Is Free Speech Under Attack in this Country?

[nsacpi]

So your theory is they could not have developed an app or web platform without college ?

I am open-minded should you be able to produce any evidence of similar entrepreneurial activity by HS grads. There are some famous college dropouts who have done ok. Gates and Jobs. Elon dropped out of a PhD program to go on to bigger and better thangs. Morris Chang says that failing his PhD qualifying exams was the best thang that ever happened to him. Maybe Joe the plumber did something similar. Not that I mean to denigrate plumbers. It is an honest profession.

 

[Tapate50]

I am open-minded should you be able to produce any evidence of similar entrepreneurial activity by HS grads. There are some famous college dropouts who have done ok. Gates and Jobs. Elon dropped out of a PhD program to go on to bigger and better thangs. Morris Chang says that failing his PhD qualifying exams was the best thang that ever happened to him. Maybe Joe the plumber did something similar. Not that I mean to denigrate plumbers. It is an honest profession.

You would can take coding classes on your own and go forward. The app content which would be sourced from your own creativity, would not be honed from college either but lived experience.

 

[Tapate50]

I am open-minded should you be able to produce any evidence of similar entrepreneurial activity by HS grads. There are some famous college dropouts who have done ok. Gates and Jobs. Elon dropped out of a PhD program to go on to bigger and better thangs. Morris Chang says that failing his PhD qualifying exams was the best thang that ever happened to him. Maybe Joe the plumber did something similar. Not that I mean to denigrate plumbers. It is an honest profession.

Plumbers are useful. They are also pulling in pretty good $ these days

I’m not sure you can make the same arguement for a professor

If the world didn’t have one or the other - the which one would people need more ?

 

[nsacpi]

are there academics who have founded successful businesses

ChatGPT said:​

Yes — quite a few academics have successfully founded businesses, sometimes becoming as well known for their entrepreneurial work as for their scholarship. A few notable examples across different fields:

Technology & Computer Science

• Sergey Brin & Larry Page – PhD students at Stanford working under computer science professors when they founded Google.
• David Cheriton (Stanford) – Computer science professor, early investor in Google, co-founded companies like Arista Networks.
• Sebastian Thrun (Stanford) – Professor of computer science and robotics, co-founded Udacity (online education) and worked on Google X.
• Andrew Ng (Stanford) – Associate professor in AI, co-founded Google Brain and Coursera.

Biotechnology & Medicine

• Robert Langer (MIT) – Chemical engineering professor, co-founded dozens of biotech firms including Moderna (mRNA vaccines).
• Jennifer Doudna (UC Berkeley) – Biochemist and CRISPR pioneer, co-founded multiple gene-editing companies (Caribou Biosciences, Editas, Intellia).
• George Church (Harvard/MIT) – Geneticist, co-founded numerous biotech startups (Veritas Genetics, Editas, Colossal Biosciences).

Economics & Business

• Muhammad Yunus (Chittagong University) – Economics professor, founded Grameen Bank (microfinance, Nobel Peace Prize).
• James Mwangi & colleagues – Academics in Kenya played a key role in developing M-Pesa, the world’s most successful mobile money platform.

Physics & Engineering

• Federico Faggin (though more an engineer than academic) – Worked at Fairchild and Intel, later helped develop the microprocessor and co-founded companies.
• Elon Musk’s professors – While Musk himself wasn’t a professor, academics like John Hennessy (Stanford, later co-founder of MIPS and ARM leadership) show the cross-flow between academia and entrepreneurship.

 

[nsacpi]

how about academics in economics and finance

ChatGPT said:​

Yes — there are several prominent cases of academics in economics and finance founding or co-founding successful businesses. The pattern here tends to be fintech, asset management, and data/analytics companies. A few notable examples:

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Economics / Finance Professors as Founders​

Asset Management & Trading

• Robert Merton (MIT, Harvard) – Nobel laureate in economics. Co-founded Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), which was initially highly successful before collapsing spectacularly in 1998. Still a classic case of academic finance moving into practice.
• Myron Scholes (Stanford) – Another Nobel laureate and Black-Scholes model co-author. Also co-founded LTCM.
• Fischer Black (MIT, later Goldman Sachs) – While not a startup founder, his Black-Scholes work directly underpinned modern derivatives markets and firms.

Fintech / Data Analytics

• Andrew Lo (MIT Sloan) – Professor of finance. Co-founded AlphaSimplex Group, a quantitative investment management company.
• Richard Sandor (University of California, Berkeley) – Taught economics, known as the “father of financial futures.” Later founded Chicago Climate Exchange, pioneering carbon trading.
• Jonathan Berk (Stanford GSB) – Co-founded AQR Capital Management? (Actually no—AQR was by Cliff Asness, who was a PhD student at Chicago under Eugene Fama.)

Bridge Between Academia & Hedge Funds

• Cliff Asness (PhD, University of Chicago, student of Eugene Fama) – Co-founded AQR Capital Management, one of the world’s largest quant hedge funds. He’s not a professor himself, but directly out of academic finance research.
• Emanuel Derman (Columbia University, Physics PhD, later finance academic) – Helped found the discipline of quantitative finance at Goldman Sachs, later moved to academia.

Entrepreneurship in Development & Applied Economics

• Muhammad Yunus (Chittagong University, economics professor) – Founded Grameen Bank (microfinance), which transformed access to credit in developing countries. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Hernando de Soto (Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Lima) – Economist whose research into property rights led to building institutions that influenced financial infrastructure in emerging markets.

 

[nsacpi]

why didn't you mention David E Shaw

ChatGPT said:​

Excellent point — David E. Shaw is a great example of an academic who became an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, but I didn’t bring him up in response to your liberal arts question because his background is actually in computer science and applied mathematics, not the humanities.

Here’s how he fits into the picture:

• David E. Shaw – Taught computer science at Columbia University in the 1980s. He left academia to found D.E. Shaw & Co., a pioneering quantitative hedge fund. His firm is now one of the most profitable investment companies in history, and he personally became a billionaire.
• His trajectory is often cited as the classic crossover: deep theoretical expertise → algorithmic trading → large-scale entrepreneurship.

So:

• If we’re talking academics-turned-entrepreneurs in finance/tech, Shaw is one of the biggest names of all.
• If we’re focusing on the liberal arts specifically (philosophy, history, literature, classics, etc.), Shaw doesn’t quite fit — though it raises an interesting point that “academic entrepreneurship” is far more common in STEM and finance than in the humanities.

 

[nsacpi]

what about Demis Hassabis

ChatGPT said:​

Demis Hassabis is another huge name in the “academic-to-entrepreneur” story, though, like David E. Shaw, his roots are in science and technology rather than the liberal arts.

Here’s a quick sketch of his path:

• Academic background:
  
  • Child chess prodigy and game designer before academia.
  • PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from University College London (after earlier work in computer science and AI).
  • Did postdoctoral work at UCL and MIT in neuroscience, studying memory and imagination.
• Entrepreneurial leap:
  
  • Co-founded DeepMind in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.
  • DeepMind became one of the most important AI research labs in the world.
  • Acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported £400 million (~$600 million).
  • DeepMind’s breakthroughs include AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and AlphaZero, which fundamentally changed multiple scientific fields.
• Position today:
  
  • CEO of DeepMind (now Google DeepMind after the 2023 merger with Google Brain).
  • Widely considered one of the most important science entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
  • Balances leadership with publishing high-impact science (Nature, Science, etc.).

Why he matters in this context:
Hassabis shows how someone with academic training in a cognitive/neuroscience domain can successfully build a commercial research powerhouse — blending the ethos of a university lab with the resources of big tech. In many ways, he’s comparable to Robert Langer (MIT biotech → Moderna, dozens of startups) or David Shaw (academia → quant finance), but in AI/neuroscience.

 

[Jaw]

You people really need to learn how reddit works.

I’ve been on the site a minimum of several times per week for years so I’m familiar. I go to look in on a couple of the subreddits that are relevant to some hobbies. I land on a home page of popularly upvoted posts primarily consisting of far left propaganda and calling anything right of Marx, Hitler.

It’s your basic far left Sheeple echo chamber. Not much to figure out.

 

[zitothebrave]

Y

I’ve been on the site a minimum of several times per week for years so I’m familiar. I go to look in on a couple of the subreddits that are relevant to some hobbies. I land on a home page of popularly upvoted posts primarily consisting of far left propaganda and calling anything right of Marx, Hitler.

It’s your basic far left Sheeple echo chamber. Not much to figure out.

You see how reddit works is things you comment and interact on are pushed to your homepage. If you stick to that you mainly see things you like. So I see lots of posts about beer, Star Wars, DND, barbeque, NFL, NFL Memes, Baseball, etc. the only general politics I get dragged into is /r/nottheonion, and the general like Pics subreddit.