
Carnegie Mellon's Brainhub Hosts NeuroHackathon for Computer Scientists - Lind5
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2016/may/neurohackathon.html
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jostmey
Wait! This is the same place where all the underpaid computer scientists left
for Uber!

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-
carne...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carnegie-
mellon-in-robotics-1433084582)

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throwawaykeno
Successful researchers are almost by definition under-paid when their research
(area) reaches the top of a hype curve; the success of their research (area)
_directly causes_ a massive increase in their value.

10-15 years ago, researchers working on self-driving cars weren't in-demand
engineers. They were academic robotics researchers primarily subsisting on
grants rather than capital. And CMU isn't in the business of venture capital.
They're in the business of doing the research that results in the innovation
that venture capital then develops into products.

To put it in SV terms:

* Saying that NREC employees were under-valued during the early days of self-driving is kind of like saying that an early-stage startup was undervalued with ten years of hind-sight.

* Saying that NREC should have increased their pay for those employees to work on (new, different) research projects is kind of like saying that early-stage startups should match Google's salaries for their employees working on a (new, different) startup.

In other words: maybe scientists are underpaid, but the fact that successful
researchers can leave academia and make more money is basically a tautology.

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the_ancient
>>And CMU isn't in the business of venture capital. They're in the business of
doing the research

I thought they were in the business of unethical hacking for the FBI

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throwawaykeno
Yes, the entire institution's purpose is to help the FBI. There isn't a single
biologist, computer scientist, chemist, or neuroscientist in the entire
institution who isn't hell-bent on helping the FBI /s.

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return0
I wish they made these data public! Even for neuroscientists , it's hard to
find data like that to analyze.

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the_ancient
So how much is the FBI paying them to hack the brain

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akadien
I'm sure I'll get downvoted, but God help us if science has become a data
science hackathon.

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dang
Please don't go on about getting downvoted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
It makes for low-quality comments.

