Academia is the game where you gain status by getting attention for new knowledge
Universities have multiple conflicting missions
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Graduate students are the labor in academic science and engineering
People giving out grants try to derisk them as much as possible
Manufacturing is important and often ignored
The word ‘novel’ is used as an idea bludgeon in academia
Peer review doesn’t catch duplications
Bell Labs is one of the few examples of an innovation org that was aligned with its money factory
A new professor needs about $1.5m to get going
Younger professors have to spend more time getting money
Academics are incentivized to do peer-reviewed publishable work
Things that are not paper-worthy enough for academia and not product-focused enough for a startup
Three myths about scientific peer review
Pay-it-forward tithing could resolve the tension between the potential public-good and potential profit in research.
A PI needs to provide evidence that they have access to a lab facility
What was the real incentive for people to work on the DARPA Grand Challenge?
It is easier to have a multipoint mutation in technology than in evolution
NS Notes on Officers Techniques
Startups and Academia are bad at addressing structural constraints
The boundaries between industry government and academia are fuzzy
The Architected Innovation Institute - Engineering Scientific Revolutions
Is it more impactful to find and train undiscovered diamonds or to unlock well-positioned but constrained researchers?
Is it possible that we’re actually getting less research because we have more researchers?
Running list of relevant science news?
People keep track of their ‘score’ in citations, published papers, grant money, awards.
People and organizations are all playing some game that has different ways of gaining status and power
The peer review and citation system incentivizes people to work on things that other people think is interesting
§Institutions and Games
Successful professors are not necessarily the best researchers
Academic research is often just the concept half of creating a heuretic
All institutions are coupled to at least one game
Motivation is not context-free
Human capital theory of stagnation
Research requires intrinsic motivation
Bottling Lightning