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by nlosti 2128 days ago
The second question is leaving a lot to be desired. Which individuals? What if they're part of an organisation? What is the actual research they are trying to fund? What could they gain from the research? What do you mean by 'should society ban'?

I could go on... These are important qualifiers. There is an imbalance of power when it comes to people like Epstein and you need to be careful how this imbalance affects science. If your wealth/person ratio is immensely high i'd start to raise eyebrows.
1 comments
JamesBarney 2128 days ago
> Which individuals? What if they're part of an organisation? What is the actual research they are trying to fund? What could they gain from the research?

Legally, I think any individual should be able to write any other individual a check so that the second individual can afford to study any subject. I assume institutions will have more restrictions to maintain scientific credibility.

> What do you mean by 'should society ban'?

This doesn't seem confusing to me. Banning means to legally restrict. With an onerous example being "Only the government can fund research, private contributions to any organization that performs research is banned". Maybe you could elucidate which part of that was unclear.

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nlosti 2128 days ago
I just think agreeing to let any individual in all cases, legally, be able to give money to another individual for research, is maybe jumping the gun a bit. Ok perhaps you don't agree with my idea of wealth inequality, fair enough, but if for example you are trying to fund WMD research, or research into pseudoscience, or research that is inherently biased, I would actually like to see that banned I'm afraid. Other workarounds maybe include banning the research area itself, or banning newspapers from publishing it, whatever.
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JamesBarney 2128 days ago
Yeah it seems like we have two very different views of what government should do, you want to live in a society where what you can spend your money on is heavily restricted, the government has strong powers to restrict what newspapers can publish, and the government decides what types of science are approved, biased, and pseudoscience.

That government seems closer to something like China, where I prefer a less authoritarian government where individuals have more control over what they can say, and spend money on. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

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