The post-materialist economy

Tech is driving a quiet but quickening scientific revolution

The trailer for Gwyneth Paltrow’s show The Goop Lab, launched January 24 on Netflix, tantalizes the audience with promises to explore “out-there” topics like exorcisms and orgasms. In case you’ve never heard of the “yoni” egg suit, Paltrow’s tech startup Goop is famous for their jade vagina egg that resulted in a civil fine because there was no scientific evidence to support the claim it supported women’s health. Exorcisms and orgasms will happen without scientific evidence for their usefulness, but what about some of The Goop Lab’s topics like mediumship, psychedelics, energy healing, and psychics?

Would you be more surprised to learn there’s credible scientific research supporting these phenomena or that this research is largely funded by tech companies and investors? If you’re more surprised by the first point, I’ll refer you to this book (I’m a co-author) and this paper (same).

Today, I’ve become inspired to write about the emerging “post-materialist” economy that benefits independent scientists like me, and some concerns I have about the currently lopsided funding picture.

What is post-materialism? Let’s start with materialism. Materialism is the currently accepted scientific worldview that everything in nature is…