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denisbider comments on Helpless Individuals - Less Wrong
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In some Greek myth there's a fleet heading off to war - an important endeavor, involving a group of more than 50 people - but they get held up by some bad weather. After exhausting all the usual remedies, the fleet's leadership determines that the gods have to be appeased by some extreme measure, so he summons his daughter from home and sacrifices her. It's all very sad, but it works; the storm abates and the war can proceed.
Have we considered encouraging people to donate to science in a similar way? Not ritual murder, of course. Sacrificing a child in a more figurative sense. Produce more children than you otherwise planned to, send the spares off to be trained (from a very young age, making best use of that precious neural plasticity) as specialists in whatever field will be most needful 20 years down the road.
I don't think the lack of scientists is the issue. The issue is others providing all the engineering and support that scientists need - to survive in the first place, and then to get science done.
If you want to continue your example of sacrificing a child, a more effective proposal would be to have extra children and bond them into near-slavery, taxing them at some high amount so as to support those who do science.
But that would be a real sacrifice, and most would not find the idea pleasing.