# Pitching is a competition-driven equilibrium in precommercial scitech At the end of the day [[Precommercial scitech funding is taste based]] so in order to get funded, a project (whether it is an institutional structure, a research program, or just a research project) needs to appeal to a funder’s taste. In order to appeal to a funder’s taste, it needs to grab and hold their attention. Regardless of how you feel about them, I would argue that good pitches are the most effective way of grabbing and mimetically holding attention — that’s what they are optimized for. They’re like the refined sugar of idea transmission. Even if you’re a deep thinker who takes your time and reads and considers, a good pitch will grab your brain every time. Metrics or rigid heuristics are a reasonable antidote to pitches but they don’t work in this situation because everything is taste based. The power of pitches means that even if both funders and fund-seekers agree to a different system for proposing and evaluating projects, the first person to defect to using good pitches will do better and everybody else will start pitching as well. As a result, I don’t see how to move away from pitches in a stable way. [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Pitching+is+a+competition-driven+equilibrium+in+precommercial+scitech) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Pitching+is+a+competition-driven+equilibrium+in+precommercial+scitech)