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Viliam_Bur comments on Division of cognitive labour in accordance with researchers' ability - Less Wrong
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If you could make a good estimate of young Einsteins, it would be enough to pay the basic income to the selected talented people. And it does not even have to be forever. You could just offer to pay them basic income for 10 years; and when it is 5 years till the end, evaluate them again, and if they still pass your filter, extend the time for another 5 years; possibly repeatedly. (And they can still try academia when your scholarship expires.)
In some sense Yudkowsky has such a deal with Peter Thiel. And Yudkowsky is not the only person that Thiel supports in such a way.
But I think that estimating young Einsteins is a very hard problem.
“I can only speak for myself. Unlike most people, I don’t “work” at all, in the sense of doing anything with the conscious goal of making money. All I do is think about what interests me, and discuss the results of that thinking with other people. As long as governments (and philanthropists like Mike Lazaridis) are willing to pay me for my non-work, I’m happy to take their money. If they ever stop paying me, I guess I’ll have to find some other source of income.” -- Scott Aaronson
This is exactly what academia is supposed to be, and it doesn't work. (Notably, it didn't work for Einstein, who didn't get let in until 1908.)
People are very, very bad at recognizing genius.
This isn't true. Until 1905, Einstein was a graduate student (a very junior "insider"). He was still under 30 in 1908 when he was given a lectureship, which is a pretty plausible age to be given a teaching appointment. So that's three years spent outside the academy; not so very long.