4 ms·
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invests in radical science innovation
- bh42222 15y agoInteresting concept. It is true that most government research funding is conservative. And private big co. R&D funding is rarely focused on basic research. This aim to specifically fund high risk science is a very interesting idea. What worries me is how they will tell real high risk science from charlatanry?
- melling 15y agoThis page is broken in Chrome? http://www.breakoutlabs.org/ http://www.breakoutlabs.org/
- tryitnow 15y agoI really wish more of the wealthy had the foresight and ingenuity to focus their philanthropy on high risk high reward areas like Thiel does.
- zotz 15y agoThe single most anti-science stance in government and industry is the prohibition on hemp. The chemurgists of the 1920s and 30s had figured out that anything made from a hydrocarbon can also be made from a carbohydrate. This knowledge, combined with George Schlichten's decorticator (the cotton gin of hemp), was about to revolutionize both agriculture and manufacturing (as detailed in this 1938 article in Popular Mechanics: http://books.google.com/books?id=e9sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=e9sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA238#v...) when industry, using its power via its control of the American Congress, outlawed an entire plant. The anti-science attitude starts in the worlds of entrenched business and government interests that have little to no wish to see humanity progress beyond those interests.