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I worked at a lab hired away by SV. In general our lab was very good at research & the rigidity of current academic institutions means that 1. admins are alwa

I worked at a lab hired away by SV. In general our lab was very good at research & the rigidity of current academic institutions means that 1. admins are always the first hiring priority 2. academics do a ton of free work in publishing, service to their institutions on panels and committees, etc. The leadership above our program head were so entrenched by block grants, & their de-facto recipients, that there would be fights over post-doctoral salary increases on the $5k level. We had more money, which we won on competitive contracts, meaning if we won new contracts we could pay for better people... this was not welcome news to block grant recipients who had, essentially, fixed budgets & old mindsets. The result is, as it typically is, driven by incentive structures.

noqc 3y ago
What are the incentive structures driven by?
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  The incentive structures of those funding the university's research department. In many cases, state governments, who themselves are run by congresspeople responding to the incentive structures set out by voters. Those voters are themselves tactically voting to get the best possible outcome in response to the incentive structures set out by voting systems. And the people who decide what the voting system is are the congresspeople they're voting in, who have an incentive to keep the system as it is so they can stay in power. In other words, it's incentives all the way down. At the national level, there are other factors that dilute the influence of this infinite regression of incentives, such as geopolitics, war, etc. But for states the only real factor that shines through - the green tint in our infinity mirror - is "how much money do we want to spend on secondary education" and the answer is invariably "less than last year" and "can we find someone else to pay for it?"
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - noqc 3y ago
    If coal is equally distributed among all people, then the utility to each person for burning their coal is more than offset by the (negative) utility of everyone burning their coal. Voting is what allows us to overcome this sort of prisoner's dilemma, and prevents coal from being burned when it hurts society in aggregate to do so. If instead, you adopt a system where how much you own decides your voting power, then when the coal gets concentrated enough, it doesn't matter how bad it is for society, that coal will get burned, because the voting power is concentrated among the people who benefit from it the most. Saying voting is the source of this incentive structure is ignorant.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      The voting I'm referring to is the actual democratic system of each state government that funds the schools, not the shareholder """democracy""" of one share one vote.
      - noqc 3y ago
        I agree, that's why I called it ignorant.
        jujube3 3y ago
        In other words, the government cannot do bad things, only private companies can do bad things. A very enlightened point of view. Great that you corrected the people with actual experience.
        noqc 3y ago
        Those are indeed other words. I said that it's incorrect to describe the bad things the government does as being driven by "voters acting tactically". It's not even rational to vote. Changing what I said so that you can disagree with it more easily is also dishonest.
        jujube3 3y ago
- omgJustTest 3y ago
  There are a few different things defining the incentive structure: 1. Management by private institutions : National labs within the US are no longer managed by the government, there are LLCs which charge statutorily limited management fees of ~7% of lab revenue. The higher the revenue, or higher the operating budget, the higher the $ accumulated by the management company. 2. Liability limitation : Large science orgs, in the US, are deathly afraid of lawsuits related to personnel & the business of conducting science (ie employing lots of people who may test the boundaries of technologies, materials, & etc which could be hazardous long term). Typically government institutions are self-insured institutions, meaning there is no insurer who will underwrite their liability in the event of an incident. Safety & Admins are deployed as inertial dampening on the approvals of new research efforts. Admins also dilute responsibility for decisions made high within the orgs, via a hierarchy of admins that looks more like links in a chain: one admin reports directly to another admin, effectuating potentially arbitrary delays and dilution of scientific input on decision making within day-to-day operation. 3. Incumbency of older guard : Block funded scientists (the majority of whom were hired 25years or more ago) will get staff positions within large science orgs, because there's no risk to continued employment of that person long term to the org. Staff have all the political power at my old org, therefore staff positions [=] influence to drive the org. Older scientists are reluctant to cede political power, but also do not have dynamic budgets. Their task is to run projects with cutting edge science on, mostly, post-docs & grad students. Paying more for labor means they will have fewer papers, the scientific currency.
  - noqc 3y ago
    I know that the situation at Los Alamos was, at one point, 5 administrators to 1 scientist. That doesn't jibe with the 7% figure op there, but I imagine I don't know what a management fee corresponds to. The administrative overhead at LANL seemed to be completely unlimited. Every public university I've participated in has had an ever expanding court of nobles that don't do anything except give the universities money away to each other and consulting groups (who ironically always recommend cutting off the heads of the nobility). Departments are stuck seeking out private funding at this point, which doesn't seem like it should be legal, but it seems to be unprosecuted at the very least.

noqc 3y ago

What are the incentive structures driven by?

kmeisthax 3y ago
The incentive structures of those funding the university's research department. In many cases, state governments, who themselves are run by congresspeople responding to the incentive structures set out by voters. Those voters are themselves tactically voting to get the best possible outcome in response to the incentive structures set out by voting systems. And the people who decide what the voting system is are the congresspeople they're voting in, who have an incentive to keep the system as it is so they can stay in power. In other words, it's incentives all the way down. At the national level, there are other factors that dilute the influence of this infinite regression of incentives, such as geopolitics, war, etc. But for states the only real factor that shines through - the green tint in our infinity mirror - is "how much money do we want to spend on secondary education" and the answer is invariably "less than last year" and "can we find someone else to pay for it?"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- noqc 3y ago
  If coal is equally distributed among all people, then the utility to each person for burning their coal is more than offset by the (negative) utility of everyone burning their coal. Voting is what allows us to overcome this sort of prisoner's dilemma, and prevents coal from being burned when it hurts society in aggregate to do so. If instead, you adopt a system where how much you own decides your voting power, then when the coal gets concentrated enough, it doesn't matter how bad it is for society, that coal will get burned, because the voting power is concentrated among the people who benefit from it the most. Saying voting is the source of this incentive structure is ignorant.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    The voting I'm referring to is the actual democratic system of each state government that funds the schools, not the shareholder """democracy""" of one share one vote.
    - noqc 3y ago
      I agree, that's why I called it ignorant.
      - jujube3 3y ago
        In other words, the government cannot do bad things, only private companies can do bad things. A very enlightened point of view. Great that you corrected the people with actual experience.
        noqc 3y ago
        Those are indeed other words. I said that it's incorrect to describe the bad things the government does as being driven by "voters acting tactically". It's not even rational to vote. Changing what I said so that you can disagree with it more easily is also dishonest.
        jujube3 3y ago
omgJustTest 3y ago
There are a few different things defining the incentive structure: 1. Management by private institutions : National labs within the US are no longer managed by the government, there are LLCs which charge statutorily limited management fees of ~7% of lab revenue. The higher the revenue, or higher the operating budget, the higher the $ accumulated by the management company. 2. Liability limitation : Large science orgs, in the US, are deathly afraid of lawsuits related to personnel & the business of conducting science (ie employing lots of people who may test the boundaries of technologies, materials, & etc which could be hazardous long term). Typically government institutions are self-insured institutions, meaning there is no insurer who will underwrite their liability in the event of an incident. Safety & Admins are deployed as inertial dampening on the approvals of new research efforts. Admins also dilute responsibility for decisions made high within the orgs, via a hierarchy of admins that looks more like links in a chain: one admin reports directly to another admin, effectuating potentially arbitrary delays and dilution of scientific input on decision making within day-to-day operation. 3. Incumbency of older guard : Block funded scientists (the majority of whom were hired 25years or more ago) will get staff positions within large science orgs, because there's no risk to continued employment of that person long term to the org. Staff have all the political power at my old org, therefore staff positions [=] influence to drive the org. Older scientists are reluctant to cede political power, but also do not have dynamic budgets. Their task is to run projects with cutting edge science on, mostly, post-docs & grad students. Paying more for labor means they will have fewer papers, the scientific currency.
- noqc 3y ago
  I know that the situation at Los Alamos was, at one point, 5 administrators to 1 scientist. That doesn't jibe with the 7% figure op there, but I imagine I don't know what a management fee corresponds to. The administrative overhead at LANL seemed to be completely unlimited. Every public university I've participated in has had an ever expanding court of nobles that don't do anything except give the universities money away to each other and consulting groups (who ironically always recommend cutting off the heads of the nobility). Departments are stuck seeking out private funding at this point, which doesn't seem like it should be legal, but it seems to be unprosecuted at the very least.