Interesting that the two examples are Satoshi and Jordan Peterson. When I see "moon shot" I typically think of space elevators and such. Perhaps this is a truly unique type of fund but at first glance, I have a hard time seeing the similarity of these two folks other than having initially fringe ideas.
Peterson in interviews even says he is smarter than every interviewer (I've listened to a few of them). He just comes across as pretty conceited. Everyone has their areas of expertise, but the claim that you don't know anything but 'they' do comes across like a certain world leader.
> Peterson in interviews even says he is smarter than every interviewer (I've listened to a few of them)
I've never heard him say this. Can you direct me to one such interview? I'm not a huge Peterson fanboy, but neither do I think the man is the demon-being that he's sometimes portrayed as by many in the media.
One of the biggest problems Peterson seems to have, that stirs up his opponents the most, is their propensity to misquote or completely fabricate things that he has said or done.
I have seen quite a few of his interviews and never heard him say that he is smarter than the interviewer. So I think some citations are needed here.
The cult of innovation asserts that these new "technologies" are good simply because they are new and provocative and especially impractical. Adherents to the cult aren't really interested in changing the world -- a deeply banal affair and extremely political affair -- it's just the opposite, it's all about peddling the fantasy of change, the drama of change, without much work and zero sacrifice. The delicious irony here is that the real moon shot wasn't the story of a bunch of plucky Randian individualists fighting against the unthinking herd of socialists, rather it was the story of massively expensive, highly bureaucratic, and extremely risky government investment that didn't pay off for nearly a decade. This is of course exact kind of real change-the-world innovation that libertarians like Cowen absolutely hate.
