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A comment on How Universities Should Prepare Founders. Parent comment

Re:How Universities Should Prepare Founders by yieldcrv on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @12:45AM (#49429183)
can you repeat that in a different way? opportunity cost is prioritizing gains - or at least a window of opportunity for outsized gains - I don't see how "ducked the intent" fits in

but yes I realize that any conversation with academics is going to be skewed from the market, I think its worth representing nonetheless since academics often interpret their privilege of choice as a nobler cause because they made that choice at all

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Re:How Universities Should Prepare Founders by ModernMech on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @07:43AM (#49432255)
When one choice is a very very very small chance at effectively unbounded money, the expected value of making that choice is also effectively unbounded, so the opportunity cost compared to literally anything else makes it look like an obvious chioce, meaning there's no actual rational weighing of an "opportunity cost".

e.g. "I could be an engineer, or I could be a billionaire. Which one should I pick? If I'm an engineer, I could have a nice career in the industry; but if I'm a billionaire I wouldn't have to ever work again and could just do all the software engineering I want, so it's an obvious choice to pick being a billionare."

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