[Xcelerate]

I want financial independence for the sole reason that I can work on interesting problems like this without any outside nagging or funding issues from anyone else (there might still be some judgment, but I can ignore that).

Personally I think governments should fund more moonshot solo or small team efforts because high risk / high reward pays off when you reduce the variance by spreading it out over so many people. But it looks like we’re going headstrong the other direction in terms of funding in the U.S. right now, so I’m not optimistic.

[godelski]

  > I want financial independence for the sole reason that I can work on interesting problems like this without any outside nagging or funding issues from anyone else

Ditto. This is literally the only desire I have to be wealthy. It is not about having nice things, a nice house, or any of that. It is about letting me do my own research.

[jereees]

I bet there’s a good number of us. How do we make this a reality? :)

[drivebyhooting]

Last decades? Work in ad tech. Now? Work on LLMs.

[godelski]

I bet there is too! But I think it is also hard to form this community. Given the increased friction from the general community I think it might be time to put serious effort in determining how to make this a reality.

I don't have a great idea for it tbh. I'll pitch a bad one at least to put something out there. Maybe we can convince some billionaire to perform a post scarcity experiment? To buy large chunk of land, gather people who have both high passion and expertise in domains, and let them run wild. Less like Star Trek and more like Eureka[0]. I don't think it is a realistic expectation to get billionaire funding, but I think the idea of looking at something like Eureka (or this category of groups you see in many Sci-Fi stories) is worth drawing inspiration from: effectively post scarce (possible on small scale?), high levels of freedom (very doable), high levels of creativity and expressiveness (this is the experiment, to see if it is decreased/maintained/increased).

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796264/

[Geezus_42]

I get where you're coming from, but this is just Prsopera, or any of the other failed libertarian citiy experiments.

[godelski]

That appears to have entirely different goals.

[Agentlien]

I'm a Swedish game developer and I feel exactly the same way. I have my dream games I work on every now and then making very little slow progress. My wildest dream would be just being able to dedicate myself to it full time. But, there are bills to pay.

[goalieca]

Given what universities charge, they should more than be able to cover comfortable salaries for all researchers so they never need to worry about going broke. Tenure is a very useful tool!

[genewitch]

What are Harvard's coffers up to these days? Over 2bn? IIRC that's free and clear.

[goalieca]

> The Harvard University endowment, valued at $50.7 billion as of June 30, 2023,[1] is the largest academic endowment in the world.