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Does Government Science Funding Drive Innovation? (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, British businessman and science journalist Matt Ridley argues that basic science research does not lead to technological innovation, and therefore isn't deserving of taxpayer funding. Ridley says, "Increasingly, technology is developing the kind of autonomy that hitherto characterized biological entities. The Stanford economist Brian Arthur argues that technology is self-organizing and can, in effect, reproduce and adapt to its environment. ... The implications of this new way of seeing technology—as an autonomous, evolving entity that continues to progress whoever is in charge—are startling. People are pawns in a process. We ride rather than drive the innovation wave. Technology will find its inventors, rather than vice versa.
Patents and copyright laws grant too much credit and reward to individuals and imply that technology evolves by jerks. Recall that the original rationale for granting patents was not to reward inventors with monopoly profits but to encourage them to share their inventions. ... It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."
Patents and copyright laws grant too much credit and reward to individuals and imply that technology evolves by jerks. Recall that the original rationale for granting patents was not to reward inventors with monopoly profits but to encourage them to share their inventions. ... It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."
God drives innovation by speaking to the blessed prophets we call 'scientists'. Government funding has no effect on who He chooses to bless with this new knowledge.
Someone wants to make an argument that government investment into science and technology doesn't lead to anything useful on the internet? There's a lot of great technology we have today due to government investment. Granted they were hoping the research would lead to better ways to kill our enemies or to stop them from killing us, but we've got a lot of civilian use out of government investments into science and technology.
If anything, government needs to be more strict with publicly funded research and ensure that the results end up in the public domain rather than rotting while a patent expires or hidden behind a pay-walled journal.
Typical narrow-minded view of research and knowledge. Not many corporations or private organisations invest in fundamental science research and nowhere hear at the scale and intensity that govt. funded research does. Without fundamental research, you don't have anything to base applied research on, which I guess is what they mean when they call it "innovation."
As for self-organising systems, there's plenty of fundamental research to show just how unpredictable and unstable they are in reality.
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Sincerely,
Skynet
Huh. How weird! Every time there's an article about, say, global warming, or efforts to correct imbalances in gender or ethnic representation in the sciences, or health care, there's always a sizable crowd of self-identified libertarians who show up and extol the virtues of unregulated markets and the need to rein in government spending. And now here we are, extending libertarian principles to their natural consequence (ie, taxpayers shouldn't be the ones to fund the sciences, but rather the market), and I see ... a puzzling lack of support for the idea.
It's almost as if taxpayer funding is only wasteful and frivolous if it benefits other people, and "libertarianism" is just a thin rhetorical cover for preserving privilege.
The only thing stupider would be if he was drinking a tall glass of Tang while he was posting his story about how government investment in research doesn't lead to anything useful...on the Internet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There is an old adage; everyone hates government spending except the government spending they benefit from themselves. In this case, almost every article Matt Ridley writes says how bad state aid is. Except when he was head of a bank himself, when times were tough he went to parliament with his hat in his hand to beg for a taxpayer bailout and suddenly state aid was a great idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley#Northern_Rock
If you want to change Matt Ridley's mind about state spending on research, give him a job in a research lab and watch with wonder as articles praising state aid for research emanate from his greedy mind.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Our experience thus far is that Mr Ridley is wrong. Industry *can* fund basic R&D by itself, but we wouldn’t be at the level of development we are now with only private investment. In any case, innovation is limited without some data into the basics that it will stand upon. He’s assuming innovation by accident. It happens, but you can’t count on it.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Rocketry and Artillery were both developed before Newtons laws of motion
Distilling and Steam Power were both around before thermodynamics
The compass was here long before Maxwell's equations.
The opposite points though are ridiculously easy to make.
No Semiconductor electronics without BCS band theory
No Atomic Power/Radiation therapy without Atomic theory
No Refrigeration without thermodynamics.
It seems the author is trying to make points by framing the debate in overly simplistic terms.
There's nothing left of the WSJ's journalistic integrity. Nothing at all.
This is nothing but a sad attempt to apply "trickle down" economic theory to technology. Sadly for the WSJ, trickle down is thoroughly discredited in economics. This attempt to smear technological innovation with the trickle down brush isn't even plausible. Easy enough to see that these guys didn't get any engineering in their educations. Sigh...
What next? Are they going to try to tell us that corporations are self-regulating? Wait....
just because there isn't "profit in it" doesn't make something doesn't mean it's worthless, it means you identify as a ferengi.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...technology evolves by jerks...
Steve Jobs... Bill Gates... Jeff Bezos... yeah, it's sort of hard to argue the point.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Maxwell's equations which specify how electromagnetism works have been a complete waste of research dollars; a fiasco that has never led to any technological improvement or profit.
And all that money wasted on medical research has never led to a single profitable technology, nor increase in quality or length of life, never mind to any insight into why the four humours continue to kill people like flies.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
"Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."
Oh, brother. That's just ridiculous. It was an understanding of thermodynamics (by the physicist Denis Papin) that led to the innovation of the steam engine. They imply that some guy messing around in his basement will "innovate" something and only later will the principles behind it be understood. But it is basic research and the building of mathematical models of the world that lead to inventions. And those steps in basic science are not profitable. Many blind alleys will be followed before a basic advance in science is made. Only a government dedicated to basic research will follow that path for long enough to see solid usable results.
And if occasionally a private company does advance the frontiers of real science, that's great. But I wouldn't count on that for the progress of mankind. I do agree however with the author's premise that patents are abused. Folks have forgotten why we have a patent system. It's not to make money, it's to advance the sciences. Don't believe me? Just read Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the US Constitution.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
also known originally as ARPANET, was born as a goverment project, which ended as one of the greatest achievement of the humanity in term of global communication. Do I really need to say anything else?
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
Government funding and corporate funding both have their perks and their shortcomings. But it's not such a strict divide as some paint it to be. Just like the divide between fundamental science and applied science isn't as clear cut as some like to narrate as. The late Pierre-Gilles de Gennes stated many times how he loathed that later distinction. He stated that his work with industry development departments helped him spot practical issues that had to be systematically examined, which led him to theoretical breakthroughs that would later help feed new industries.
Innovation is totally different from discovery. Innovation is, at best, a clever application of the current state of available knowledges, and may actually turn out useful, if only marginally, At worst, it's a marketing buzzword aimed at milking schmucks intoxicated with a modernist way of thinking.
There's nothing like $HOME
Seriously, watch the original Connections series by James Burke if you want to understand how technology evolves.
The old observation that 'steam engines were invented when it was steam engine time' is not a reflection on basic science, public or otherwise. Technological applications cluster because one development is a prerequisite for another, as well as creating demand that immediately pushes successive applications into being. The availability of electricity in the late nineteenth century drove a search for applications for it, leading to a number of different inventors proudly brandishing light bulbs at the same tine.
and experiment with chemicals and electronics while patting them on the back for doing a good job, drives innovation.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
was the vice presidential debate where Ryan started going off about how we had to cut back on aid for the poor because, gosh darn, we couldn't afford it, and then Joe Biden pulled out a letter where Ryan begged for aid for his state :P.
/. and all, what does the /. community think is the answer to the phrase "Sooner or later you run out of other people's money"...? I can list out a hundred reasons why this is nonsense but none of them have the impact, gut feeling and just plain truthiness of that phrase.
:). But that idea might be a little to complex to provide a bumper sticker/gut reaction answer to the OPM problem.
While I'm on
One thing I do know is that if you let the gov't spend a dollar it comes back to you eventually when that dollar circulates. Kinda like those "prosperity gospel" folks but with a bit more actually working and a bit less taking the Lords name in vain
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and throw this out there: Gov't spending on basic research is basically socialism, and the trouble with socialism is "Sooner or later you run out of Other People's Money".
Please shoot me down here. I've never come up with a good answer to the above that wasn't so long winded I lost anyone I was talking to...
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Early research in electronic computers, and early integrated circuits were driven heavily by military spending, and later gov't space exploration. Although they didn't directly invent much of it, they drove contractor R&D because they were buying.
One could say that they were created in the process of solving specific problems, like making missile electronics smaller rather than "direct" research into smaller electronics.
In that sense I agree with TFA: innovations usually come about from trying to solve specific problems. But the military and NASA were also trying to solve specific problems when computer and chip innovations came about.
Thus, it's not gov't versus private R&D, but rather how innovation comes about in EITHER.
But it's hard to know if things would be different without basic research into physics and biology. These are often helpful in explaining why experiments show what they show. If you know why something works, you have better ideas for how to improve it.
As far as patents, I agree with TFA's premise that patents are too heavy-handed.
Table-ized A.I.
Governments are run by politicians and lobbyists, so the exact opposite if often the case. Large amounts of money are sunk into projects of minor merit or out-right uselessness in order to divert funds away from more promising projects (e.g. ITER) or simply as jobs programs.
and it gets countered with "who are you to decide what gets redistributed?". That plus the old standby of "somebody in Washington telling me how to live my life"
Though I like "You only run out when everyone stops earning". Shifts the argument towards job creation and investment.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A little quoted portion of his much quoted "military industrial complex" speech:
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite."
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu...
-Styopa
do You think we don't have effective treatment for Cancer or HIV ? Because it is more "economic" to keep sick people alive than to cure them... we wouldn't have penicillin if it was up to the medico to decide.
The one word answer to that argument is Sovaldi: The biggest drug launch EVER is a cure for Hep. C. Here are three reasons why the "treatments are more profitable than cures" fails: Market share, time value of money, pricing power.
1. Market share. The first cure to enter a market full of treatments wouldn't have to fight it's competition, it would dominate from the get go.
2. Time value of money. A treatment, especially for a chronic disease, has the bulk of its revenue spread out over a decade to 15 years, during which time it might lose sales (competition, patient dies, etc). A cure would be sold to the existing patient base in just a few years. Even if a "me too" cure shows up in few years, the first cure will have already been sold to most of the patient base already. How much more would you pay for a low risk dollar today? How much would you pay for a high risk dollar 10 years from now?
3. Pricing power. Cures will always be more valuable to both patients, insurance companies, and governments. If a cure costs less than ~5 years of treatment insurance companies will want it. If it costs less than ~10 years of treatments they will be forced to pay for it.
Basically: if you want to make $50B over 10 years: create a kick-ass treatment for type II Diabetes and duke it out with Merck, Lilly, and AstraZeneca. If you want to make $2 TRILLION in 5 years: create a cure for type II Diabetes (80 million patients, $50k list price, $25k average price actually paid) and wipe the floor with them instead.
Basic science doesn't "drive" innovation, but basic science sure as hell enables innovation.
Einstein published his work on general relativity in 1915. The GPS system (which requires a knowledge of general relativity to design) began development in 1973.
Einstein published his work on stimulated emission in 1916. The first laser (which requires a knowledge of stimulated emission to design) was built in 1960.
For those keeping score, those are gaps of 58 and 44 years, respectively, to go from basic science to innovation. Neither of those innovations were simply bumbled into by tinkerers. The designers knew the science from the get-go, and the inventions would not have happened without knowing the science from the get-go. The days of Edison and similar tinkerers has long passed. Good luck inventing any modern technology by chance. The low hanging fruit have already been picked.
From TFA:
It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them.
Industry does not function on the timespan of 4, 5, or 6 DECADES. There is zero chance that modern industry could do that.* The argument in TFA is total bullshit.
*That said, once upon a time industry did kind of do this _a little_. I did research with Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs), and I decided to look into the history of the devices. Where was the first SQUID made? Ford (the car company) research labs back in 1963 ( http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab... ). Once upon a time, large corporations were flush with cash and without shareholders who wanted to wring every ounce of profit from them, so corporations _sometimes_ funded basic research just because they could -- _sometimes_ without applications in mind. However, that has long gone the way of the dodo. And no, they didn't abandon the business because the government was funding it instead. Modern corporations will never spend the money to do real basic research because it is not economically useful (either in 1963 or now) to invent something and have someone else use it 5 decades later. They learned that lesson decades ago. Ford has never made use of a SQUID, and real applications are still on the horizon (tho they may not be far away today).
You only say that because you are thinking of computers that are a generation behind the cutting edge of technology. Thankfully, the government is not as behind the times as you think.
The intelligence community (NSA et al.) are _major_ funders of quantum computing research in the USA (since working quantum computers could break current encryption methods, the NSA can't afford to get they second). The funding comes through IARPA -- NSA's equivalent of DARPA.
They've done a good enough job advancing the state of the art that corporations recently began to see quantum computers as viable and are now getting in on the game. Google recently poached one of the NSA's major funding recipients (John Martinis at UCSB), and I know that Northrop Grumman (the major defense contractor) is now spending its own money on quantum computers.
Quantum computers are not useful yet, but when they're here, you can thank the NSA.
So yes, defense/intelligence funding currently driving innovation by funding basic research, and it's paying off.
I'm a scientist, I've benefited greatly from government grants for basic research. I've also worked in the government administering basic and applied research grants. There's a lot of truth to what he's saying.
The economic return of much (not all!) of basic research is near zero.
For those of you who keep pointing out the internet, you need to read this guy's thesis and look at the timeline of internet commercialization. Basic research investment did not lead directly to internet profitability. It took decades of further tinkering with business models before that happened.
Again, a lot of what we do in science does not result in anything resembling a return on investment. Nor should return on investment be the justification for basic research. Defending this idea that science = economic progress is absurd. This is not what science is.
Why do we do science? For commercial gain alone? As a scientist, I find that idea insulting. We "do" science not to invent profitable gadgets, but to advance human knowledge and understanding of the universe. It's the job of economists to study the optimum distribution of resources, and they are scientifically correct to point out the "waste" of basic science. Also, fuck the economists.
IF science has resulted in a lower than expected return on investment in the last couple decades (it has), it is not because we're funding too much science. Scientific advances have failed to lead to expected commercialization because we have not sufficiently supported development and commercialization efforts. There's nothing sinister here. It's just that certain fields have sucked up dominating amounts of tech investment over the last several decades (ahem, internet), and left not quite enough attention for everyone else. Now that the folks who profited from that are turning to other fields, we can all expect to see many more scientifically advanced products.
I'm willing to pay extra in taxes to make sure you get the mental help you need. You're a fine example of why we need single payer health care.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
As an interesting aside, I'm actually taking an interest in more VC opportunities. I think it's a better way for me to put my money where my mouth is. I also think it's potentially lucrative. From the folks I've spoken with, I'm not alone. I'd expect to see more VC outside of the, specifically, SV/tech-or-web-centric in the near future. There have also been some recent regulation changes that open VC up a bit more for individuals - sort of like private crowdfunding, I guess, is a way to describe it. I'll have the process vetted and be given instruction before dabbling but I'm looking forward to it. I've been pondering this for a while and talking with a number of people who have also been looking into it.
For those playing the home game, it ties in nicely with the Graybeards Inc. idea which is, obviously, tech related but (of course) that's where my interests would lie. Others don't hold the same interests. There's a lot of interest in the renewables markets, agriculture, and even smaller stuff like cottage industries. I've also noticed more people approaching the credit union for smaller loans for what would normally be considered cottage industries. I don't know what the future holds but it might be interesting. I see more and more people ending up like we once were - small and mid-size businesses akin to the farmer, carpenter, milkman, blacksmith, or seamstress of yore.
Not quite on topic but your post made me think of it. There's so much bureaucracy that you're already having issues - in your case. Money, like life, seems to find a way.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What a shock to find an anti-science editorial in WSJ - surely by any measure the paper of record for plutocrats.
basic science gives rise to tech opportunities. isn't this obvious? the article actually claims that science is the result of tech, which I just cannot.
Many scientists that I have watches go through the education system are very very very good at doing school. They are otherwise nearly entirely useless when it comes to science. The problem is that these people will get a 99 in math a 99 in various sciences, 99 in all subjects regardless of their actual interests and end up eating 99% of the positions and scholarships. At the end of their PhD they are also very good at playing the system so they end up with Tenure faster, somehow publish the most, and then grab the grants to basically go to the conferences and present their most perfect papers.
Yet they really haven't contributed much at all. I find the real, near mad scientist, great scientists often do well at school but they don't see education as a checklist but the pattern is that they excel at what interests them and at best do OK at what doesn't. The same if they make it to higher education. They will focus on something very cool but forget little things like term papers in early French literature.
Then if despite everything they make it into graduate studies they will start out by rocking the boat which doesn't usually go well and if miracle of miracles they make it through their papers will be at best infrequent as they are only interested in publishing things that count.
Next, they will have problems testing any theories or gathering any data with a grant budget of $8.
Then, if at any point, they left the academic system they are completely disregarded as rank amateurs or dilettantes.
So by massively expanding science funding, all the useless wastes of space are sponged up into the academic system with room to spare. Thus someone who actually has the capability to do things that count will discover that they will have the position and resources to do the amazing things they can.
So the reality is that if maybe there were three times as many scientists being funded the result would be 2 or 3 genuine breakthroughs per decade. But cutting science funding from that level even by a third could result in zero fundamental breakthroughs.
Basically science funding needs to be expanded until all of the teacher's pets have been mopped up, all the people who should have gone to work on wall street have been mopped up, and then finally they start running out of people who want to go into science.
But one of the absolute critical features is that science funding need not make anyone rich. The truly great ones really don't care about money. Give them enough to satiate their needs both for lifestyle and more importantly to do their work and that is it. There need not be any strange commercial partnerships that look great when the academics go out and start an Intel or two. Those sorts of things are great for different reasons but you won't attract the Feynmans and Einsteins.
They launched the first satellites, the first man into space and who could forget the great day when the employees of a mega corp walked on the moon. Their nuclear reactors are incredible too.
In a just world, he would be in jail for fucking up Northern Rock so appallingly. Instead, he gets to write articles on subjects about which he knows nothing.
They imply that some guy messing around in his basement will "innovate" something and only later will the principles behind it be understood.
The Will of the Force will impregnate a poor slave-woman and she shall give birth to one who will bring balance to the Force.
The implications of this new way of seeing technologyâ"as an autonomous, evolving entity that continues to progress whoever is in chargeâ"are startling. People are pawns in a process. We ride rather than drive the innovation wave. Technology will find its inventors, rather than vice versa.
Technology creates itself apparently.
I'm guessing somewhere along the way we came up with both AI and perpetuum mobile and they have since then been hiding somewhere in the jungle and fucking their transistors out, spawning new tech.
Occasionally, a random person will get "abducted by aliens", implanted necessary information and let loose to "invent" new technology.
So, I'm not saying it's aliens. It's actually AI invented by the Will of the Force.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Allowing for relativistic effects makes it more accurate, but it would work fairly well without doing this.
No, GPS would be inaccurate to the point of being useless without accounting for relativistic effects. There are many references explaining this out there (see google), but here is one (emphasis added):
The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be utterly worthless for navigation in a very short time. This kind of accumulated error is akin to measuring my location while standing on my front porch in Columbus, Ohio one day, and then making the same measurement a week later and having my GPS receiver tell me that my porch and I are currently somewhere in the air kilometers away.
http://www.astronomy.ohio-stat...
Basic research is exactly what needs public funding, especially in areas where profit horizons are too far off to see. Potential profits drive private investment, so no, areas where some profit can be forecast don't need public funding. But most of these "innovations" depend on basic research that would never have been funded by those seeking profit. This guy sounds like an impractical ideologue like Milton Friedman.
1. Yeah, and? How is making $25k per patient x 80 million patients over the course of five years and then running out of patients worse than making $2k per patient x 10 million patients per year for 10 years and then running out of patent?
2. Yes it does - for one paying interest directly cuts your ROI. for a second you didn't take into account risk. The longer it takes your drug to turn a profit, the less of a chance it will have of doing so because other drugs will enter the market and cut your profit margin and market share. For a third, SG&A and production costs for delivering daily drugs to a patient for 10 years vs delivering it once?
3. Wrong on all counts. The market will bear much higher prices for cures than for treatments. NICE would pay much more for cures than treatments. Insurance companies will pay much more for cures than for treatments. Why? It's still cheaper for them. Drugs are only ~10% of health care costs. Curing a patient means cutting back on doctor visits, tests, hospitalizations, etc. The cure would be compared with the entire cost of treating a patient for 5+ years, not just the cost of the treatment.
I specificed Type 2 because >95% of the ~80 million diabetics in the US and the EU are Type 2. If the goal is to make trillions of dollars in a hurry, a cure for arteriosclerosis, Alzheimer's, or type II Diabetes would be a good bet. That said, a single cure or method of prevention for Type 1 does seem a lot more approachable than one for type 2; "a" cure for type 2 would be a bit like "a" cure for cancer.
Likewise the Fourier Transformation.
It started out as pure mathematics that Fourier came across and it was cool and all. And possibly fairly pointless for a while. (I don't nearly know enough math to know if it had an impact in the field on it's inherent merits)
And lo and behold, these days the Fast Fourier Transformation must be one of the most run algorithms in CS. JPEGs, Spectroscopy, MRIs, anything at all to do with frequency analysis uses this maths.
It wasn't pointless at all. It was based on mathematics that had been in development for over 100 years and was developed specifically to help understand heat transfer during the boring of cannons. It was also useful well before the development of the FFT for all sorts of electronics analysis. The FFT was developed quickly after computers became powerful enough to actually do them because the FT was already an extremely useful mathematical tool.
If we went back to 1920 and looked at Germany we would see a very rigid government and very rigid social structure both of which placed a strict burden upon youth to succeed. As a consequence we saw a German nation rapidly adopting the best notions of mechanical science and engineering that found the US sorely wanting in 1938. In 1941 we dared to enter that war after beefing up our military and we still were not up to matching Germany in the hardware of war. Their technology enabled them, a small nation, to take on the US and several other major nations. My point is that if government as well as the community demands with real severity that our youth get a no nonsense education and be willing to suffer to get it that we will advance our technology by leaps and bounds. We have seen Japan with their severe treatment of school aged youth shine bright in industry for the last 40 years. China and many Asian schools are producing scholars with ferocious abilities. It reached the point that many universities had to limit scholarships to Asians as American scholars simply could not compete at all and virtually all scholarships were going to Asian students. The laws and social traditions of a nation have a great deal to do with how fast technology and industrial abilities grow.
It is always a shame when such obviously insane people are allowed to wander the streets and speculate in the press.
The Internet.
It started out as pure mathematics
Fourier analysis came out of the solution for the partial differential equation of heat transfer.
This man Matt Ridley forms the very definition of the term ‘dangerous idiot’. This is not the voice of science and intelligence it is the voice of radical Luddism and anti-science in a new guise.. It follows along the same self defeating arc as UK industry - its no coincidence that he’s British. Remove the basic research behind them and no technology is ever possible. What he is really arguing for is stagnation and failure followed by bankruptcy or economic takeover and asset striping by foreign competitors.
We should send him to become an economic advisor to ISIS in Syria, or send him to Guantanamo for a few decades. Treat him like he’s a terrorist - he’s far more dangerous to America and the worlds future than any terrorist..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
So, let me get this straight. We shouldn't be doing research that doesn't exist solely to increase the profits of an existing private enterprise. That sounds like a recipe for economic stagnation to me. It's well known that drug companies often withold improvements in their own drugs until they near the end of their patent period, and that they pay each other to not develop competing drugs, particularly in generics. You're saying you want all science to work this way?
For example, when I was working on this problem in college, there was no GPS. What would driverless cars of today be without gps? They'd have to either have special roads built or have good vision systems, or more accurate vision systems. That in the field translates into faster which means faster computers. A car drove mostly autonomously across he country in the late 80's or 90's using a trunk full of PCs (48 class), but it did so at about 4mph. With 1,000x faster computers, you can process 100x as many images and drive faster. With gps you can reduce your reliance on only the vision part and cut the processing budget by a factor of 10. So using the same 15 year old technology and just replacing the old computers with news ones (limiting changes to only timing adjustment tweaks and maybe a gps position update integration (maybe a page of C code), you have a premade (in 1991) diverless car.
Of course with all your extra processing power, you're going to start fine tuning certain aspects, but fundamentally nothing new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Translation: basic science research doesn't drive "technical innovation" in the next quarter or two, and therefore we shouldn't put taxpayer dollars towards it.
Quick: where did microprocessors, and online systems come from?
Answer: the Apollo program. (The oldest CICS - IBM m'frame online system - error messages all began with the code DFH - defined for Houston).
Look at the research being done now by, say, drug companies - they're mostly minor advances for new drugs to replace ones that are going out of patent. In the US, it's the NIH - both the research they do, and the research at other institutions that they fund - that are doing the massive amounts of basic research.
Would you have fingers left if you counted the big companies that actually do basic research?
But it's Rupert Murdoch's WSJ, and disruptive technologies bite into existing multinationals and billionaires stead cash flow.
mark
So if government funding doesn't drive innovation, where do the generals get all those wonderful toys they love so much?
Because what is the most promising future technology? Genetic technology. And what does genetic technology depend on? Restriction enzymes. And where did restriction enzymes come from? They were an obscure result of a minor backwater of academic E. coli bacteriophage genetic research supported by federal grants, over the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Certainly nothing a self respecting for profit corporation would ever pay for.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The big financial killer for medical insurers is hospital admissions and ER visits. A drug that can head those off can command big bucks. as in, avoiding a liver transplant.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.