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> What are good investments?

Open-ended research grants to anyone with moderate training in experimental science to just throw shit against the wall and try every last possible combination of something, without concern for 'publish or perish' or jockeying for status in academia. Lets get our smartest and most dedicated technical people back in labs rather than off making CRUD apps for 10x academic wages.

If this discovery is true, we just got lucky. Based on the story we know of LK-99 it almost didn't happen, and our current system is not set up to make these kinds of discoveries quickly. Throwing billions at 'just go find stuff that matters' basic research is ultra cheap in comparison to humanity not having a high-tc superconductor.



This has been argued by David Deutsch for a long time and I'm glad to see it being replicated here. People should be free to pursue problems that interest them without fear of not returning results that are not deemed "favourable" to the institution. This will help speed up the creation of new "good explanations" which leads to new knowledge.


I would imagine a lot of discoveries in chemistry that humanity has made were _lucky_ over the course of history.




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