[munin]

> How do you make sure that the academe that is selling their project as 'basic research' isn't just pulling a fast one on you and sucking your funds to tickle their intellectual jollies?

what's the difference? would you want to fund a Feynman to tickle his intellectual jollies?

[dnautics]

yes. But I would not want someone to force me to fund Feynman to tickle his intellectual jollies. Moreover, your example has survivorship bias. There are plenty of completely rediculous people you probably would'nt want to fund. For me, one such person is Thomas Cavalier-Smith.

[sanderjd]

Am I supposed to know why you have a problem with Thomas Cavalier-Smith, or is that just a non-sequitur?

[dnautics]

no, just that I have a problem with him. But if you are curious: so much wasted effort. I am not a fan of siloing sciences, but TCS puts into stark perspective Rutherford's epithet "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" - and what TCS has done is stamp collecting at its worst. Over, and over again.

[auctiontheory]

Physics, physics ... isn't that just a branch of applied math?

[wolfgke]

A good friend of me said: anything that is science is just a special case of either mathematics or physics (and anything that does not satisfy this criterion is bullshit or rambling on and on; but surely not science).