Every genius I met in tech had a story about how they couldn’t get any funding or time to research their own ideas, but had to follow the instructions of some cabal of geezers who control funding in their field.
If you want to look up the age discrimination or age distribution of scientific grants in America. You’ll clearly see that the funding apparatus doesn’t serve early career scientists as well as it did. Accordingly, the government is less valuable and people are correctly perceiving that resources could be better allocated.
It's true that most grant money goes to go to the largest projects, and the largest projects are run by the most well-connected people with the most established research agendas.
But that doesn't mean there isn't money for new researchers who are challenging the establishment. New faculty are afforded a startup package which these days can be in the millions if the research agenda is solid and ambitious.
For those "tech geniuses" who can't get funding, their proposals usually (IME) go like this:
Do you have any experience leading a large research project of the scale you're proposing -- I was a research assistant once, does that count?
Have you ever managed a budget this large? -- I've never seen that much money in my life, no.
What kind of team are you putting together to accomplish this? -- Doing it all myself
What are the risks of failure and how will you mitigate them? -- No risks, I've already accounted for them all with my perfect plan.
Why is your method better than the ones in the literature? -- Those idea are old. My ideas are new and clearly better.
How will your research benefit society? -- Just read the title again, it's self evident.
How will your research benefit your community? -- Why do I even have to articulate this??
What's your long-term funding strategy? -- I figured you'd give me all the money I need, forever.
Funding decision: denied
But when you ask them, they'll tell you: "I wasn't funded because they're a bunch of old geezers who didn't appreciate my genius!"
Safe roads are hugely controversial, every time my city talks about speed camera or traffic enforcement, the progressives come up with a huge set of objections.
There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately.
Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years.
> There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately.
Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years.
Both happened before the redefinition of competence to making the most money in 90 days. This is a relatively recent shift; and while its roots start in the 1950s, its completion has only happened recently, within the last decade or so.
It’s the most amazing AI system out there. I got fsd a few months ago and the rate of improvement is astonishing, I go about 100-200 miles between disengagements now and have zero intervention drives to the grocery. It’s much better than a regular Uber or Lyft driver.
40k people a year die on American roads and this technology seems like the leading candidate to reduce that dramatically. I highly recommend it.
If true, that would be utterly dire for Tesla. 200 miles per disengagement is _bad_.
Cruise doesn’t report disengagements that I can tell, but Waymo is at ~17k per disengagement, WeRide is at ~21k and Zoox is 177k.
Nissan is at 284, and Apple is at 142, so that would put Tesla about there in performance. That’s a couple of orders of magnitude off from the other players.
If you want to look up the age discrimination or age distribution of scientific grants in America. You’ll clearly see that the funding apparatus doesn’t serve early career scientists as well as it did. Accordingly, the government is less valuable and people are correctly perceiving that resources could be better allocated.