Quote · Moonshots with Peter Diamandis
Michael Kratsios on the New Golden Age of American Science | EP #276
Where this was said
Golden Tickets: Making Scientific Risk-Taking Fundable Again
At 41:20 · chapter starts 40:00
The most creative mechanism in the Golden Age Report is the golden ticket: on any merit review panel, each member is given 1–3 golden tickets allowing them to unilaterally fund any proposal, independent of what the rest of the committee thinks. [1] — Michael Kratsios "Each reviewer on a grant panel gets 1–3 golden tickets, allowing them to unilaterally fund a proposal regardless of what the rest of the co…" 39:50 The insight is elegant — the current system systematically defunds the most original ideas because they require unanimous or near-unanimous consensus across a committee of specialists who are personally incentivized to protect the status quo. A golden ticket creates two virtuous loops: applicants with genuinely bold ideas now have a credible path to funding (one true believer is enough), and better people are incentivized to join review panels precisely because they get to exercise independent judgment. Peter shares a Harvard professor's experience of being penalized in reviews for being too successful — a perfect illustration of how the current system punishes excellence. The peer review process, both agree, is 'extraordinarily broken.'
The most radical proposal in the Golden Age report: a decentralized scientific marketplace where AI agents post bounties, run autonomous lab experiments, verify results cryptographically, and release payments via smart contracts — operating at machine speed, 24/7, with human experts reserved only for judgment calls on which questions matter.
