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“People such as Satoshi and Jordan Peterson have had huge impacts (regardless of one’s degree of enthusiasm for their ideas), and yet in terms of philanthropic

“People such as Satoshi and Jordan Peterson have had huge impacts (regardless of one’s degree of enthusiasm for their ideas), and yet in terms of philanthropic funding the world just isn’t geared to seed their ambitions,” said Cowen. I don't understand this quote. Satoshi is a fictional person as far as I'm concerned, who's idea has already succeeded to the extent that it can. I don't even want to know what this Jordan Peterson guy needs funding for. He already has a very vocal, supportive fan base. He can probably raise a lot of money with Kickstarter if he needed to.

1123581321 8y ago
I saw them as recognizable examples of the type of currently unrecognized thinker he wants to fund. I agree that the fund is not big enough to provide new options to those particular two. I do think both are examples of how constraints and a long, unusual background lead to outstanding results. A fund like this attempts to shortcut that long climb but I think that would prevent the result from being unusual enough to be remarkable. I think funds like this are better for defined needs that are difficult to fund, such as open research questions.
atomical 8y ago
How is Satoshi a fictional person? Did the software come from AI that traveled in a time machine?
- Latteland 8y ago
  Come on! Yes, someone or some group created the blockchain etc. But he/she/the team is fictional because there is no one individual or group identified.
  - atomical 8y ago
    That's not the definition of fictional.
zawerf 8y ago
It is pretty interesting that he chose two people who don't need philanthropic funding. Satoshi made a ton of money off bitcoin Jordan Peterson is one of the top 10 earners on Patreon: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators
- sincerely 8y ago
  According to the NYT he makes 80K/mo from Patreon. I too am sort of confused about why Cowen brought those two up as examples - especially when I don't really see what Peterson's "moon shot" was.
  - atomical 8y ago
    He has captured the attention of a lot of people.
- gwern 8y ago
  It's unclear if Satoshi has made any money off Bitcoin, ever. (He definitely did, however, spend at a minimum thousands of dollars just in hosting and mining costs, never mind the actual work of making Bitcoin.) In any case, he couldn't make any money off it between ~2006 - Bitcoin Pizza Day 2010, because it either didn't exist or it did but bitcoins were worthless and he couldn't give them away. The minute possibility of being a billionaire in a decade does not pay any bills in the present, any more than it does for regular startups, who need VCs or other forms of investment.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dang 8y ago
Would you please stop creating accounts for every couple comments you post? That's explicitly against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. HN can't be a community without members. Disembodied comments are not community members. No one is required to use their real name here, but users need to have some consistent identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we might as well have no usernames and no community at all. A disembodied-comment forum would be a different kind of site—perhaps an interesting one, but not Hacker News. You're free to find one or create one, but not to turn this one into that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- malandrew 8y ago
  While I agree with this in practice, with the culture wars of the past few years, HN has recently received its fair share of people who downvote due to disagreement. It used to be that downvotes were generally reserved for poor quality comments and upvotes were given for substantive well-considered comments even when one disagreed. Eternal september and culture wars are a bad combination. It's no longer innocent ignorance in this eternal september. I don't have a solution to offer here, but I increasingly sympathize with those that create throwaway accounts, especially now that intent is not longer considered when interpreting comments. People have been losing their jobs not for what they meant, but due to how their words were interpreted by someone else. The fact that HN doesn't allow one to delete their comments, makes these cultural changes increasingly concerning. Who knows which of our past comments will come back to bite us as society becomes less tolerant of ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
  - atomical 8y ago
    People who post on HN have lost their jobs?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Who knows which of our past comments will come back to bite us as society becomes less tolerant of ideas. Your desired solution only deepens such problems. It agrees that one is guilty and deserving of being fired instead of pushing back against that idea. Disney recently fired someone for decade old tweets. Shortly thereafter, some publication stood by its decision to hire someone when their old not PC tweets came to light. Civil liberties can be lost at any point in time. Gaining them doesn't guarantee them in perpetuity. They need to be guarded and promoted. Your proposed solution does the opposite of that.

1123581321 8y ago

I saw them as recognizable examples of the type of currently unrecognized thinker he wants to fund. I agree that the fund is not big enough to provide new options to those particular two. I do think both are examples of how constraints and a long, unusual background lead to outstanding results. A fund like this attempts to shortcut that long climb but I think that would prevent the result from being unusual enough to be remarkable. I think funds like this are better for defined needs that are difficult to fund, such as open research questions.

atomical 8y ago

How is Satoshi a fictional person? Did the software come from AI that traveled in a time machine?

Latteland 8y ago
Come on! Yes, someone or some group created the blockchain etc. But he/she/the team is fictional because there is no one individual or group identified.
- atomical 8y ago
  That's not the definition of fictional.

zawerf 8y ago

It is pretty interesting that he chose two people who don't need philanthropic funding. Satoshi made a ton of money off bitcoin Jordan Peterson is one of the top 10 earners on Patreon: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators

sincerely 8y ago
According to the NYT he makes 80K/mo from Patreon. I too am sort of confused about why Cowen brought those two up as examples - especially when I don't really see what Peterson's "moon shot" was.
- atomical 8y ago
  He has captured the attention of a lot of people.
gwern 8y ago
It's unclear if Satoshi has made any money off Bitcoin, ever. (He definitely did, however, spend at a minimum thousands of dollars just in hosting and mining costs, never mind the actual work of making Bitcoin.) In any case, he couldn't make any money off it between ~2006 - Bitcoin Pizza Day 2010, because it either didn't exist or it did but bitcoins were worthless and he couldn't give them away. The minute possibility of being a billionaire in a decade does not pay any bills in the present, any more than it does for regular startups, who need VCs or other forms of investment.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dang 8y ago

Would you please stop creating accounts for every couple comments you post? That's explicitly against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. HN can't be a community without members. Disembodied comments are not community members. No one is required to use their real name here, but users need to have some consistent identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we might as well have no usernames and no community at all. A disembodied-comment forum would be a different kind of site—perhaps an interesting one, but not Hacker News. You're free to find one or create one, but not to turn this one into that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

malandrew 8y ago
While I agree with this in practice, with the culture wars of the past few years, HN has recently received its fair share of people who downvote due to disagreement. It used to be that downvotes were generally reserved for poor quality comments and upvotes were given for substantive well-considered comments even when one disagreed. Eternal september and culture wars are a bad combination. It's no longer innocent ignorance in this eternal september. I don't have a solution to offer here, but I increasingly sympathize with those that create throwaway accounts, especially now that intent is not longer considered when interpreting comments. People have been losing their jobs not for what they meant, but due to how their words were interpreted by someone else. The fact that HN doesn't allow one to delete their comments, makes these cultural changes increasingly concerning. Who knows which of our past comments will come back to bite us as society becomes less tolerant of ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- atomical 8y ago
  People who post on HN have lost their jobs?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Who knows which of our past comments will come back to bite us as society becomes less tolerant of ideas. Your desired solution only deepens such problems. It agrees that one is guilty and deserving of being fired instead of pushing back against that idea. Disney recently fired someone for decade old tweets. Shortly thereafter, some publication stood by its decision to hire someone when their old not PC tweets came to light. Civil liberties can be lost at any point in time. Gaining them doesn't guarantee them in perpetuity. They need to be guarded and promoted. Your proposed solution does the opposite of that.