3 ms·

Ad money is what's paying for all the interesting projects and acquisitions going on at Google right now. If not directly a net benefit to society, it has been

• shas3 12y ago
  Paraphrasing Peter Thiel [1], this is a stochastic approach ("unplanned statistical view of the future") to technological progress. Throw darts at ad clicks and hope that it cures cancer. The opposite approach is the 'Manhattan Project'-way, where you throw the best minds in a field to work on a particular project. To some extent, this is going on in areas like mathematics (Langlands Project), Human Genome Project, NIH BRAIN Initiative, etc. In the long term, it is unclear if the 'stochastic approach' is deterministically effective in solving the 'Big' problems. [1] http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2012/02/01/a-conversation-with-peter-thiel/ http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2012/02/01/a-c...