alyssavance's Shortform

Crazy idea: LessWrong and EA have been really successful in forming student groups at elite universities. But in the US, elite university admissions select on some cool traits (eg. IQ, conscientiousness), don't select on others, and anti-select on some (eg. selection against non-conformists). To find capable people who didn't get into an elite school, what if someone offered moderate cash bounties (say, $1,000-$5,000 range) to anyone who could solve some hard problem (eg. an IMO gold medal problem, or something like https://microcorruption.com/), without already being a "recognized expert" (say, under age 25, not at an elite school, not already working in the field, etc.). This would be similar to the old "Quixey Challenge" (https://venturebeat.com/2012/06/09/quixey-gamifies-job-hunting-in-an-entirely-new-way/), where coders were offered $100 to find a bug in one minute, but at a slightly broader scale and for different skills. This would select from a broader range of people, and could be adapted to whatever types of skills are most in demand, eg. hacking challenges for trying to recruit computer security people (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZJiCfwTy5dC4CoxqA/information-security-careers-for-gcr-reduction).