EFTA00693768.pdf

New Methods Project - v. 1.0, September 5, 2014 Design Specs: Provisional Title: Foundational Questions in Measurement (FQM) Primary purpose andjustification: Human progress hinges closely upon the ability to comprehend new realities. An important driver of comprehension is the apprehension and ordering of information. Many of the topics of interest to Sir John Templeton suffer from a lack of conceptual progress because terms and concepts are fuzzy and subjective (including realities such as creativity, imagination, joy, passion, the divine, belief, virtue, love, freedom, hope, and genius, to name but a few). The goal of this project is to discover new ways of clarifying, via new measures and techniques, the essential essence of these forces and concepts. Such new measures and techniques are intended to help to create new kinds of rigor needed for progress for spiritual realities. Project Management Outsourced as part of the grant, with a 12-person steering committee (4 in each of the 3 areas below) overseeing the RFP launch and selection of winning projects, supported by a two-person project management team based at an administrative hub (location to be determined- candidates include Santa Fe, Penn, and Yale). Core Exploration areas: 1) Causality and System Dynamics: Example question: How can we better measure and comprehend complex interrelationships in real social and biological systems? 2) Workings of the Mind: Example question: What are novel and better ways to measure qualifies such as joy, love, and imagination? 3) New Techniques: Example question: What are some novel and better ways in increase comprehensions of God and the divine? Basic Structure: Four Stage process: Application: What is your Problem? (July-August) Work: Creation of new measures (August-Feb) Work: Broader testing of new measures (Feb-June) Gathering: New measures "hackathon" (July) EFTA00693768 Financial Incentives: Yearly (2 years): Up to 20 awards in each of the three areas above for creation of new measures, averaging at @$10k =$600k Up to 10 awards in each of the three areas above for broader testing, averaging at $25k= $750k Meeting: 30 people at 3k = 90k Total direct incentives: $1.44MM pa, 42.88MM Otherfinancial costs: Project launch, management, promotion and overhead: = $2MM Promotion and outreach advisors: • Barry Nalebuff • Steve Jurvetson • Howard Morgan • Peter Diamandis • Henry Timms • Martin Seligman • Jeff Walker • Possible Project advisors: • Geoffrey West • Joi Ito • John Cacioppo • Howard Nausbaum • Martin Nowak • Gunter Wagner • Judea Perl • Marc Kirschner EFTA00693769