A commenter points us to this juicy story:
John Glenn, huh? I had no idea. I guess it makes sense, though: after the whole astronaut thing ended, dude basically spend the last few decades of his life hanging out with rich people.
Following the link:
Two tiers will be available: the gold collectible, which is unique and grants the buyer the right to co-host the calls with Pinker, will be priced at $50,000; the standard collectibles, which are limited to 30 items and grant the buyers the right to access those video calls and ask questions to Pinker at the end, will be priced at 0.2 Ethereum (~$300).
Here’s the thing. Pinker’s selling collectibles of his idea, “Free speech is fundamental.” But we know from some very solid research that scientific citations are worth $100,000 each.
So does that mean that Pinker’s famous idea that “Free speech is fundamental” is only worth, at best, 0.5 citations? That doesn’t seem fair at all. Pinker’s being seriously ripped off here.
On the other hand, he could also sell collectibles for some of his other ideas, such as, “Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence?”, “Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy and morally driven?”, “Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men?”, or, my personal favorite, “Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children?” 50 thousand here, 50 thousand there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
All joking aside, I don’t see anything wrong with Pinker doing this. The NFT is a silly gimmick, sure, but what he’s really doing is coming up with a clever way to raise money for his research projects. If I had a way to get $50,000 donations, I’d do it too. It’s hard to believe that anyone buying the “NFT” is thinking that they’re getting their hands on a valuable, appreciating asset. It’s just a way for them to support Pinker’s professional work. One reason this topic interests me is that we’re always on the lookout for new sources of research funds. (We’ve talked about putting ads on the blog, but it seems like the amount of $ we’d end up getting for it would be not worth all the hassle involved in having ads.) As is often the case with humor, we laugh because we care.
And why is particular story this so funny? Maybe because it seems so time-bound, kind of as if someone were selling custom disco balls in the 1970s, or something like that. And he’s doing it with such a straight face (“* * * NOW LIVE . . . My first digital collectible . . .”)! If you’re gonna do it at all, you go all in, I guess.
P.S. Following the links on the above twitter feed led me to this website of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, whose slogan is, “Separating Sense from Nonsense.” How cool is that?
What a great idea! I wonder how they fund it. They should have similar offices at Ohio State, Cornell, Harvard (also here), the University of California, Columbia, etc etc etc.
A bit confused about the middle of this post. Some guy tweets “Just minted my first Pinker NFT” and then posts a picture of some form signed by David Rogers. Kind of low-res, but if I zoom in, it has something to do with aircraft. And then Andrew says “John Glenn”. Huh? I guess John Glenn was a test pilot when he wasn’t an astronaut? I lost the thread there.
Adede:
It was from the linked twitter thread. I happened to notice John Glenn’s name listed on flight 887 of that log.
OK, I see John Glenn’s name there. I don’t see Pinker’s. Kind of confused as to why someone would post a picture of a random flight log as a “Pinker NFT”. I feel like there’s a joke I’m not getting.
I was also puzzled by this. Apparently Pinker also flew on Epstein’s jet. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets-parties-and-eugenics-jeffrey-epsteins-bizarre-world-of-scientists
Presumably the tweeter couldn’t be bothered digging up the right flight log.
Thomas:
I followed the link, and . . . Larry Bird, too! I had no idea. Is he endorsing NFT’s also?
> It’s hard to believe that anyone buying the “NFT” is thinking that they’re getting their hands on a valuable, appreciating asset.
Sure, overall, NFTs have a scammy feel to them and a lot of people have been scammed but yeah, it does seem likely that not many Pinker NFT buyers are going to get scammed.
What I find particularly funny about this is the description where “Free Speech is fundamental” is his idea.
I always thought that he’s the one who realized that Water is Wet.
I think you should go with your idea that “Statistics is Hard” for yuur NFTs.
PhD MD DDS OBE MBA?
WTF? OMG!
HPE
>What a great idea! I wonder how they fund it.
Well no cash flowing from the Dowsing industry.
Jd:
That smooth, smooth dowsing cash will flow to you, if you only know where to pump.
…according to the article a Canadian city and 10 UK water companies….and the German government. What an elaborate experiment for something so far fetched.
Jd:
As a sociological and economic phenomenon, dowsing is definitely a real thing. People are willing to pay for it!
Andrew’s reply regarding “real thing” is so deep in the reply chain that I cannot respond directly to it. However, this is my attempt to do so.
I once knew a man who hired a dowser to locate a well on his farm. His wife objected. He replied that “He has lots of successes.”
She then said “You don’t believe that dowsing really works do you?”
He replied “Yes and no. I think he uses his observations of vegetation and surface geology to identify locations to drill. I think he uses dowsing to avoid disclosing his methods. It’s a combination of trade secrets and plausible denial .”
Dowsing can be a real thing—just not a method of finding good spots to drill.
He was a farmer who, when discussing what to plant next spring, used expressions like “Demand for potatoes is very inelastic.”
Bob76
Whenever I see “thought leader” I mentally substitute “though troller”