does serve to cut down on the numbers, but I can see problems with using this filter, e.g. the effect on those excluded, and the biases that it will introduce. I would not call it a good thing on the whole.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gffrd 3y ago

> terrible incentive for attracting some of the best and the brightest to enter the funnel Maybe they don't want the best and the brightest?

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
I've talked with many professors on the selection committees. They want the best, especially for competitive programs. All of the researchers I've talked with are keen on training the next generation of researchers.
- gffrd 3y ago
  I’m not saying that the professors aren’t keen for the best—I mean the universities. If the professors don’t leave / the pipeline doesn’t dry up as a result, why pay more?

noqc 3y ago

The donor class often has very stupid or industrially motivated ideas about what kind of research should be done. In the former case, you're mostly just adding another idiot to your list of pseudobosses. In the latter case, what's really happening is that the rest of the funding is now going to end up subsidizing some private research endeavour. This is a form of capture, and should basically be avoided. The current state of the system for graduate students is bad, but it is not improved by allowing private investment.

WalterBright 3y ago
> The donor class often has very stupid people who are very good at making money make stupid investments? > industrially motivated ideas which drive increased prosperity in our economy > it is not improved by allowing private investment wow. Maybe we shouldn't allow things like inventing semiconductors, jet engines, television, etc.
- defrost 3y ago
  > people who are very good at making money make stupid investments? Absolutely, particularly when the "investment" is a donation to charity or a university that's more to assuage guilt or plaster a name for posterity than it is for any return. People that do end up with a great deal of money aren't always the sharpest crayons in the sun - many have luck and good advisors.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > that's more to assuage guilt or plaster a name for posterity than it is for any return And you know this, how? > always If you have to insert this word, you've created a strawman.
    - richbell 3y ago
      > > > People that do end up with a great deal of money aren't always the sharpest crayons in the sun - many have luck and good advisors. > > always > If you have to insert this word, you've created a strawman. It's a strawman to say that "something isn't always true?" Really? Come on.

sandworm101 3y ago

It should be dumped into a trust fund, an endowment that will fund some low level SETI in perpetuity. The goal should be to free SETI from having to worry about funding from one year to the next. Funding such projects needs to be measured in decades, not dollars.

adastra22 3y ago
Tax-exempt organizations need to spend 10% of their endowments every year in order to keep their status, pretty much for this reason (avoiding perpetuities).
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Then it goes into a trust outside of SETI, but that pays out to SETI. Such things are not uncommon.

WalterBright 3y ago

> Money is so incredibly tight in Academia Given the size of university endowments, and the enormous tuitions, this sounds like misaligned incentives rather than paucity.

sandworm101 3y ago
Endowments are for statues, new buildings and scholarships, not paying the bills/salaries.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Harvard's endowment is $51 billion. They could build an Egyptian pyramid with that.
  - nradov 3y ago
    They should do it! Desptite centuries of archaeological research we still don't really know how the pyramids were built. A real world test of the various possible techniques would answer a lot of questions. Plus when they're finished maybe the Goa'uld will show up to resolve the SETI issue.
    - mnky9800n 3y ago
      Teal'c! It is your god, Apophis!
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  More seriously, endowments are for specific purposes specified by the donor. Most of the time, this money cannot be spent on anything else, regardless of "need."
YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
Yeah, that's why I'm suggesting people donate to departments or labs directly. Who knows how well universities are really run?

Fomite 3y ago

As someone who works in a department that was essentially founded via a gift from some very generous donors, it has been enormously impactful in the nature of our positions, how we approach science, etc. All of them for the better.