6 ms·

It seems like Silicon Valley is full of people who love espousing their noble ideas but got rich via (as Thiel admits) at best socially neutral things like Face

by et2o 11y ago

It seems like Silicon Valley is full of people who love espousing their noble ideas but got rich via (as Thiel admits) at best socially neutral things like Facebook and Paypal. As for the anti-aging research: Fund the NIH. Basic science like that needed in aging research isn't going to come on a startup timescale. Thiel makes a big deal about encouraging people to leave universities, but the smartest PhD students are generally not the ones leaving academia.

dnautics 11y ago
The nih's run of good Basic science is over and may never come back. Government has this pesky thing called accountability that it needs to satisfy. There is no way to hold a scientist accountable when the fruits of 'basic science' are not provable for decades or centuries. It's just too easy for a snake oil salesman to extract funding from clueless program managers (the smartest PhD students are not the ones becoming program managers). As for smart PhDs leaving academia... They are. Getting a faculty position is basically a crap shoot that requires politicking, landing a lucky project, getting a high impact factor publication, or all three. The labor market was so saturated by decades of encouraging more people to be PhDs (it kind of became a dumping ground for students who didn't want to med school or look for a job) that the distinction between a good scientist and a bad failed to be the standard academic metrics. Good scientists who diligently pursued difficult research were more likely than not rewarded with little because such projects might not be doable in a five year PhD or a two year postdoc. The other route out is fraud. Edit: oh, I see, you're in the MSTP. Please consider Upton Sinclair's quote: "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
- et2o 11y ago
  My main point was that product-driven start-ups are not going to be able to do the basic science research needed to get revolutionary advances in things like aging research. You're complaining about getting only 7 years of protected research time with no real expectation of a viable product: How long will these types of places have? If you're going to call me out on my vested interested in NIH funding, I think you should acknowledge you have a pretty similar (opposite) conflict of interest :) Certainly the NIH basic science funding situation right now is absolutely dismal. However, it's ludicrous to suggest that the reason is because of some lack of "accountability." It's also not exclusively "clueless program managers" who are choosing how funds are disbursed: There are panels full of (decidedly) non-clueless professors who do that. The real reason is because there are more PhDs than there used to be, more professors than there used to be, more people applying for grants than there used to be, and NIH funding has become nominally stagnant (declining in real dollars) after a period of massive expansion. I'm not arguing that getting a faculty position is definitely something of a crapshoot, especially if you aren't a dual-degree candidate and don't have a clinical aspect to your work that you can fall back on.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    What's my conflict of interest? I'm not paid by my nonprofit, and it doesn't do basic research. I think you missed my point. If the smartest are leaving academia, then the professors that are reviewing grants and papers ARE clueless. How did Arsenic Life get through review with glowing reviewer comments? How is it that Reza Ghadiri got $6M to pursue DNA nanopore research sequencing with zero previous experience in the field? I could go on and on. As for alternatives for basic science, the idea that science must be funded by either the NIH or startups (or even industry writ large) is a false dichotomy: consider Peter Mitchell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell It's also worth noting that one of the most major medical advances of the 20th century, the eradication of polio, was done similarly without the NIH.
    - et2o 11y ago
      I know I probably invited inflammatory responses by suggesting that the best PhD students are able to stay in academia, which I admit is an overgeneralization. From what I see (and this is getting more personal than I'd like to from a response to my lighthearted comment) you left academia to work at a pharmaceutical (non-profit) company you started. I may have gotten that wrong. If so I apologize. I do think it's a bit beside the point to be arguing about this instead of the ideas, but so be it. Peter Mitchell was exceptional, as was every other Nobel Prize Winner, the vast majority (the rest?) who were academics. If you're arguing that moving to a model where individual scientists soliciting charity for their research is better, I would have to disagree. You think the general public is better able to assess research value than the NIH?
      - dnautics 11y ago
        It is not just an overgeneralization, it is basically a dangerous defense of the status quo, that doesn't match up with reality. The problem is largely that science has become a kleptocratic system where there's even a term 'grantsmanship' that everyone knows involves a level of dishonesty and overselling. If you'd like for your scientific leaders to be polluted, at a fundamental level, with this toxic attitude, then perhaps you deserve the scientific system we have now. On a personal level, I find it to also be a very distressing appeal to authority - "well these people are professors because clearly they deserve to be"... I mean, I have worked under/with professors who definitely deserve it (Ham Smith, Clyde Hutchison, Dan Gibson, Vanessa Hayes, Jeff Kelly, my boss at the University of Maryland - who does incidentally now work for the NIH, but is planning on quitting) but there is a very, very long list of professors who do not... I'm not really going to name too many names for obvious reasons.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  > Getting a faculty position is basically a crap shoot that requires politicking, landing a lucky project, getting a high impact factor publication, or all three. True. That's because we've been cutting the percentage of GDP spent on basic research, and because we structure academic careers pyramidally, ensuring there will always be more PhD graduates than permanent academic jobs (unless you wish to pave over the universe in professorial offices). Now look, I'm in industry right now, but while some smart PhDs leave academia and some don't, most smart MS and PhD holders would rather be doing research. So don't talk about how research productivity has dropped off and will never come back: social determinism is the kind most likely to be wrong (since if people understand the prediction made by the social determinist, they act to prevent its coming true). Instead, let's understand just how much everyone stands to gain from advances in basic science (to follow the given example: longer, healthier, happier lives) - how much we have always gained from advances in basic science - and restructure the scientific career to make it happen. Throwing free money at anyone with a PhD doesn't maximize scientific productivity. Neither does starving out the overwhelming majority of all trained scientists with a pyramidal career ladder and ever-shrinking science budgets.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    "social determinism is the kind most likely to be wrong" That's basically a nonsense defense of the status quo. Consider your own mechanism: and because we structure academic careers pyramidally This is essentially an exponential growth process. Even if people understand the predictions, if their actions are limited to linear fixes, they aren't going to be able to stop the problem. Why is it that people like Jay Keasing, Pete Schultz, Carolyn Bertozzi, George Church, etc. have giant pyramids with 50-100 direct reports? How do we stop that? Ok. Now that we've solved that problem: Instead, let's understand just how much everyone stands to gain from advances in basic science (to follow the given example: longer, healthier, happier lives) - how much we have always gained from advances in basic science - and restructure the scientific career to make it happen. Great. What exactly is the plan here? I don't think you have real data as to how the social and labor structure of science has an effect on innovation. Nobody does, the n is too low, and real innovations are largely black swans.
zo1 11y ago
>"It seems like Silicon Valley is full of people who love espousing their noble ideas but got rich via (as Thiel admits) at best socially neutral things like Facebook and Paypal." What's wrong with that? If Thiel is a Libertarian (haven't looked it up, not that it matters), then supporting and making money off-of socially "neutral" things such as Facebook and Paypal seems like a very good representation of the things Libertarians believe in. Namely, freedom from violent coercion in all forms, and the voluntary trade and association between free individuals. Calling it "Neutral" is also quite a loaded term, to be honest. You've already created and started projecting some sort of internal (and probably shared-with-others) scale of social good. And then you apply it to something completely voluntary and non-violent, as if to degrade from what it actually represents.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  "freedom from violent coercion" The problem with that is, they're just fine with every other form of coercion.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    The opposing viewpoint essentially boils down to "use violent coercion to stop non-violent coercion" which is not only ideologically inconsistent, but an escalation.
  - psychometry 11y ago
    Namely, the inevitable coercion by private companies left completely unchecked to amass power, money, and influence.
    - MCRed 11y ago
      Companies have to keep everyone happy-- employees so they won't work elsewhere, shareholders so they won't sell the stock, customers so they won't shop elsewhere and the government so they won't be prosecuted. Yet we see a major political movement with constant scare stories about the evils of corporations. Meanwhile, the US government spends $3 Trillion a year, collects it all via violence (eg: taxation or inflation which is a non-consensual devaluing of the dollar) and is literally using it to spy on people illegally, and drop hellfire missiles on innocent teenagers.... ... yet all I hear is how we need more of this government thing and less of those evil, scary, companies that have to keep everybody happy in order to stay in business. It boggles my mind. Personally, I have been threatened with violence on a couple of occasions and robbed by the government every year since I became an adult... and only rarely does a company do something wrong/stupid, and when they do the scale doesn't even begin to compare. But literally what you say is wrong. It's not "coercion" to offer a better product. To claim companies are "unchecked" is wrong as well, they are checked by the need to keep everyone happy. Government doesn't even run fair elections!

by et2o 11y ago

dnautics 11y ago

The nih's run of good Basic science is over and may never come back. Government has this pesky thing called accountability that it needs to satisfy. There is no way to hold a scientist accountable when the fruits of 'basic science' are not provable for decades or centuries. It's just too easy for a snake oil salesman to extract funding from clueless program managers (the smartest PhD students are not the ones becoming program managers). As for smart PhDs leaving academia... They are. Getting a faculty position is basically a crap shoot that requires politicking, landing a lucky project, getting a high impact factor publication, or all three. The labor market was so saturated by decades of encouraging more people to be PhDs (it kind of became a dumping ground for students who didn't want to med school or look for a job) that the distinction between a good scientist and a bad failed to be the standard academic metrics. Good scientists who diligently pursued difficult research were more likely than not rewarded with little because such projects might not be doable in a five year PhD or a two year postdoc. The other route out is fraud. Edit: oh, I see, you're in the MSTP. Please consider Upton Sinclair's quote: "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"

et2o 11y ago
My main point was that product-driven start-ups are not going to be able to do the basic science research needed to get revolutionary advances in things like aging research. You're complaining about getting only 7 years of protected research time with no real expectation of a viable product: How long will these types of places have? If you're going to call me out on my vested interested in NIH funding, I think you should acknowledge you have a pretty similar (opposite) conflict of interest :) Certainly the NIH basic science funding situation right now is absolutely dismal. However, it's ludicrous to suggest that the reason is because of some lack of "accountability." It's also not exclusively "clueless program managers" who are choosing how funds are disbursed: There are panels full of (decidedly) non-clueless professors who do that. The real reason is because there are more PhDs than there used to be, more professors than there used to be, more people applying for grants than there used to be, and NIH funding has become nominally stagnant (declining in real dollars) after a period of massive expansion. I'm not arguing that getting a faculty position is definitely something of a crapshoot, especially if you aren't a dual-degree candidate and don't have a clinical aspect to your work that you can fall back on.
- dnautics 11y ago
  What's my conflict of interest? I'm not paid by my nonprofit, and it doesn't do basic research. I think you missed my point. If the smartest are leaving academia, then the professors that are reviewing grants and papers ARE clueless. How did Arsenic Life get through review with glowing reviewer comments? How is it that Reza Ghadiri got $6M to pursue DNA nanopore research sequencing with zero previous experience in the field? I could go on and on. As for alternatives for basic science, the idea that science must be funded by either the NIH or startups (or even industry writ large) is a false dichotomy: consider Peter Mitchell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell It's also worth noting that one of the most major medical advances of the 20th century, the eradication of polio, was done similarly without the NIH.
  - et2o 11y ago
    I know I probably invited inflammatory responses by suggesting that the best PhD students are able to stay in academia, which I admit is an overgeneralization. From what I see (and this is getting more personal than I'd like to from a response to my lighthearted comment) you left academia to work at a pharmaceutical (non-profit) company you started. I may have gotten that wrong. If so I apologize. I do think it's a bit beside the point to be arguing about this instead of the ideas, but so be it. Peter Mitchell was exceptional, as was every other Nobel Prize Winner, the vast majority (the rest?) who were academics. If you're arguing that moving to a model where individual scientists soliciting charity for their research is better, I would have to disagree. You think the general public is better able to assess research value than the NIH?
    - dnautics 11y ago
      It is not just an overgeneralization, it is basically a dangerous defense of the status quo, that doesn't match up with reality. The problem is largely that science has become a kleptocratic system where there's even a term 'grantsmanship' that everyone knows involves a level of dishonesty and overselling. If you'd like for your scientific leaders to be polluted, at a fundamental level, with this toxic attitude, then perhaps you deserve the scientific system we have now. On a personal level, I find it to also be a very distressing appeal to authority - "well these people are professors because clearly they deserve to be"... I mean, I have worked under/with professors who definitely deserve it (Ham Smith, Clyde Hutchison, Dan Gibson, Vanessa Hayes, Jeff Kelly, my boss at the University of Maryland - who does incidentally now work for the NIH, but is planning on quitting) but there is a very, very long list of professors who do not... I'm not really going to name too many names for obvious reasons.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
> Getting a faculty position is basically a crap shoot that requires politicking, landing a lucky project, getting a high impact factor publication, or all three. True. That's because we've been cutting the percentage of GDP spent on basic research, and because we structure academic careers pyramidally, ensuring there will always be more PhD graduates than permanent academic jobs (unless you wish to pave over the universe in professorial offices). Now look, I'm in industry right now, but while some smart PhDs leave academia and some don't, most smart MS and PhD holders would rather be doing research. So don't talk about how research productivity has dropped off and will never come back: social determinism is the kind most likely to be wrong (since if people understand the prediction made by the social determinist, they act to prevent its coming true). Instead, let's understand just how much everyone stands to gain from advances in basic science (to follow the given example: longer, healthier, happier lives) - how much we have always gained from advances in basic science - and restructure the scientific career to make it happen. Throwing free money at anyone with a PhD doesn't maximize scientific productivity. Neither does starving out the overwhelming majority of all trained scientists with a pyramidal career ladder and ever-shrinking science budgets.
- dnautics 11y ago
  "social determinism is the kind most likely to be wrong" That's basically a nonsense defense of the status quo. Consider your own mechanism: and because we structure academic careers pyramidally This is essentially an exponential growth process. Even if people understand the predictions, if their actions are limited to linear fixes, they aren't going to be able to stop the problem. Why is it that people like Jay Keasing, Pete Schultz, Carolyn Bertozzi, George Church, etc. have giant pyramids with 50-100 direct reports? How do we stop that? Ok. Now that we've solved that problem: Instead, let's understand just how much everyone stands to gain from advances in basic science (to follow the given example: longer, healthier, happier lives) - how much we have always gained from advances in basic science - and restructure the scientific career to make it happen. Great. What exactly is the plan here? I don't think you have real data as to how the social and labor structure of science has an effect on innovation. Nobody does, the n is too low, and real innovations are largely black swans.

zo1 11y ago

>"It seems like Silicon Valley is full of people who love espousing their noble ideas but got rich via (as Thiel admits) at best socially neutral things like Facebook and Paypal." What's wrong with that? If Thiel is a Libertarian (haven't looked it up, not that it matters), then supporting and making money off-of socially "neutral" things such as Facebook and Paypal seems like a very good representation of the things Libertarians believe in. Namely, freedom from violent coercion in all forms, and the voluntary trade and association between free individuals. Calling it "Neutral" is also quite a loaded term, to be honest. You've already created and started projecting some sort of internal (and probably shared-with-others) scale of social good. And then you apply it to something completely voluntary and non-violent, as if to degrade from what it actually represents.

s73v3r 11y ago
"freedom from violent coercion" The problem with that is, they're just fine with every other form of coercion.
- dnautics 11y ago
  The opposing viewpoint essentially boils down to "use violent coercion to stop non-violent coercion" which is not only ideologically inconsistent, but an escalation.
- psychometry 11y ago
  Namely, the inevitable coercion by private companies left completely unchecked to amass power, money, and influence.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    Companies have to keep everyone happy-- employees so they won't work elsewhere, shareholders so they won't sell the stock, customers so they won't shop elsewhere and the government so they won't be prosecuted. Yet we see a major political movement with constant scare stories about the evils of corporations. Meanwhile, the US government spends $3 Trillion a year, collects it all via violence (eg: taxation or inflation which is a non-consensual devaluing of the dollar) and is literally using it to spy on people illegally, and drop hellfire missiles on innocent teenagers.... ... yet all I hear is how we need more of this government thing and less of those evil, scary, companies that have to keep everybody happy in order to stay in business. It boggles my mind. Personally, I have been threatened with violence on a couple of occasions and robbed by the government every year since I became an adult... and only rarely does a company do something wrong/stupid, and when they do the scale doesn't even begin to compare. But literally what you say is wrong. It's not "coercion" to offer a better product. To claim companies are "unchecked" is wrong as well, they are checked by the need to keep everyone happy. Government doesn't even run fair elections!