Ask whomever: who gives away free money?
28 comments
ID and science don't belong in the same sentence. I'm sure there are creationists out there who will be happy to fund someone with some kind of credentials (do you have some sort of degree in science? it seems unlikely, given your belief in a politically motivated hoax of epic proportions, that is wholly unbacked by science or reason, but if you're expecting someone to pay you for "science" I must presume you have some kind of scientific credentials).
But, frankly, if I had guidance to offer on how to raise money for research, I wouldn't. You're seeking to do harm, whether you know it or not. Any belief system that requires lies to defend it, is a belief system that does not deserve to be heard, and ID is built entirely on lies and misdirection. If you aren't aware of the distortions of truth behind ID, then you're certainly not equipped to call yourself a "scientist" in the field.
But, frankly, if I had guidance to offer on how to raise money for research, I wouldn't. You're seeking to do harm, whether you know it or not. Any belief system that requires lies to defend it, is a belief system that does not deserve to be heard, and ID is built entirely on lies and misdirection. If you aren't aware of the distortions of truth behind ID, then you're certainly not equipped to call yourself a "scientist" in the field.
I believe that ID gets unfairly maligned. As a scientific theory it is a basic statement about probabilities. Simply stated: the probability that life could have evolved to its current state by way of Darwinian evolution is so low as to be a nearly a mathematical impossibility. (Simply calculate the probability that each of the necessary factors for intelligent human life came to exist and multiply these numbers together. You arrive at an extremely small number, less even than 1 in 10^60.) This statement allows that the universe has an infinite time frame for such evolution to have occurred. ID also points out that recent astronomical findings date the universe to about 14 billion years old, thus significantly curtailing the theoretical maximum time allowable for that evolution to occur in. Now tell me, what makes that claim pseudo-scientific?
You are wrong. Study evolution before telling me it is astronomically improbable. This debate only ends up giving Intelligent Design mindshare that it does not deserve. I hope you haven't actually fallen for the tricks of the Insane Fundamentalists.
To everyone else: there is absolutely no need to entertain Intelligent Design trolls.
To everyone else: there is absolutely no need to entertain Intelligent Design trolls.
You're right that it's a stupid debate that doesn't belong here, but all the down-modding and vitriol smacks a little too much of a tyranny of the (correct) majority.
To the poster, you're not going to find any funders here, but there are probably some groups elsewhere interested in funding people to put together a case for ID. Your best bet is probably working through an evangelical school like Liberty University.
To the poster, you're not going to find any funders here, but there are probably some groups elsewhere interested in funding people to put together a case for ID. Your best bet is probably working through an evangelical school like Liberty University.
[deleted]
What makes that claim pseudo-science is that it demonstrates a total ignorance of probability and has been debunked many times.
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/08/big_numbers_bad_ant...
For one such example.
> I believe that ID gets unfairly maligned.
Yeah, those nasty mean judges.
Yeah, those nasty mean judges.
I object to your phrase "worthy individuals". Noone is worthy or unworthy - what they choose to do with their time and talents are either worthy or unworthy.
I am not an ABSOLUTE apologist for capitalism, but I will say that the vast majority of useful tasks have some money in them. Sure, in some places, it's hard to capture the value that you create, but in most areas of inquiry, you can capture the value you create.
Thus, 99% of the time, your expected pay out accurately reflects your expected contribution to society (yes, I am simplifying somewhat).
The wonderful thing about a free market is that it channels people's talents and labor into those areas that are ACTUALLY useful to other people.
I am not convinced that you noodling around, thinking about ID, is of much use at all to society (this is entirely orthogonal to my thoughts on ID - I am commenting specifically on your desire to noodle around). Your other wide-ranging interests also, without more detail, do not immediately sound like they are of much use to anyone.
Now, there may be ways to convert your desire to noodle around into something that is of worth to other people (which means that other people would be interested in paying you for it).
A lot of people look at business plans as an arcane exercise, especially because the plan itself is often deviated from quite quickly. In fact, business plans are tremendously useful as a self-discipling tool: they force you to confront not just what you want to do, but what value people might find in what you want to do, and they force you to tweak your plan until you deliver a noticeably amount of value to others.
Your problem here is that you are concentrating JUST on what you want to do. You have to spend some time thinking about how this creates value for others. Until you have done that, I do not believe that you would do anything useful with the money, if it were to be handed to you.
Funding an intellectual to stare at his navel for 5 years is of not use to anyone (and is barely of any use to the intellectual, who - if he is honest with himself - will look back on the 5 years as wasted, and without result).
Funding an intellectual to work on something that sounds useful, on the other hand, makes a lot of sense.
Bottom line: stop focusing on yourself, and focus on the value that you're going to create. Once you do that, you'll have a real plan that might be deserving of someone else's hard earned dollars (after all,if you don't want to work for The Man to earn the benjamins, why should someone else who has ALREADY worked for The Man give you his dough, which is to say, the crystalized value of his hours?)
I am not an ABSOLUTE apologist for capitalism, but I will say that the vast majority of useful tasks have some money in them. Sure, in some places, it's hard to capture the value that you create, but in most areas of inquiry, you can capture the value you create.
Thus, 99% of the time, your expected pay out accurately reflects your expected contribution to society (yes, I am simplifying somewhat).
The wonderful thing about a free market is that it channels people's talents and labor into those areas that are ACTUALLY useful to other people.
I am not convinced that you noodling around, thinking about ID, is of much use at all to society (this is entirely orthogonal to my thoughts on ID - I am commenting specifically on your desire to noodle around). Your other wide-ranging interests also, without more detail, do not immediately sound like they are of much use to anyone.
Now, there may be ways to convert your desire to noodle around into something that is of worth to other people (which means that other people would be interested in paying you for it).
A lot of people look at business plans as an arcane exercise, especially because the plan itself is often deviated from quite quickly. In fact, business plans are tremendously useful as a self-discipling tool: they force you to confront not just what you want to do, but what value people might find in what you want to do, and they force you to tweak your plan until you deliver a noticeably amount of value to others.
Your problem here is that you are concentrating JUST on what you want to do. You have to spend some time thinking about how this creates value for others. Until you have done that, I do not believe that you would do anything useful with the money, if it were to be handed to you.
Funding an intellectual to stare at his navel for 5 years is of not use to anyone (and is barely of any use to the intellectual, who - if he is honest with himself - will look back on the 5 years as wasted, and without result).
Funding an intellectual to work on something that sounds useful, on the other hand, makes a lot of sense.
Bottom line: stop focusing on yourself, and focus on the value that you're going to create. Once you do that, you'll have a real plan that might be deserving of someone else's hard earned dollars (after all,if you don't want to work for The Man to earn the benjamins, why should someone else who has ALREADY worked for The Man give you his dough, which is to say, the crystalized value of his hours?)
[deleted]
I guess you should ask an ID lobby group. They probably spend significant money on marketing.
<<I'm very interested in ID and figuring out what God is up to. ID based science will be the next revolution.>>
If you believe in God, then doesn't 'figuring out what God is up to' simply mean 'science.' In that case, what does it mean for science to to be 'ID based' ? That your research pursuits are guided by the bible? If so, why don't you just go work in a lab somewhere?
If you believe in God, then doesn't 'figuring out what God is up to' simply mean 'science.' In that case, what does it mean for science to to be 'ID based' ? That your research pursuits are guided by the bible? If so, why don't you just go work in a lab somewhere?
If intelligent design was true there would already be a scientific revolution. The science just isn't their. If you want "truth" focus on the philosophical ideas.Get right wing fundamentalists that want to evangelize religion rather than finding actual scientific truth to fund you if you want to research id. If you want to research the early universe study astronomy or astrophysics.
Careful now, such a pronouncement is unscientific. After all, how long did it take for Copernicus's view of things to go from ridiculous to revolutionary?
As long as it took to demonstrate supporting evidence - more precisely, to verify a prediction made by the Copernican model. Have at it.
(ObFrTed: Down with this sort of thing.)
(ObFrTed: Down with this sort of thing.)
I wouldn't just be focussed on ID, I have wide ranging interests. That's why I was wondering if anyone would just generically fund me to do whatever.
Regardless of my interests, isn't this something you'd want? Why go through all the effort of a start up if there's a quicker way to get independence?
Regardless of my interests, isn't this something you'd want? Why go through all the effort of a start up if there's a quicker way to get independence?
Your troll about ID killed your thread before it got started. I would encourage you to wait a week and try again without referencing something that offends the vast majority of this board.
--- If there is one thing I think should be censored here it is the intelligent design debate. The entire movement is one big troll that feeds off of its own debate. Let's start marking it dead on arrival.
--- If there is one thing I think should be censored here it is the intelligent design debate. The entire movement is one big troll that feeds off of its own debate. Let's start marking it dead on arrival.
Ok, noted. I agree the ID debate, and like flame wars, should be censored. I value this community and don't want to bring it down. I wasn't quite sure everyone would automatically censor me for the idea, so I was testing the water.
I think mentioning controversial subjects should be alright, like if someone wanted to know what I would pursue if given the means, but debates about them should be done offline.
I think mentioning controversial subjects should be alright, like if someone wanted to know what I would pursue if given the means, but debates about them should be done offline.
Your parents might.
If it's my money, why isn't what you're proposing to spend it on relevant?
It's not about you.
If it's my money, why isn't what you're proposing to spend it on relevant?
It's not about you.
Kinda, though I know if I had alot of money, it would be kind of cool to fund people who are passionate about something to just go do their thing and see what happens. I figure creative work prospers best when a person isn't tied down to some specific problem space. This is where most of our great scientific revolutions seem to have come from. This was true for the Greeks too, who built so many of our intellectual foundations.
Perhaps, then, you should be applying to churches for funding? They have interests in common with you - in both "figuring out what God is up to" and the "wanting something for nothing".
Come to think of it, those ideas might themselves be directly related.
Come to think of it, those ideas might themselves be directly related.
It's a wonderful thing called a "scholarship."
I've been thinking about these comments and would like to add one more thing:
Perhaps the debate about ID, abortion, pigs swimming with sheep, etc should be taken somewhere else. That makes sense to me. It's not relevant to the purpose as I understand it of the board and we're never all going to agree. But the business ideas that spring from controversial ideas should absolutely be part of a startup board, in my opinion.
So aside from the joke I made, in all seriousness, the question is: what kinds of business opportunities are there that relate to your interests? It would seem to me that the more controversial your interests, the tighter the market niche you are going to find. Perhaps bear polishers are a tight-knit group and have been looking for a social portal website. Perhaps cigarette smokers who like the Three Stooges are underrepresented in the market.
Let's face it: a lot of web applications have a big marketing/popularity aspect to them. Anybody who feels passionately about any topic should ask themselves how many other people feel the same way, and is there some service that could be offered to them that would help them out. That's what it's all about, right? So yes, I'd be very interested in talking about some issue I might have problems with in terms of what the business opportunities were.
Now there's a moral component: you don't want to support cigarette smokers, you don't want to help IDers, etc. I can respect that. Personally, I think it's awful to devise something to help out Islamic Fundamentalists. I could not do or support anything like that because I feel it hurts other people directly (as in kaboom, not as in it makes their mind mush). So on those topics, perhaps it is best to self-censor in order to allow the business conversation to continue, at least as much as possible. And yes, the post was a troll, but it brought up an interesting point,
Perhaps the debate about ID, abortion, pigs swimming with sheep, etc should be taken somewhere else. That makes sense to me. It's not relevant to the purpose as I understand it of the board and we're never all going to agree. But the business ideas that spring from controversial ideas should absolutely be part of a startup board, in my opinion.
So aside from the joke I made, in all seriousness, the question is: what kinds of business opportunities are there that relate to your interests? It would seem to me that the more controversial your interests, the tighter the market niche you are going to find. Perhaps bear polishers are a tight-knit group and have been looking for a social portal website. Perhaps cigarette smokers who like the Three Stooges are underrepresented in the market.
Let's face it: a lot of web applications have a big marketing/popularity aspect to them. Anybody who feels passionately about any topic should ask themselves how many other people feel the same way, and is there some service that could be offered to them that would help them out. That's what it's all about, right? So yes, I'd be very interested in talking about some issue I might have problems with in terms of what the business opportunities were.
Now there's a moral component: you don't want to support cigarette smokers, you don't want to help IDers, etc. I can respect that. Personally, I think it's awful to devise something to help out Islamic Fundamentalists. I could not do or support anything like that because I feel it hurts other people directly (as in kaboom, not as in it makes their mind mush). So on those topics, perhaps it is best to self-censor in order to allow the business conversation to continue, at least as much as possible. And yes, the post was a troll, but it brought up an interesting point,
Oh dear.
Shhh... be very very quiet.
Rant rant rant!! Rant.
It's sad that this got downmodded; seems funny to me. :)
(That is, if it really was "Rant rant rant!! Rant." when it was downmodded).
(That is, if it really was "Rant rant rant!! Rant." when it was downmodded).
Yeah, it was. I don't get it either. But it's just karma. Not like it's important or anything.
Looking at these comments, I'd say you could get money for basically nothing if you could get people to argue all day. Perhaps you should consider a career in the radio talk-show business.
As enjoyable as getting money for just existing would be, imagine how much more fun it would be to get money for doing something that you love and that made a difference to other people.
As enjoyable as getting money for just existing would be, imagine how much more fun it would be to get money for doing something that you love and that made a difference to other people.
As for my pursuit - I'm very interested in ID and figuring out what God is up to. ID based science will be the next revolution.