Well, that is a similar place. If you have plenty of money sloshing about coming from some commercial process you probably disagree with, whether you're a SV day-in-the-life-of employee or a social sciences professor, you probably can have plenty of ideas that are never disproven because you're so insulated.
Yet theres a difference between hitching a horse to a wagon to move things vs joining a bestiality cult that worships horses.
A university is hardly the only place for terrible ideas to thrive, just look at silicon valley culture and this orange site.