

Ask whomever: who gives away free money? - yters

I know lots of people here want to do the whole startup thing so they get the whole working thing out of the way and do what they really want.  But, we're such a rich nation that surely someone would sponsor worthy individuals in their pursuits.  Who are these people and how do I get in contact with them?<p>As for my pursuit - I'm very interested in ID and figuring out what God is up to.  ID based science will be the next revolution.
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SwellJoe
ID and science don't belong in the same sentence. I'm sure there are
creationists out there who will be happy to fund someone with some kind of
credentials (do you have some sort of degree in science? it seems unlikely,
given your belief in a politically motivated hoax of epic proportions, that is
wholly unbacked by science or reason, but if you're expecting someone to pay
you for "science" I must presume you have some kind of scientific
credentials).

But, frankly, if I had guidance to offer on how to raise money for research, I
wouldn't. You're seeking to do harm, whether you know it or not. Any belief
system that requires lies to defend it, is a belief system that does not
deserve to be heard, and ID is built entirely on lies and misdirection. If you
aren't aware of the distortions of truth behind ID, then you're certainly not
equipped to call yourself a "scientist" in the field.

~~~
Kaizyn
I believe that ID gets unfairly maligned. As a scientific theory it is a basic
statement about probabilities. Simply stated: the probability that life could
have evolved to its current state by way of Darwinian evolution is so low as
to be a nearly a mathematical impossibility. (Simply calculate the probability
that each of the necessary factors for intelligent human life came to exist
and multiply these numbers together. You arrive at an extremely small number,
less even than 1 in 10^60.) This statement allows that the universe has an
infinite time frame for such evolution to have occurred. ID also points out
that recent astronomical findings date the universe to about 14 billion years
old, thus significantly curtailing the theoretical maximum time allowable for
that evolution to occur in. Now tell me, what makes that claim pseudo-
scientific?

~~~
rms
You are wrong. Study evolution before telling me it is astronomically
improbable. This debate only ends up giving Intelligent Design mindshare that
it does not deserve. I hope you haven't actually fallen for the tricks of the
Insane Fundamentalists.

To everyone else: there is absolutely no need to entertain Intelligent Design
trolls.

~~~
karzeem
You're right that it's a stupid debate that doesn't belong here, but all the
down-modding and vitriol smacks a little too much of a tyranny of the
(correct) majority.

To the poster, you're not going to find any funders here, but there are
probably some groups elsewhere interested in funding people to put together a
case for ID. Your best bet is probably working through an evangelical school
like Liberty University.

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tjic
I object to your phrase "worthy individuals". Noone is worthy or unworthy -
what they choose to do with their time and talents are either worthy or
unworthy.

I am not an ABSOLUTE apologist for capitalism, but I will say that the vast
majority of useful tasks have some money in them. Sure, in some places, it's
hard to capture the value that you create, but in most areas of inquiry, you
can capture the value you create.

Thus, 99% of the time, your expected pay out accurately reflects your expected
contribution to society (yes, I am simplifying somewhat).

The wonderful thing about a free market is that it channels people's talents
and labor into those areas that are ACTUALLY useful to other people.

I am not convinced that you noodling around, thinking about ID, is of much use
at all to society (this is entirely orthogonal to my thoughts on ID - I am
commenting specifically on your desire to noodle around). Your other wide-
ranging interests also, without more detail, do not immediately sound like
they are of much use to anyone.

Now, there may be ways to convert your desire to noodle around into something
that is of worth to other people (which means that other people would be
interested in paying you for it).

A lot of people look at business plans as an arcane exercise, especially
because the plan itself is often deviated from quite quickly. In fact,
business plans are tremendously useful as a self-discipling tool: they force
you to confront not just what you want to do, but what value people might find
in what you want to do, and they force you to tweak your plan until you
deliver a noticeably amount of value to others.

Your problem here is that you are concentrating JUST on what you want to do.
You have to spend some time thinking about how this creates value for others.
Until you have done that, I do not believe that you would do anything useful
with the money, if it were to be handed to you.

Funding an intellectual to stare at his navel for 5 years is of not use to
anyone (and is barely of any use to the intellectual, who - if he is honest
with himself - will look back on the 5 years as wasted, and without result).

Funding an intellectual to work on something that sounds useful, on the other
hand, makes a lot of sense.

Bottom line: stop focusing on yourself, and focus on the value that you're
going to create. Once you do that, you'll have a real plan that might be
deserving of someone else's hard earned dollars (after all,if you don't want
to work for The Man to earn the benjamins, why should someone else who has
ALREADY worked for The Man give you his dough, which is to say, the
crystalized value of his hours?)

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Tichy
I guess you should ask an ID lobby group. They probably spend significant
money on marketing.

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Jd
<<I'm very interested in ID and figuring out what God is up to. ID based
science will be the next revolution.>>

If you believe in God, then doesn't 'figuring out what God is up to' simply
mean 'science.' In that case, what does it mean for science to to be 'ID
based' ? That your research pursuits are guided by the bible? If so, why don't
you just go work in a lab somewhere?

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deltapoint
If intelligent design was true there would already be a scientific revolution.
The science just isn't their. If you want "truth" focus on the philosophical
ideas.Get right wing fundamentalists that want to evangelize religion rather
than finding actual scientific truth to fund you if you want to research id.
If you want to research the early universe study astronomy or astrophysics.

~~~
yters
I wouldn't just be focussed on ID, I have wide ranging interests. That's why I
was wondering if anyone would just generically fund me to do whatever.

Regardless of my interests, isn't this something you'd want? Why go through
all the effort of a start up if there's a quicker way to get independence?

~~~
rms
Your troll about ID killed your thread before it got started. I would
encourage you to wait a week and try again without referencing something that
offends the vast majority of this board.

\--- If there is one thing I think should be censored here it is the
intelligent design debate. The entire movement is one big troll that feeds off
of its own debate. Let's start marking it dead on arrival.

~~~
yters
Ok, noted. I agree the ID debate, and like flame wars, should be censored. I
value this community and don't want to bring it down. I wasn't quite sure
everyone would automatically censor me for the idea, so I was testing the
water.

I think mentioning controversial subjects should be alright, like if someone
wanted to know what I would pursue if given the means, but debates about them
should be done offline.

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gwenhwyfaer
Perhaps, then, you should be applying to churches for funding? They have
interests in common with you - in both "figuring out what God is up to" and
the "wanting something for nothing".

Come to think of it, those ideas might themselves be directly related.

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foobar55
It's a wonderful thing called a "scholarship."

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DanielBMarkham
I've been thinking about these comments and would like to add one more thing:

Perhaps the debate about ID, abortion, pigs swimming with sheep, etc should be
taken somewhere else. That makes sense to me. It's not relevant to the purpose
as I understand it of the board and we're never all going to agree. But the
business ideas that spring from controversial ideas should absolutely be part
of a startup board, in my opinion.

So aside from the joke I made, in all seriousness, the question is: what kinds
of business opportunities are there that relate to your interests? It would
seem to me that the more controversial your interests, the tighter the market
niche you are going to find. Perhaps bear polishers are a tight-knit group and
have been looking for a social portal website. Perhaps cigarette smokers who
like the Three Stooges are underrepresented in the market.

Let's face it: a lot of web applications have a big marketing/popularity
aspect to them. Anybody who feels passionately about any topic should ask
themselves how many other people feel the same way, and is there some service
that could be offered to them that would help them out. That's what it's all
about, right? So yes, I'd be very interested in talking about some issue I
might have problems with in terms of what the business opportunities were.

Now there's a moral component: you don't want to support cigarette smokers,
you don't want to help IDers, etc. I can respect that. Personally, I think
it's awful to devise something to help out Islamic Fundamentalists. I could
not do or support anything like that because I feel it hurts other people
directly (as in kaboom, not as in it makes their mind mush). So on those
topics, perhaps it is best to self-censor in order to allow the business
conversation to continue, at least as much as possible. And yes, the post was
a troll, but it brought up an interesting point,

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limeade
Oh dear.

~~~
alex_c
Shhh... be very very quiet.

~~~
yters
Rant rant rant!! Rant.

~~~
randallsquared
It's sad that this got downmodded; seems funny to me. :)

(That is, if it really was "Rant rant rant!! Rant." when it was downmodded).

~~~
yters
Yeah, it was. I don't get it either. But it's just karma. Not like it's
important or anything.

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DanielBMarkham
Looking at these comments, I'd say you could get money for basically nothing
if you could get people to argue all day. Perhaps you should consider a career
in the radio talk-show business.

As enjoyable as getting money for just existing would be, imagine how much
more fun it would be to get money for doing something that you love and that
made a difference to other people.

