[visarga]

That's exactly my point - following the gradient of money you won't get to the global optimum because it's just a short sighted signal. You need to invest into crazy ideas to get anywhere. Unknown unknowns don't get discovered in a systematic way and are not profitable step by step.

If your name is Christopher Columbus and it's 1492, your project gets rejected for being implausible, what do you do?

[nytgop77]

Pitch it to different investors. His own country Italy did not fund him, so he pitched it to Spain.