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The last chapter, to me, was the most interesting, and I would have liked it if author had expanded on this: "If we need 100,000 people to cure cancer, to deal

The last chapter, to me, was the most interesting, and I would have liked it if author had expanded on this: "If we need 100,000 people to cure cancer, to deal with Alzheimer’s, to figure out fusion energy and climate change…I don’t know of any other way to do that other than financial markets: equity, debt, proper financing and proper payout of returns. I think that in many cases [finance] probably is the gating factor" How do you attribute finance as an organising/motivating factor to solve some of these problems? Energy, and patented medicine, yes I can see that - but pollution and climate change?

vkou 9y ago
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Never mind that most of the biggest contributions to science had nothing to do with the market economy...
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  They have, but it's a second order connection. Academic institutions didn't spring up out of charity but due to general idea of the rulers of the day that it will make their and their subjects lives better. This including both financial and non-financial gains, both affecting economy in general though not linked to it in detail. This is why most big academic centers are government funded and not privately funded - and it's always a high risk game and few businesses like high risk. (Even startups, most go for low hanging fruit and quick returns. Academia in total is supposed to go for long game with high payout instead.) Patents came out of the left field, to protect and enhance private research, provide more incentive to do so, cover the huge costs which few private companies could otherwise bear without exclusivity. (Because private company has to make profit while government funding does not necessarily directly because it has huge buffers of cash and social capital.)
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >Academic institutions didn't spring up out of charity // Are you sure? Didn't the library of Alexandria invite academics and give them bed-and-board to stay and study? (It may have been one of the other early libraries??) With the aim to expand human knowledge. Yes wealth will always have a relationship with knowledge/wisdom but that doesn't mean supporting academia has to have other than altruistic basises. Weren't a lot of early academic institutions monastic, seeing accrual of knowledge as a service to the world by leading to greater understanding of the creator? (Which you kinda intimate.) Isn't that "charity"?
    - abecedarius 9y ago
      I don't think arrangements at the library of Alexandria are known in that kind of detail. (I've read a couple books about it, and most of the sources they use are from much later.) It was founded and funded by the Ptolemies as what you could plausibly call the first research university. Probably it was some combination of knowledge-is-power (it was an era of technical progress -- e.g. you know Eratosthenes and the size of the Earth? Eratosthenes was head of the library, and his work included basically inventing geography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#.22Father_of_geography.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#.22Father_of_geog... a subject of obvious interest to a new bureaucratic state), prestige, and genuine curiosity/cultivation on the part of the first few Ptolemies.
nonbel 9y ago
>"If we need 100,000 people to cure cancer, to deal with Alzheimer’s, to figure out fusion energy and climate change" Look through their dissertations and publication history. Categorize as "put name on NHST-using paper or not". You will narrow it down to about 10 potential recipients.
friedman23 9y ago
I guarantee you that the solution to climate change will come from markets. Not some utopian ideal of all the countries of the world coming together to stop polluting but some person trying to get rich that creates a business that makes non polluting energy more affordable than fossil fuels.
- dharma1 9y ago
  I'm not sure we will have a solution to climate change (or other types of pollution) before it's too late. The main problem, in my view, with pollution is that we find ourselves in a situation where short term gains (or negligence) are creating long term problems with significant consequences that we have no inherent motivation or evolutionary reward pathways to address. In the case of energy one could argue that markets will drive the cost of solar below fossil fuels, which I agree with, though not convinced about the time scale, especially on energy storage front. With other types of pollution I don't see the market doing much at all.

vkou 9y ago

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Never mind that most of the biggest contributions to science had nothing to do with the market economy...

AstralStorm 9y ago
They have, but it's a second order connection. Academic institutions didn't spring up out of charity but due to general idea of the rulers of the day that it will make their and their subjects lives better. This including both financial and non-financial gains, both affecting economy in general though not linked to it in detail. This is why most big academic centers are government funded and not privately funded - and it's always a high risk game and few businesses like high risk. (Even startups, most go for low hanging fruit and quick returns. Academia in total is supposed to go for long game with high payout instead.) Patents came out of the left field, to protect and enhance private research, provide more incentive to do so, cover the huge costs which few private companies could otherwise bear without exclusivity. (Because private company has to make profit while government funding does not necessarily directly because it has huge buffers of cash and social capital.)
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  >Academic institutions didn't spring up out of charity // Are you sure? Didn't the library of Alexandria invite academics and give them bed-and-board to stay and study? (It may have been one of the other early libraries??) With the aim to expand human knowledge. Yes wealth will always have a relationship with knowledge/wisdom but that doesn't mean supporting academia has to have other than altruistic basises. Weren't a lot of early academic institutions monastic, seeing accrual of knowledge as a service to the world by leading to greater understanding of the creator? (Which you kinda intimate.) Isn't that "charity"?
  - abecedarius 9y ago
    I don't think arrangements at the library of Alexandria are known in that kind of detail. (I've read a couple books about it, and most of the sources they use are from much later.) It was founded and funded by the Ptolemies as what you could plausibly call the first research university. Probably it was some combination of knowledge-is-power (it was an era of technical progress -- e.g. you know Eratosthenes and the size of the Earth? Eratosthenes was head of the library, and his work included basically inventing geography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#.22Father_of_geography.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#.22Father_of_geog... a subject of obvious interest to a new bureaucratic state), prestige, and genuine curiosity/cultivation on the part of the first few Ptolemies.

nonbel 9y ago

>"If we need 100,000 people to cure cancer, to deal with Alzheimer’s, to figure out fusion energy and climate change" Look through their dissertations and publication history. Categorize as "put name on NHST-using paper or not". You will narrow it down to about 10 potential recipients.

friedman23 9y ago

I guarantee you that the solution to climate change will come from markets. Not some utopian ideal of all the countries of the world coming together to stop polluting but some person trying to get rich that creates a business that makes non polluting energy more affordable than fossil fuels.

dharma1 9y ago
I'm not sure we will have a solution to climate change (or other types of pollution) before it's too late. The main problem, in my view, with pollution is that we find ourselves in a situation where short term gains (or negligence) are creating long term problems with significant consequences that we have no inherent motivation or evolutionary reward pathways to address. In the case of energy one could argue that markets will drive the cost of solar below fossil fuels, which I agree with, though not convinced about the time scale, especially on energy storage front. With other types of pollution I don't see the market doing much at all.