Yes, you're right of course; not all scientific advances are useful. And many individuals will not be directly impacted by a cure for cancer, for example. Broadly speaking, though, and what I meant to get at, is that if a scientific advance is beneficial, then it provides that benefit to the broader humanity, even if only statistically speaking and perhaps not immediately.

(Even the nuclear bomb research probably helped spur nuclear power, which in turn staved off climate change. And, of course, views are divided on whether more or less lives were lost due to the bombs. So yes, I definitely meant broad generalisation rather than absolute statement :) )

Others have already pointed out the obvious magnitude-of-funding issues.

Another issue though is that all of humanity benefits from scientific advances. If government funding were to reduce and be replaced by fund raising drives, then (in the simplest case) those who don't contribute would be getting all the benefits (alternatives to fossil fuels, medical advances, etc) but with none of the upfront cost. Of course, we already have some fund raising for breast cancer/prostate cancer/MS/other specific disease but I would imagine this makes up a fairly small portion of their research budgets (and in some cases genuinely represents an investment in their personal future).

The obvious way around this is through a Kickstarter style reward system, where people who contribute get some specific rewards. But what would you offer? You get a share of the profits? (Well, now you're actually a corporation.) You get early access to the treatment? (That's not going to fly politically.) You get your name on the side of the particle accelerator? (That might work.)

Obviously, people are welcome to do whatever they want with their money, but I think government funding of science for the common good is the fairest scenario, and what we should be encouraging.

Actually, that's for the PoGo (smaller 2x3" prints). I've got one, and it's excellent - perfect for travelling to remote areas of the world and leaving families with photos of their kids!

Just don't ask where the genie came from, okay? :)

If I held a laser blaster to your head and demanded a forecast, what do you think civilisation will look in 5,000 years?

E.g., will we have colonies on other planets? Other star systems? Will we have robots/AI/cyborgs? Will we have a high tech world? Low tech? Nox tech?

A genie appears and offers you one true yes/no answer to any question you ask (subject, perhaps, to xkcd rules). What would you ask?

Leaving aside (or not!) the recent neutrino experiment, do you think that humans will ever devise a way to travel (explicitly or implicitly) faster than light? Specifically, do you think it will be possible to travel to (say) Alpha Centauri and back in under 8 years from the reference frame of earth?

If not, what do you think this means for long term space exploration and/or colonisation?

(I say implicitly/explicitly to allow for both actually exceeding the speed of light and for using some sort of clever multi-dimensional/space bending/startrekkian technique :) )

Apologies if I offended; you're right, perhaps that wasn't a fair comparison. I still think there would be a correlation - maybe not as strong, though?
More to the point, in Australia we can rent physical DVDs from $2.95 (new release) overnight. On Tuesdays, all DVDs are $1. If one of the intentions of these sort of stores is to make inroads against piracy, you'd have to be working at beating these price points, even with the convenience of home based downloads.

I would expect that the people who know how to root their phone are also unlikely to pay $3.99 to rent a movie - I can't imagine there's a lot of overlap or heartache here amongst the users.

On the other hand, these are also the most tech savvy users who might actually be swayed by a convenient and cheap (and legal) movie downloading system. Certainly I used to buy music from a certain Russian site because the cost was worth the convenience of high quality music on demand.

Replying to myself, some further googling [PDF] shows a number of studies that suggest a link between learning chess and improved performance. There does seem to be evidence that learning chess improves performance (although there also seems to be some studies that suffer from correlation/causation issues; without reviewing each study individually, I'm also suspicious that some studies might not have controlled for the fact that any intervention produces improvement, not just learning chess. But the devil is in the details, and there's a broad trend towards improvement).

Looks like chess is already being taught in the Phillipines too?