“There certainly are diminishing returns to going into science or going into academia generally. Maybe this is why so much of it feels like a sociopathic, Malthusian kind of an institution, because you have to throw more and more and more at something to get the same returns. And at some point, people give up and the thing collapses.”

Isn’t this the nature of any growth curve? The farther you get into it the more you have to spend for a similar gain?

One of the things I don’t like about Thiel, and all the folks in this space, and maybe this is what being a world-changing VC is, is it feels like their all looking for a cheat code instead of addressing the problem head on.

And looking for revolutions and leverage are important, but why not find an alternative “Harvard” that works the way he wants.

In a certain way, it sounds like he’s saying a combination of “the worlds broken and only I can fix it” or “the worlds broken, and it’s everyone else’s fault but mine.

And - I’m all for disruption by being a leader to show people how to do it better, but incremental gains through traditional research are working to solve some kinda of problems, why disrupt that destructively rather than creatively?

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44390263

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44390263