[beloch]

Think about what these uber-rich entrepreneurs would find sexy. Curing cancer, a condom people actually want to use, extending human life, saving the world from meteor impacts, bringing mammoths back, flying to space... It's all near-future, commercializable stuff. Next, go read some article titles/abstracts under quant-ph on arxiv and think about how many would of those would really grab these rich dudes by their eyeballs and make them drop a few million.

A huge portion of physics is driven by basic curiosity, has no commercial applications in the near future, and is so esoteric that even other physicists have to work very hard just to understand what's going on. Much of this stuff will wind up being dead-ends, but some of it is the foundation the future will be built on top of. No trained physicist currently alive can predict what will change the world and what won't. Why should we let people whose only qualification is money try to decide what's important?

[DaniFong]

If so, what say you to the Fundamental Physics Prize -- funded by Yuri Milner?

https://fundamentalphysicsprize.org/

Or the Nobel Prize before that, funded based on inventions in explosives (used for mining, construction, and armament), and to a lesser extent through Alfred's father's and brothers innovations in plywood, the torpedo, oil refining and international finance / business.

[vixen99]

'Why should we let people whose only qualification is money try to decide what's important?'. Let! Gosh, lovely implications. What constraints do you have in mind to fetter the lawful activities of very rich people? Who is the 'we' and how will you define 'important'? But it's the 'let' that worries me.

[beloch]

What constraints? Adequate public funding for fundamental science so that brilliant minds and productive labs can pursue their chosen field of inquiry rather than abandoning it to chase grant money reserved for sexier topics.