I remember having a conversation with Peter Thiel at the Singularity Summit in 2009 where he expressed a pretty strong opinion that humanity seriously pursuing advances in theoretical Physics was a momentous waste of brain power. At the time I was a relatively recent Physics graduate, I wasn't too pleased to hear that. I wonder if his opinion on this has changed at all.
Anyway, nice to have you here Eliezer ... like the commenter below, I'm a massive Methods of Rationality fan too :).
Yeah, Peter Thiel also thinks college is a waste of time, because you could be working at making a bunch of money instead.
The fact of the matter is, without the continuous research and application of this type of "momentous waste of brain power", we wouldn't have the accessible and affordable technology to enable his wealth and position where people think they should give a shit what he thinks about science.
Peter Thiel doesn't think Einstein was wasting his time, and isn't expressing disapprobation of physics or science; he's expressing disapprobation of modern physics-academia, and the presumption that the thing to do with your genius is obviously string theory.
Well, maybe what would be easier is to waste massive amounts of brain power in building computers that can solve the most complicated issues in theoretical physics
But of course, for theoretical physics to advance, experimental physics has to advance as well...
With all that brainpower they could almost certainly crack the Facebook monetization problem, because all that data has got to be worth something. Theoretical Physics? Well that will never break him into the 11 figures no matter how many bosons they discover.
Anyway, nice to have you here Eliezer ... like the commenter below, I'm a massive Methods of Rationality fan too :).