We live in an attention economy. If you read a story, or watch a video, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with the content; you're still traffic.
Just viewing content on most of the internet boosts it's signal, and creates value for someone; much less engaging further by commenting, up/down voting, or sharing it. It's a pretty ugly system.
The most surefire way to acquire massive wealth in the 21st century is to get convince people to pay as much attention to your app's notifications as they would an incoming phone call.
Since nothing has been proven or disproven yet, we’re really in no different position that before all the experiments began. Might as well spend that money now to end it.
It fits so far out of our theoretical models that it's unfair to say it isn't proven or disproven. There are virtually infinite hypothesis that are neither proven nor disproven experimentally, but because theory states it's impossible we don't consider them worth testing.
It seems cheap relative to pretty much anything these days. People pay that much for rare cars, a rich person could snap their fingers and make it happen. I hate to tell people how to spend their money but I wish someone pitched it as an experiment to Elon Musk or Bezos. Just like you said - put it in space, switch it on. Either it works or it doesn't, should be obvious straight away, no?
