[boxed]

Your logic assumes only one such person. The problem is that there are tens of thousands of similar people with, let's be super kind, unlikely ideas. If you hire them all that's not a hedge that's a huge cost with an almost 0% probability of payoff.

I'd bet the number of such people with unreasonable ideas will go drastically up if you start hiring them too.

[motohagiography]

The analog I'm thinking of is that space propulsion could turn out to be as much of a sandbox as cybersecurity and crytpo have been, where there was always a ceiling above which everyone just agreed to not look. I'm being super charitable about Lazar, but having been in the security field both pre- and post- Snowden, Lazar is more like a Binnie or Drake figure, with the full extent of the issue still further off in the future. What good technologists suspected about crypto and saw little edges of, vs. what ultimately came out implies companies like those mentioned above would need to have done some deeper arguments and analysis beyond blowing him off as just a kook. Musk's opinion on Lazar would be interesting for its own sake.

However, this is also like saying you have to rule out every "free energy" conspiracy before starting a battery company as well, so it's not really that much of a forcing function at all.