Maybe. But the MacArthur Foundation really does seem to be captured by the same conservative spirit that prevails in the foundation world. They almost have to be in order to maintain their standing.
Contrast them with Theil and Cowen. Those guys each has a vision of the world, a sense of things they want to see done. They make their fundi…
Maybe. But the MacArthur Foundation really does seem to be captured by the same conservative spirit that prevails in the foundation world. They almost have to be in order to maintain their standing.
Contrast them with Theil and Cowen. Those guys each has a vision of the world, a sense of things they want to see done. They make their funding decisions out of that vision. The MacArthur Foundation doesn't have anything like that. The mandate for the Fellows Program is simply to pick creative people. And it's done through an elaborate not-at-all-transparent process. But in the end it's a committee. And the committee just has that rather vague but noble-sounding mandate. Which is useless as a guide to selection.
If the MacArthur Foundation could pick 200 fellows a year, 110 of them would be at prestigious institutions. They simply don't know how to do anything else. When I started writing that material I had one simple idea, don't fund anyone who has a secure gig. That way at least the money is going to people who need it.
A final note. I got my degree in the English Department at SUNY Buffalo back in the 70s. It was a very experimental program - they allowed me to study computational linguistics, for example. That department thought of Harvard English as a bastion of high-class deadwood. There's a lot of that in the world, and some of them have Big Macs. I'm not saying that the Ivy League recipients of Macs aren't smart and creative, some of them no doubt are. The fact that they are at Ivys (or similar institutions) and even highly regarded is no guarantee. But they don't need the money. Take a risk and give it to someone who has to wait tables or do piecework for Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Yeah the conservative streak is definitely a problem, and one which iconoclasts like Thiel have a chance to change. The streak is what I meant is somewhat inevitable when you're in the public eye and with limited ability to the risk... In fact Thiel genius of choosing late teenagers is fantastic because it's much harder to find credentialed 19yos.
In theory it’s hard to find credentialed 19 year olds. In practice, the Thiel Fellows have all been very accomplished by the time they were chosen as Fellows (winning national science contests, publishing magazines, working in scientific labs, starting businesses, etc)
& you have Cowen's idea of a bunch of people like him giving out Emergent Venture type grants. Get a whole bunch of different people to do it for a year. Provide them with funds to disperse and have a quick and dirty application process like he set up for Emergent Ventures.
Maybe. But the MacArthur Foundation really does seem to be captured by the same conservative spirit that prevails in the foundation world. They almost have to be in order to maintain their standing.
Contrast them with Theil and Cowen. Those guys each has a vision of the world, a sense of things they want to see done. They make their funding decisions out of that vision. The MacArthur Foundation doesn't have anything like that. The mandate for the Fellows Program is simply to pick creative people. And it's done through an elaborate not-at-all-transparent process. But in the end it's a committee. And the committee just has that rather vague but noble-sounding mandate. Which is useless as a guide to selection.
If the MacArthur Foundation could pick 200 fellows a year, 110 of them would be at prestigious institutions. They simply don't know how to do anything else. When I started writing that material I had one simple idea, don't fund anyone who has a secure gig. That way at least the money is going to people who need it.
A final note. I got my degree in the English Department at SUNY Buffalo back in the 70s. It was a very experimental program - they allowed me to study computational linguistics, for example. That department thought of Harvard English as a bastion of high-class deadwood. There's a lot of that in the world, and some of them have Big Macs. I'm not saying that the Ivy League recipients of Macs aren't smart and creative, some of them no doubt are. The fact that they are at Ivys (or similar institutions) and even highly regarded is no guarantee. But they don't need the money. Take a risk and give it to someone who has to wait tables or do piecework for Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Yeah the conservative streak is definitely a problem, and one which iconoclasts like Thiel have a chance to change. The streak is what I meant is somewhat inevitable when you're in the public eye and with limited ability to the risk... In fact Thiel genius of choosing late teenagers is fantastic because it's much harder to find credentialed 19yos.
In theory it’s hard to find credentialed 19 year olds. In practice, the Thiel Fellows have all been very accomplished by the time they were chosen as Fellows (winning national science contests, publishing magazines, working in scientific labs, starting businesses, etc)
& you have Cowen's idea of a bunch of people like him giving out Emergent Venture type grants. Get a whole bunch of different people to do it for a year. Provide them with funds to disperse and have a quick and dirty application process like he set up for Emergent Ventures.
UBI would ensure nobody gets missed.