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USA to Pass Science Crown to China
instantgames writes "According to a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research, rapid development of a science and technology base by populous Asian countries soon may threaten the economic position of the United States. Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to develop new technologies is declining rapidly with respect to the rest of the world. According to Richard Freeman, the paper's author, the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology." From the article: "The phenomenal growth of China's industrial base has been widely publicized, but Freeman focuses on what is perhaps the more important long-term indicator of a nation's prosperity - its re-investment in science and technology education.
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This nation does not have a history of education or academic excellence. Our WW2 genius was mostly imported, as was much of our cold war research.
We as a nation have been able to attract great minds with promises of "vast tracks of land", but that is about it.
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I don't quite understand what exactly the "scientific Crown" means, but on the balance I think this is positive news - science is not a zero sum game. What's invented in US works the same in China and vice versa. I don't view it exactly as US falling behind but Asian countries catching up because growth is always faster when you have lots of room to grow but then it slows down. Of course, US needs to do more to invest into and encourage better education to stay competitive. The fact that this is not currently the case is alarming.
It is also good to hear that developing Asian countries are on a way to contribute to progress rather than dig their heels in and do everything in a futile attempt to stop it (as seems to be popular in some Middle East contries now a day).
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
But they continued on to also say opposition to ANY nuclear project was critical.
Yeah, sometimes (most of the time?) passionate self-righteousness precludes any rational thought. I work on the campus of a liberal arts college, and see a lot of PCU-style protesters. A few years ago, NC was looking to build a waste-disposal site for low-level nuclear waste (generally stuff like rubber gloves used in medical procedures involving radiation or x-ray). I was approached by a protest group that wanted me to sign a petition decrying this horrendous environmental affront. I asked them what they proposed should be done with this waste, they said "Stop producing it." I pointed out that a) chemotherapy patients, dental patients, etc. would object to this "solution", and b) this "solution" would do absolutely nothing for the already existing waste.
I'm not sure which was louder, the howls of rage, or the giant sucking sound as my points were hurled into the intellectual vacuum.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Well, for one, Europe only ceeded its "science crown " to the USA because of the World Wars. Since then, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Western Europe are science and technology powerhouses. Taiwan is especially instructive, as they speak the same language and have many of the same cultural factors. Despite their miniscule sliver of the total Chinese population, they're way ahead. Population don't mean much if most of your people are living in squalor due to repressive and corrupt government.
The US's open-door policy for researchers from around the globe to study and research in the US had more to do with getting the "crown." The metling-pot mindset, especially popular with educators and institutions, allowed the best and the brightest to come to the US to do their work.
That, and the US is, like, you know, a first world country? Once China and India and Indonesia can get phone and power service to the medievil huts the majority of its population lives in, then I'd worry about the massive population difference.
New Zealand and Finland are good examples of miniscule countries in terms of population that are doing very, very, very well for themselves on the science and technology front. New Zealand is isolated by location, and Finland by language. They still have engineering firms and physicists that are world class.
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Get rid of most of the teachers after grade 5 or so and let people who can utilize the vast array of self-tutorials, peer-forums and the sheer power of the internet to learn. My niece is 12 years old and has advanced all the way to precalculus with a mother and father who know only basic arithmitic and has never been in a school or met a teacher. She is self-sufficient and is not some super genius or anything. Teacher-led instruction as the basis for education in a fast paced knowledge driven economy is damaging children before they learn you can learn for yourself, by yourself.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Long-term China's growth is going to slow down. Right now it's using predatory monetary policy to fuel rapid economic growth but as Japan learned you can only feed off other nations for so long before your internal system starts to collapse. Japan and China both have rapidly aging populations. Europe's system is practically stagnant. Honestly, Brazil and India look to be the biggest players in 50 years IMO.
America has a tradition of innovation, a stable population, a low population density, huge amounts of capital, a steady influx of immigrants, and a devise society. We also have an insane prison population, high levels of drug use, a week SS program ECT. I don't think we will still have 2x the economy of biggest competitors in 50 years but I think we are in good long-term shape.
PS: Canada and Australia will also become more significant players on the world stage, but I don't see them having the levels of economic growth to catch up with the US in the next 50 years.
> America is hated largely because we are number one in terms of GDP, freedom, etc. I say let someone else take that spot at the top (at least in GDP) so the rest of the world can hate them for a while.
America is not hated because you have more GDP or freedom than the rest of the world. You are hated because you attack and destroy countries and sovereign governments when your economic interest dictates that, in the name of "liberating" the population (well, the part which you do not kill) while you do not give a hoot about hundreds of thousand dying when there is no money for you in it.
You are hated because you toot around against WMDs whlie you are the largest developers of named WMDs and, in fact, the only one who used nuclear weapons against civilian targets.
You are hated because you refuse to care about the environment because it would hurt your bottom line and the rest of the world suffers from your ignorance. You are hated because you define what "freedom" must mean to the rest of the world: the American Way of Life. Everyone who thinks differently is an enemy of Freedom and Liberty and the enemy of the US of A.
You are hated because you set up dictators when it suits you then try to depose them, with all your military might, when they do not toe the party line any more. Never mind how many people die in both turn and never mind what gets destroyed, as long as weapons sale profits are high enough.
You are not hated but looked down for touting freedom when you had seggregation just 30 years ago, for warning parents that the Origin of Species contains dangerous theories that are not in the Bible, for having a patent system that allows you to patent a way of combing your hair to cover a bald spot, for cranking out movie after movie with no plot but more blood and explosion than a slaghterhouse hit by a Pershing and you call it "culture" but in the same time you have no problem destroying many thousand year old remnants of human history - all in all, that was not American, thus it must have been worthless. You are looked down for being the largest porn manufacturing industry but with an unbelievable hypocricy make nudity a deadly sin. You talk about freedom but ban gay marriages. You talk about women's rights but ban abortus even to an underage rape victim.
The idea that the world envies you is false. It comes from the idea that the US is, by definition, the best. Therefore obviously the world wants to be like the US just evil forces want to stop development and in order to liberate the world in their quest to finally living "our way of life", as your great leader puts it in every speech, you should attack them by economic, political and military needs. The fallacy in the whole ideology is that the rest of the world does not want to live like you. Europe appreciates her own decadent ways you know, with all that culture rubbish and lack of rights to have machine guns but with some rights of not being killed by your fellow citizens. Asia has a culture that is a lot more ancient than even Europe's and they seem to be doing reasonably OK with it, thank you very much. Africa is just too poor to have its priorities around freedom and ideology, they think about the food and water and medication more than their liberty.
Noone would have a problem with the US wanting to lead the world.
The problem is that you do not want to lead, you want to rule.
Except that there is so little chance of life occuring the way it is today through Intelligent Design alone. I suppose I developed an 'evolution' belief, but there are WAY too many screwups in nature to support Intelligent Design alone.
You are right, in that it is mostly a political debate, not a scientific debate. He adverted the political side by making us decide for ourselves. Questions rose in my mind on how the complexity of modern life could have possibly been created 'by intelligence' or appeared at the level it's at today. This is the point i'm trying to get at.
(if anyone wishes to debate on why I think we are here because of evolution alone, think of all the physiological idiocies of the human body. the crossover between the windpipe and the oesophagus, and the apparently useless appendix. the remarkable tendency to get back pains due to our badly-designed spinal curvature, and how genetic diversity is comparatively minimal - everything we see around us seems to at least belong to the same family tree. Try to convince me that all of that -- and a ton more -- was produced by a supposedly intelligent Creator (who somehow sprung fully-formed and with high IQ from nowhere, that's another discussion))
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
What really annoyed in during high school and middle school was the prevalent idea that logic/reason is contrary to creativity. Anyone lacking skills in reasoning/math can compensate to themselves by claiming that they were creative. That's just dandy because there's no good way to measure creativity so they just hide behind that. Random ideas != creativity. From my experience, creativity requires at least a small measure of reasoning. In fact, some of the most creative people I know are very skilled at mathematics and computer science. The two are not exclusive but rather go hand-in-hand.
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I'm sorry, but that is just wrong. I'm from China. I grew up there until age 8 (end of 2nd grade) when I moved to the US (1986) Teachers were the *most* respected profession. Yes, higher level teachers (college vs high school vs whatever) were respected more, but every teacher is highly respected. When I got home from school (this was typical), I did the homework given by my teacher, then the homework given by my mother, then more work because I was expected to do it. At that tender age I could do multiplying and dividing of fractions, long division, decimals, and basic algebra. Calculus is normally a 7th grade subject in China.
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
I teach in an engineering department in a fairly good european university.
We had a meeting recently where the senior members of the department discussed project work and instructions to students. Their concern was that a pattern was emerging along these lines...
Domestic students would or would not do what they were told by the deadline. They may or may not introduce some ideas of their own in doing this.
European students would tend to deliver but had a tendency to deliver what they wanted deliver rather than what was discussed, this would vary a bit as to whether it was a good thing (innovative, neat ideas, rejecting what on balance became bad advice) or a bad thing (willfully ignoring good advice) depending.
Japanese students tend never to say no, but would sometimes reappear at an advanced point in the project and confess they were stuck. Sometimes this would be a bit too late to do much about it. They'd normally get by though, just on the basis that up until that point they'd have had a damn good go at attacking the problem and there was often on close examination some stuff there that could be re-worked or otherwise given prominence to attract the credit it deserved.
Chinese students, basically, would never so no and always deliver exactly what was requested, even if they staggered in looking like death warmed up.
The bulk of the meeting was discussing how we could get our overseas students to loosen up a little and be more proactive. Its a fine balance obviously recognising the needs of individuals but not being discriminatory. But as one Prof quipped, we could probably kill a Chinese student by giving them an insoluable problem to work on whereas a domestic student would probably turn up and call us names (rightly). Be careful with the off-hand suggestions was the message, be clear about what the goals are and what are side issues. This should help all the above in different ways.
Does this translate into anything nationally? Not sure, but it might be relevant if it says something universal about mentality. Chinese engineers certainly have the work ethic, put it that way.
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I always liked the way that conversation goes at parties. If there's a follow-up question, it's always "What kind?" and occasionally incredulous. One learns to say "algebra" and change the subject.
I've had more than one conversation run along lines like this:
Person: So what do you do?
Me: I'm a mathematician.
Person: Oh, you're a teacher. What level do you teach?
Me: No, I don't teach at all -
Person: But I thought you said you did math?
Me: Yeah, I do. I'm a research mathematician for a software company.
Person: How do you research math?
At which point it's time to grab the conversation by the scruff of the neck and quickly steer it in another direction because anything more isn't going to be productive.
The exposure to abstract mathematics doesn't reach significance--much less unification--with a BS in math ed.
I agree, and this is an issue. We spend a lot of time teaching people how to do math problems, without actually teaching them any mathematics. In a way it's akin to teaching people about creative writing by nothing but drilling them for years in spelling and formal grammar - yes it's important if you want to be able to do the subject properly, but it fails to really impart the essence of the subject.
That horrible question, when will I ever use this?, becomes a sort of grim reality.
That's an interesting problem, and the answer really is "all the time". We really ought to be teaching philosophy, including some formal logic, and stretching our math ciriculum sideways to meet it. One of the greatest skills that mathematics can impart, even at a very early level (late elementary school) if taught appropriately, is how to think about, deal with, and analyse abstract concepts. It's exercising the mental muscles for logical analysis and critical thinking. If we actually taught mathematics and philosophy from an early age I think we'd be much better off.
I don't think bad teachers are to blame. Boring, maybe, but not resentful.
I think they are, in that they have an attitude that math is both hard, and not of much real practical importance. Whether or not they tell kids that explicitly, it is very much an attitude that kids pick up and learn to imitate.
Jedidiah.
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