i make more money trading options and have way more fun! in a way - it is "real" science in a way whereas the modern Life Science Industrial Complex is anything but that.

But what I garner is that AI/robotics led wet lab work is in progress. And hacking the AI running the wet lab to make a virus is definitely plausible as that seems to be one of the directions we’re going in the AI+biopharma space

every few weeks though i test claude and chatgpt on their scientific reasoning and it has definitely improved over time. in my experience without specific instruction on what is known/unknown they typically are lagging behind the leading edge of the field (dev bio/pluripotency in my case). probably because scientific research articles are not open-source so they can't crawl them.

claude has definitely outperformed chatgpt in this regard however, it's scientific reasoning is impressive.

science as an apparatus often works on timescales that are decades, not 4 year political cycles. so rapid pendulum swings are particularly dangerous to the pursuit of science as a whole. you could just as easily describe a scenario where the pendulum has swung left instead of right and a bunch of right-leaning research gets cut and people lose their jobs, we lose progress etc.

these days i'm pretty in favor of a system where funding is guaranteed and investigators are allowed absolute academic freedom. think something along the lines of each principle investigator gets $Xmillion to study their research topic in perpetuity without fear of reprisals or sudden funding cuts.

i naively think this would solve a LOT of the issues in academia currently, which already in the absence of the recent Trump shake-ups has devolved into a metric chasing, paper-mill, grant funding behemoth whose sole purpose is to churn out papers of dubious quality, game metrics, and bring in research funding to the university. the modern professor's job is not to advance our understanding of the natural world, but to generate positive KPIs and bring in as much revenue as possible to the university in the form of overhead costs (66% of all the federal funding we bring in at my institution goes directly to the school). it's a business, and that's not what basic science research is supposed to be in my opinion.

you can do this, you just need to find a chump who is willing to spend the money.

Second of all, winner-take-all presidential mechanics don’t imply a four-year cycle of funding instability for research. That only happens if the president has sufficient control of funding. Which, through the administrative state (which is supposed to basically be a delegate of congressional authority), really is supposed to be insulated in large part from presidential, partisan politics. With increased centralization of power in the president (which, imo, is largely just an ~evolutionary response to Congress’ sclerosis), this insulation is lost, exposing research more to the four-year cycle of heavily partisan presidential politics.

Meanwhile the Alz and Neuro field as a whole are well established, and the amyloid hypothesis was a foundational theory taken as a fact. Any initial questioning of this and they would brand you as a lunatic.

naive question: why has no one made an app with the reverse incentive structure? i understand that the current business model is much more lucrative...but i feel like with how fed up people are with the inability of modern online dating to provide quality, long-lasting relationships a new platform that optimizes for match quality and longevity would eat all of Match Groups offerings lunches. i guess there just isn't enough money to be made so it's not even worth it?

You've identified the problem but failed to adequately describe a solution.

The matchmakers need to make money, even to just pay for the costs of running the service.

A monthly subscription to use the service creates the perverse incentive to give bad matches. A one-time fee makes unsuccessful users feel cheated out of their money. A "pay us once you get married" option is ripe for abuse.

Even if the service is free and paid for by selling ads, you'd run into the same problem of the subscription model: They'd be incentivized to keep you perpetually single so you see more ads.

Now when I meet somebody through the service, and we think it's serious, we can release that money. And we can check whether the other did too!

Sure there will still be profiles with people that don't pledge, because they're just testing the waters, or poor, or scammers. Whatever. Point is I can send a signal that at some point I want to be done with the service, and then pay them for that.

If you get married, there should be a "what app did you meet on" question on the marriage application. Apps should get $10/month for each relationship they create, for as long as the partners live or until they get divorced.

This would encourage app makers to "get rid" of their users as fast as possible, getting them into successful, long-term relationships, instead of keeping them on the apps for as long as possible to milk subscription revenue.

Considering the fertility crisis that most western countries are facing, this is overwhelmingly likely to be long-term revenue-positive for governments.

1. Network effects. An app isn't like a new local business where people will naturally wander in. They may already exist but the market's captured everyone on the skinner box services

2. App stores. The deeper you look into the things needed to advertise as a mobile app, the more obvious it becomes. You need milliions up front just to be featured in your critical launch time. If you don't, you fall into #1 and it's hard to recover from the "it's so empty" early impressions.

3. As you said, any success despite #1 and #2 is destined to fail. ad won't make that money up, so the only viable idea is relying on a premium or subscription model. But paid models in the era of "free" mobile apps is a hard sell unless you can guarantee success. And dating is anything but guaranteed.

That said other models have been tried to correct the issues with the big apps. Limiting matches, reversing the gender dynamics, based around special interests, etc. The only one I think I saw any kind of success from is one tailored towards rich/famous people meeting other rich/famous people (surprise, surprise).

They used to have a sister site. They had these kind of hilarious animated ads that made the whole thing seem so logical. One ad targeted at women and the other at men, both claiming that money meant you only got serious requests. I wish I could find those ads, they were classic.

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Found one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFo-da_2rdI

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Found the other: https://vimeo.com/21179683

top on my list of things to do if i were a billionaire: launch an institute for the sole purpose of reproducing other's findings.

firstly, there are basically no legal repercussions for scientific misconduct (e.g. falsifying data, fake images, etc.). most individuals who are caught doing this get either 1) a slap on the wrist if they are too big to fail or in the employ of those who are too big to fail or 2) disbarred, banned, and lose their jobs. i don't see why you can go to jail for lying to investors about the number of users in your app but don't go to jail for lying to the public, government, and members of the scientific community about your results.

secondly, due to the over production of PhD's and limited number of professorship slots competition has become so incredibly intense that in order to even be considered for these jobs you must have Nature, Cell, and Science papers (or the field equivalent). for those desperate for the job their academic career is over either way if they caught falsifying data or if they don't get the professorship. so if your project is not going the way you want it to then...

sad state of things all around. i've personally witnessed enough misconduct that i have made the decision to leave the field entirely and go do something else.