[HN Gopher] Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in
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Moth Minds: Fund individuals doing work you believe in
Author : DanteVertigo
Score : 133 points
Date : 2021-12-01 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mothminds.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mothminds.com)
| bravogamma wrote:
| Tangential question. The painting at the top of the post is
| gorgeous. How did go about licensing it for use?
| codingdave wrote:
| Gotta love image search -->
| https://rebeccaluncan.com/polyphemus-over-nashi/
|
| I'm actually interested in your question, too, seeing how this
| is an original painting the artist is selling for $2600.
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| Looks like the copied the image directly from shopify cdn. Go
| here, click on the image for the popup, then open image in new
| tab. It's the exact same dimensions as the background image in
| op's post.
|
| https://www.antlerpdx.com/collections/rebecca-luncan/product...
|
| As far as I can find on the web, there are no digital copies
| available for sale. There is the small chance the person whom
| created the marketplace bought the original, but not likely.
| 5rest wrote:
| Nice project!! Artists, traditional medicine practitioners,
| philosophers, social service volunteers, natural farmers,
| conservationists, and researchers in many obscure areas are
| people who come to mind while reading about Mothminds. A huge
| human social good potential remains untapped in these silent
| people. I hope Mothminds will be a catalyst in this effort.
|
| Funding can move the needle and sustain them to some level. A
| greater need is yet not met like providing emotional support
| until they see light in their area. More tools to help them help
| us are unrealized wishes.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I would love to work on open source, well designed, free software
| to control distributed energy resources and building load.
| Currently I've worked for several companies doing this, but I
| think that closed source, non free software will never allow us
| to truly reach the full electrification and decarbonization we
| need, and the power grid, both generation and transmission, is
| only getting more complex to manage with the old school tech
| approaches I've seen. I want to build the _free and open_ OS for
| the distributed grid, but I need to support my family first.
|
| This isn't to beg, but imagine all the others who have similar
| stories to the above, like in medicine or education, and don't
| have the freedom to actually do those things because they are
| instead pouring effort into adtech or something else that's not
| as important to the world (no ad trolls please, it's just an
| example). Instead, we have risk averse profit motivation as our
| major path to innovation, and that's quite bad, in my opinion.
| benfarahmand wrote:
| If the goal is developing grantee self-efficacy, the funding
| should require pairing with a mentor. Finding a mentor that is
| willing to guide a grantee to bring an idea to fruition is also
| validation of that individual's ability to accomplish the task.
| Weryj wrote:
| I think that follows the mentality of VC, the idea here seems
| to support agency and unique views on the world, for diverging
| from the path is when a new path is found. I think enforcing a
| mentor program would harm that goal.
| mike_d wrote:
| I'd love to take a year and just build free security tools for
| people to use. I don't need a mentor to do that, I just need a
| salary replacement for that time period.
|
| This reeks of the mantra of product managers everywhere...
| "There is no way a brilliant engineer would be able to create
| something great without management."
| x0xrx wrote:
| 1. Apply for new job, get 30% raise (apparently everyone is
| doing it).
|
| 2. Cut expenses by 30% (how hard can it be? Avocado toast is
| tre expensive!)
|
| 3. Save for just one single year.
|
| 4. Hey there's your salary replacement! Looking forward to
| awesome security tools (seriously, legit looking forward to
| it).
|
| (Lest you fear obsolescence;
|
| 5. Get your new new job, 30% raise again).
| threshold wrote:
| Great idea, not the best choice of name. I think some of the
| criticism is valid. There are delusional lazy people that will
| sink your investment, and then there are driven brilliant types
| that will succeed with or without it on sheer perseverance.
| However - there are people between these states that would be
| wildly successful if they had a relaxation of resource
| constraints in addition to accountability, mentoring and social
| support. If you can deliver the package then there may be
| something excellent here. I hope it succeeds.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Moth Minds is a platform that makes it extremely easy for
| anyone to start their own grants program.
|
| Where is it? More like will be.
| mkaic wrote:
| This looks really interesting. Very curious to see how it will
| end up working.
| japhyr wrote:
| This is a wonderful idea, and I will be quite curious to see
| where it goes. I really, really like the idea of funding
| individuals we believe in, rather than specific projects.
|
| It reminds me of Gittip from a decade ago, which morphed into
| Gratipay. That original idea of "distributed genius grants",
| which is reminiscent of MacArthur fellowships, was great.
|
| Anyone digging into this space has to be willing to wade deep
| into fighting fraud. Any platform that allows people to funnel
| money their way is going to draw abusers and desperate people. I
| appreciate people who are willing to face this head on.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| The article (and title) is about funding work, not people.
|
| Postgraduate scholarships are closer to "funding people", since
| you can propose any project you like (in my experience,
| anyway). Academic performance is the credential - not a
| terrible predictor but of course far from perfect.
|
| And in academia, there are a lot of "moths", who use their
| position to do their own thing, outside the entire academial-
| publishing complex. A personal skunkworks.
| jdonaldson wrote:
| _cries in bitcoin_
| nickff wrote:
| This is an interesting premise, but I'm not sure that the pool of
| potential grant recipients will be a very good one. The problem
| that I foresee is that people working on these sorts of projects
| seem to fall into two broad categories:
|
| -People who don't want to work for someone else, but lack vision
| and exist on social proof. These people will be attracted to the
| grant funding, but unable to use it to create something
| interesting.
|
| -People who appear to have vision, and are either brilliant (and
| often very driven) or delusional (and often lazy). Most of this
| group is delusional, and will never succeed. The brilliant ones
| are so driven that they will often succeed without assistance.
|
| Even venture capitalists are bad at finding brilliant, driven
| visionaries, so I'm not sure how this individual plans to sort
| the wheat from the chaff.
| 13415 wrote:
| That is some pretty strong armchair folk psychology. I'd rather
| put the run-off-the-mill social Darwinist economics talk aside
| and focus on ways to evaluate a grant recipient's progress,
| with a positive attitude and helping them along the way.
| Startups also often fail, individual grants will not be
| different from that, and not everyone needs to be a brilliant
| genius to achieve something.
| nickff wrote:
| > _"Startups also often fail, individual grants will not be
| different from that, and not everyone needs to be a brilliant
| genius to achieve something."_
|
| I agree, but I'm trying to point out that this plan has an
| adverse selection problem coupled with some other issues.
| 13415 wrote:
| Maybe you're right, it's difficult to judge from that web
| page. It depends a lot on how they intend to carry out the
| funding process and the web page doesn't say much about it.
| I assumed it's something like Patreon, which works well for
| some people, I've heard.
| webmaven wrote:
| Even if I accept your model of reality, there are some pretty
| big problems that a grant could address:
|
| 1) the categories of 'brilliant' and 'delusional' aren't
| mutually exclusive, especially since both are spectra rather
| than binary. They aren't entirely orthogonal, however.
|
| 2) 'brilliant' and 'delusional' are each qualities that are
| very hard to evaluate except in hindsight.
|
| 3) Finally, it is possible for someone who is brilliant and
| non-delusional to still fail (or be 'insufficiently driven' and
| give up rather than dying in poverty), or to succeed with no-
| one noticing (because they lack resources or skills for self-
| promotion).
|
| There _is_ no way to reliably sort the wheat from the chaff,
| except to give them space and time to succeed or fail.
| nickff wrote:
| I agree with you on all three points; I was trying to point
| out that there's an adverse selection problem that the post
| doesn't seem to take into account. Even most VCs have a very
| difficult time making money by finding brilliant visionaries,
| and they have a number of factors working in their favor.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > The brilliant ones are so driven that they will often succeed
| without assistance.
|
| but brilliance for truly novel things is usually only revealed
| in retrospect. Might as well say "the ones who succeeded are
| driven and brilliant because they succeeded"
|
| also, you are implying lazyness is a vice (because work is
| virtue?) however lazyness is also whence the value of comfort
| (i.e. of making things eaiser) comes. I'm saying there's a
| positive side to lazyness. (similar to "drive" or ambition,
| there's pros and cons to it).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| change your definitions of success & take off the pre-judgement
| blinders?
| sombremesa wrote:
| > The brilliant ones are so driven that they will often succeed
| without assistance.
|
| That might be true, but the _level_ of success might change
| dramatically based on assistance. Founders know this, and may
| choose that path despite being capable of success regardless.
| nickff wrote:
| I completely agree, the problem is that the adverse selection
| problem makes finding these people difficult, and often
| uneconomical (not just unprofitable).
| weego wrote:
| I 'run' my own micro arts fund providing support for people in
| MH communities that would like supplies or tools to help as
| part of their ongoing rehab or change of career as a way of
| getting back into a life that means something.
|
| The answer really is if you expect a measurable outcome from
| small-scale investing in people then don't do it, you're in the
| wrong space. If you view your investment as a path to the
| outcome you have in mind for them then don't do it, you're in
| the wrong space.
|
| If you believe that a person deserves opportunity that might
| otherwise be blocked from them by what the privileged of us
| would consider incredibly low bars (money) and are willing to
| possibly not ever know if it made a difference or where that
| took them then it might be for you.
| nickff wrote:
| What you're describing seems clearer and much more likely to
| succeed than the plan in the post. It sounds like you're
| talking about enabling others to self-actualize, which is
| definitely a worthy goal (but not what the post seemed to be
| trying to achieve).
| coyotespike wrote:
| Yes, this sounds right!
|
| If you approach it with the mindset of "let's free this
| person up for a while and see if this helps them do something
| cool" then you're more likely to be happy with the outcome.
|
| This is not a job, after all, which would allow you to get a
| measurable or specific outcome - it's a grant!
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I put this together as a concept. There are so many tiers of
| "low bar", I think a lot of people just need a very basic
| safety net.
|
| There is so much real estate sitting essentially empty and
| the boomer generation is starting to downsize to smaller
| places because their homes feel empty and have become
| unrewarding to own.
|
| After my parents died when I was young I would have killed
| for a middle class teen/twenties life.
|
| https://www.middleclasspaas.com/
| coyotespike wrote:
| The world is full of smart, curious, active people who are
| neither brilliant nor delusional.
|
| One problem we do have is that (in the States, especially), our
| culture is geared around individual careers.
|
| Meaning we don't have a supportive culture for people creating
| stuff on their own - or really a strong culture of forming
| small supportive teams.
|
| I do think the tech world (and, even if you really oppose it in
| general, the crypto world) has a lot of people forming teams to
| do cool stuff. So that's a culture which is a counterexample to
| what I just said.
|
| Given such a generally atomized (or actively unhelpful)
| culture, you're more likely to have a few breakouts
| ("brilliant") and a lot of more normal folks who can't make it
| ("delusional").
|
| Nevertheless, I think giving grants to free more people up to
| start figuring out how to do creative work on their own (or,
| better, form networks and groups to support them socially) is a
| very good start.
|
| In other words, it's not about just sorting the wheat from the
| chaff - it's more about helping more people to start muddling
| their way to a happy and helpful place.
|
| With that said, I'm glad you've surfaced this concern, as it is
| certainly a common one.
| nickff wrote:
| I think that you're suggesting something like _weego_ did in
| another comment, which seems like a worthy goal, but is a bit
| different from what the proposal seemed to outline (at least
| in my reading).
| maydup-nem wrote:
| I don't believe in work.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think this is a lovely idea. Just as everyone has a novel
| inside them, there are two or three "drop everything if I had the
| cash" ideas inside every head. All of them unique and some even
| useful to society :-)
|
| Yes. Let's fund more moths.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| UBI will do this. Lots of freeloaders, but at pretty much the
| same cost as at present.
|
| But it's instructive to look at communistic/socialistic states,
| which pretty much had this. Anecdotally, Joscha Bach talks about
| his father, being able to do his own thing in that environment,
| without needing it to be practical.
|
| And perhaps that's the crucial thing: without incentives, ideas
| are not made practical, where they can make a difference. Did you
| ever notice that when some cool new mathematics is developed and
| applied to do something amazing, it turns out that the math had
| already been worked out by somebody else about two centuries ago
| - but that work had no effect on the breakthrough. It would have
| made no difference if it had never been done...
|
| For me, who loves the idea of people being able to work on
| whatever inspires them, this is _terrible news_. I wonder if
| there 's a way around it? Perhaps just better connecting previous
| work - "idea search", if you like (present academic "literature
| review" is evidently inadequate).
|
| Perhaps a categorization system like Roget's or Dewey's, but for
| arbitrarily dimensional application of ideas, maybe somethig
| relational or like Hoogle for searching Haskell type signatures,
| which works surprisingly well, probably because types are general
| in terms of application. The semantic web _doesn 't_ seem to work
| well; too specific/concrete.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I would like $100k to work on the Collatz conjecture for 6
| months.
|
| I have an idea that will probably fail, but if I had that money I
| would quit my job work my ass off for six months to flesh it out.
|
| But I have no credentials, no way to write a grant proposal, and
| even I wouldn't invest in myself.
|
| ....and yet if we did this sort of experiment 10000 times over,
| humanity might make some big breakthroughs because some of this
| people would be legitimately smart (unlike me).
|
| of course 10000 x one billion dollars, so maybe we _should_ just
| fund legit grant seeking PhDs.
| bsedlm wrote:
| sounds a lot like what VCs are already doing, except they're
| interested in business, not big breakthroughs
| varelse wrote:
| As someone just barely past past the affluence event horizon,
| VCs are now actively courting me to lead startups to develop
| their ideas or to invest in their funds. Previously, they
| just dismissed me as hella smart but clearly not leadership
| material (apparently net worth is an equivalent virtue signal
| to academic pedigree, who knew?). I am instead investing in
| myself and building skills orthogonal to what got me here so
| as to push senility off into the far off future.
|
| I like the concept here in principle. But I would love to see
| it expand to also attracting tribes both in terms of time and
| money to build concepts. These days, I tell startups that
| want my money that it is off the table, but I offer my time
| and opinions in exchange for free dinners. It's up to them
| whether they consider that a good deal or not. Or it's easy
| to get money if you're willing to search for someone who's
| already pursuing something similar and you just need to
| express your concept as if it is their concept. What's hard
| is finding people who can execute all the way to production.
| Thank you for attending my TED Talk(tm).
| _jal wrote:
| I've had a similar experience. It is kinda satisfying to
| tell those folks thanks, but you simply don't have time for
| their call.
|
| Valley VCs shop for very particular people, and
| behaviorally, are perfectly fine ignoring good ideas if the
| body in front of them (when young) didn't go to Stanford or
| (when older) doesn't care about some of the same things.
|
| Just ignore them, they're increasingly unnecessary.
| [deleted]
| kenferry wrote:
| Maybe I'm misreading, but it SEEMS like this site is reverse
| kickstarter: I would like to FUND people to work on the Collatz
| conjecture, please apply.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The site isn't active yet
| ok_dad wrote:
| For something like this, if you have a good idea, why not
| explain it and make the idea public so someone with more time
| can research it? You'll only lose the chance to make a big name
| for yourself, and if it pans out you'll still get some credit,
| and the human race will have advanced in knowledge. It's not
| like you're giving away a possible formula to nuclear fusion.
| What's the downside I'm not seeing?
| koheripbal wrote:
| I have tried that, but people online don't really have an
| open mind.
|
| I'll tell you right now... I _feel_ like there is a way to
| model the 3n+1 system of equations (or really any such
| generalized system) using Godel numbering as a representation
| of each operation, as a prime number based programming
| language of nature, and then try to glean something from the
| output primes to see if there is something that predicts the
| single 4- >2->1 outcome we always see. e.g. if it is a
| certain form of Fermat prime or something.
|
| It would require me to put my computers to work because these
| numbers get very big, but the real limitation is my time
| because I have three kids and cannot afford to quit my job.
| barrenko wrote:
| I'll send you 10 bucks. I really believe Naval x Joe Rogan
| outlined the whole future of work, together with the movie
| "Her".
| tarkin2 wrote:
| I like the idea. I wonder how much "return" financial
| contributors would want. I'd suggest allowing financial
| contributors to split a set sum between recipients. I've often
| liked the idea "I'll contribute x amount to whatever, this is how
| I'll split it per month" and being able to do that easily.
| 5rest wrote:
| Not all contributors look for returns. There are people who are
| willing to contribute to a cause instead of say buying a TV. We
| see such contributions on gofundme to help out people in need.
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