
Tyler Cowen launches fellowship and grant program for moon shot ideas - jseliger
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/economist-tyler-cowen-launches-a-fellowship-and-grant-program-for-moon-shot-ideas/
======
gweinberg
It's hard to se what Satoshi and Peterson have in common, aside from that they
are two people Cowan would have never funded before they were famous.

~~~
Latteland
Jordan Peterson is so controversial, why would you mention him in that
interview? "Team" Satoshi actually solved fundamental problems and moved the
world forward in cryptocurrency and associated underlying technology like
blockchains, but Peterson has just stirred people up.

~~~
majos
I am also curious about the allusion to Peterson. I am not aware of any huge
societal contribution he has made beyond encouraging dueling op-eds. Certainly
he has a devoted fan base, but I essentially never hear about him in real
life.

I'm not weighing in on how good or bad his ideas are. But I see way more of
the blockchain in the world than I do (knowingly) of Peterson.

What am I missing?

~~~
nexus2045
I have thoroughly consumed a lot of Peterson content. I can vouch that aside
from the political controversy, that he has a powerful message for young men:
to find the meaning in life through responsibility and sacrifice, to go out
there and make something of themselves. I have no idea why that it is
"controversial" to be told to strive for something, and I don't see much
alternatives other than self-help books. There are much more troubled, aimless
people out there than you think, because if you've lived a fairly decent life
yourself, you almost never come into contact with the guys that aren't doing
so well and are in need of such a message. He's almost filling in as a father
figure for young men where self-help did not suffice. The opposing side likes
to attempt to character assassinate him by labelling as a right-wing bigot,
but have never bothered to really listen to his message while holding the
empathy that more unfortunate people DO need a message like that.

~~~
erikpukinskis
To me, his controversial argument is the idea that the academy is infested
with communists who think you should be thrown in jail for using the wrong
pronouns, and that an entire generation of college students is taking women's
studies classes wherein they are taught that the problem with the world is
that men exist and that they aren't enough like women. And that in these
leftist circles you're not allowed to talk about sexism perpetrated by muslim
men. And a bunch of other such theories.

Sure, all of that exists in various crappy people in obscure corners of
academia. But he makes it out to be widespread, and he makes it out that no
dissenting voices are allowed to exist on the left or in academia. Neither of
which is true. But more troubling, there's a community of right wing pundits
who use Peterson and his theories to justify total vilification of the left
and academia in their entirety. The impression you get from Peterson is that
no gender studies professor has ever done anything except hate traditional
values and the people who love them.

There are people out there making constructive criticisms of overzealous
leftists. Peterson seems to be choosing a purely divisive path. You can tell
because he never talks to or about anyone on the left with more moderate
views. He only engages the center right and the radical left, because
fundamentally his goal isn't to reform the left, it's to justify his own
rightward shift in his personal politics.

~~~
quotemstr
After the events of the past few years, I don't think it's tenable to cast the
problems Peterson highlights as occasional and obscure. Look at FIRE's speech
code analysis: most universities have administrative restrictions on free
inquiry. Look at Heterodox Academy's work on ideological bias: social science
is 90% left, with something like 30% (from memory) calling themselves
"radical". Look at the current replication crisis, which arises in part from
fabrication of ideologically convenient results.

I simply cannot agree with your assertion that Peterson et al are cherry-
picking and that academia is fundamentally sound. These pathologies are too
common and too widespread not to constitute some kind of systemic issue. I
find your arguments unconvincing. Instead, I believe that a correction is long
overdue.

Disciplines that reject reason, empiricism, and rigor, that claim all truths
are equally valid, and that hold the only valid goal of pedagogy is tearing
down power dynamics --- these are indoctrination, not inquiry, and the public
should not fund this activity.

> no dissenting voices are allowed to exist on the left or in academia

Academia really does apply extreme social and political pressure to unorthodox
thinkers. Look at the campaign against Rachel Fulton Brown.

> use Peterson and his theories to justify

It's become common lately to argue that we shouldn't acknowledge certain facts
because unscrupulous people might use them to justify something bad. This
position is not tenable. The truth always gets out, and when it does, those
suppressing it lose all of their influence and credibility. It's far better to
acknowledge facts and work with them.

~~~
erikpukinskis
None of what you've said looks like evidence to me. I see arguments and
anecotes.

The fact that unscrupulous people lean on Peterson to villify the left is not
my concern. My concern is that Peterson seems to engage exclusively with those
people, and he himself doesn't appear to see any variance amongst people in
the various groups he targets (leftists, academics, feminists, antifa, etc).

------
samstave
Aren't there a few such projects to fund moon shots?

What/where is the best list of moon shots being currently worked on and
backed?

~~~
jayalpha
SBIR Grants are supposed to finance "moon shot" projects. Unfortunately the
way they are granted is very "opaque" to put it mildly and without going into
more detail.

~~~
chris11
What do you mean? SBIR grants are intended to support early stage innovation
projects. They should be able to be commercialized, but too high risk for
normal investors. That's not really the same thing as a moon shot program. And
individual federal agencies that participate in the program can decide what
they are interested in researching.

~~~
jnbiche
> That's not really the same thing as a moon shot program.

Matthew Weinberg, former Special Advisor to the SBA's Office of Investment and
Innovation, disagrees with you. With respect to the SBIR program, he said:

"It’s fundamentally astounding that the federal government—not private venture
capital firms or banks—is the entity backing these _moonshot_ investments that
end up changing the world[1]."

He also wrote an article about the SBIC and SBIR programs entitled, "Your
federal government drives innovation by investing in _moonshots_ [2]".

(My italics)

1\. [https://www.fundera.com/blog/sbir-
program](https://www.fundera.com/blog/sbir-program)

2\. [https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/03/your-federal-government-
dr...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/03/your-federal-government-drives-
innovation-by-investing-in-moonshots/)

------
HarryHirsch
In 25 years we can look back who has had a greater impact on society - the
people awarded a McArthur grant or the people awarded an Emergent Ventures
grant. My money would be on Phil Baran and Carolyn Bertozzi, not Jordan
Peterson and Nakamoto Satoshi. _Nota bene_ : John McArthur was a financier
himself.

~~~
barry-cotter
Both of the chemists you mention were already wildly professionally successful
before they got their MacArthur Grant. The MacArthur Grant was not encouraging
success, it was rewarding it.

If they’re typical recipients of MacArthur Grants then the Emergent Ventures
grantees will definitely look worse on average. Some of them will try and
fail. None of the MacArthur grant awards are going to fail and drop into
obscurity. They’ve all already reached some level of success.

Whatever about Peterson Satoshi Nakamoto developed a financial technology on a
par with at least international wire transfers and possibly fiat money. Even
if BitCoin as such is insecure and collapses, worthless some altcoun is going
to be traded in 100 years. The technology is a big deal.

------
atrilumen
This part of the application is making me nervous because I feel like I'm
missing something:

> what is one mainstream or "consensus" view that you absolutely agree with?
> (This is our version of a “trick” question, reversing the now-fashionable
> contrarianism.)

I searched Google for variations on the _contrarian_ inverse of the question,
but couldn't find anything that seemed relevant.

Can you help me?

~~~
jwahba
[https://fs.blog/2015/11/the-single-best-interview-
question-y...](https://fs.blog/2015/11/the-single-best-interview-question-you-
can-ask/)

~~~
atrilumen
Thanks!

------
jtcond13
It’s interesting to see the America's most prominent libertarian economist
state that capital markets aren’t adequately funding risky business
ventures...

~~~
potempkin_TOS
Many libertarians believe in market failures, and (I think) most believe it's
possible for markets to NOT fully capitalize on business opportunities.

Of course, Cowen is also a market actor. So, I'm not sure where the
inconsistency lies.

~~~
waterhouse
David Friedman (anarcho-capitalist)'s comment on market failures is that they
do happen, but what might be called government failures also happen, and are
probably a worse problem.

"Individual actors usually receive most of the benefit and pay most of the
cost of their actions, making market failure the exception, not the rule. On
the political market individual actors—voters, politicians, lobbyists, judges,
policemen—almost never bear much of the cost of their actions or receive much
of the benefit. Hence market failure, the exception on the private market, is
the rule on the political market."

[http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery_3d_Edition/Market%20...](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery_3d_Edition/Market%20Failure.htm)

------
jamestimmins
Interesting that the two examples are Satoshi and Jordan Peterson. When I see
"moon shot" I typically think of space elevators and such. Perhaps this is a
truly unique type of fund but at first glance, I have a hard time seeing the
similarity of these two folks other than having initially fringe ideas.

~~~
gameswithgo
Jordan Peterson seems pretty useless overall. His climate change views seem to
suggests he thinks he is a lot smarter than he is.

~~~
Latteland
Peterson in interviews even says he is smarter than every interviewer (I've
listened to a few of them). He just comes across as pretty conceited. Everyone
has their areas of expertise, but the claim that you don't know anything but
'they' do comes across like a certain world leader.

~~~
jnbiche
> Peterson in interviews even says he is smarter than every interviewer (I've
> listened to a few of them)

I've never heard him say this. Can you direct me to one such interview? I'm
not a huge Peterson fanboy, but neither do I think the man is the demon-being
that he's sometimes portrayed as by many in the media.

------
atrilumen
Applied!

Slater Systems LLC

Wish us luck (Slater and me)

------
agorabinary
I suspect GMU/Mercatus has a few early crypto adopters given the symmetry of
their ideas with crypto political ideals. What does a GMU academic economist
do with hodl money? Form a grant program with a heavily libertarian bent.

------
throwaway834
“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.

~~~
dang
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
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)

~~~
dang
That's inaccurate. Downvoting for disagreement has always been ok:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314).

It's also inaccurate about deletion. We're happy to delete or redact older
comments when users ask us to, and we do this all the time. We don't want
anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN. What we don't allow
is wholesale deletion.

I was talking mostly about users who create throwaway accounts for everything,
including uncontroversial stuff, so I don't see the relevance of the culture
wars here.

As for Eternal September, people have been saying these things for almost as
long as HN has existed. If you want a plus-ça-change moment, take a look at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1646871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1646871)
from eight years ago (edit: or
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604),
from nine).

~~~
abdullahkhalids
I have always wondered if its possible to have three buttons (A)gree,
(D)isgaree and (U)nhealthy. The first two buttons control how high up a
comment apears in the thread/page and the last does the graying out currently
reserved for downvoting. If there was any forum where people could deal with
three buttons, HN would be it. Any thoughts?

~~~
dang
That's maybe not so different from upvote, downvote, and flag?

HN's system is long established. I don't see much upside to reordering it, and
considerable downside.

------
freen
Unless you are able and willing to risk the entire US silver reserve (see the
Manhattan project), you aren’t actually funding moonshots.

