Technological evolution has a momentum of its own

The first half of this editorial doesn't really address basic science.

In the second half he does get to the premise in the title, and he gives it some support ... but he has very few cards to play. Yes, sometimes scientists get caught in an ivory bottle for too long. But sometimes practitioners play "poke and hope" for too long.

Why do we not need basic science? Because

> technology is self-organizing and can, in effect, reproduce and adapt to its environment. It thus qualifies as a living organism, at least in the sense that a coral reef is a living thing.

This piece is essentially just a hodge-podge of quotes by various sources which are intended to vaguely support the headline of the article and in no way actually addresses the tie between research results in science and technological innovation.

If you want to read more worthless fluff (the not-at-all pompously titled book is available in a book store near you):

> Mr. Ridley is the author of “The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge,”

"The Myth of Basic Science" is clearly one of those titles that will put the entire thread on tilt, so we changed it to the subtitle.

Please comment only if you have something substantive to say. If you think the article is unredeemably bad, you can always flag it, but don't degrade the thread with empty dismissals.

While I do not agree with everything in this article, indeed some of its claims are suspect, I think it raises important points. There is a dynamic interplay between "science", the act of discovery, and "technology" putting knowledge to work. In my own work, the desire to accomplish a task drives my scientific work. All of my current work has a "natural application" in my field but has lead me to interesting mathematical questions which have potential applications elsewhere as well. Thus, the dynamic I have personally observed: progress in one space enables progress in another.

Furthermore, without individuals who are largely interested in knowledge discovery, I maintain that progress would be slower. Someone had to desire to understand cells and know about x-ray crystallography in order for it to be applied. I picked on this example because it was brought up in the article. But, by the same token, people interested largely in technological improvement are also needed. It takes a lot to move a discovery from a lab notebook into a useful state.

I also categorically reject the notion of technology being a thing unto itself that perpetuates itself. Humanity is the engine of innovation and no amount of innovation is likely to change that any time soon. All technology and all machines are ultimately at the service of humans. We are not in the service of the machine. We are dependent upon our machines but are machines are not free from us. This is why post-apocalyptic stories of AI destroying humanity remain popular. We are uncomfortable and fearful of our own dependence.

The fear of both scientists and corporations is we fundamentally do not know what the world looks like without government involvement. There is no roadmap for a transition. There is no telling who would win and who would lose. In the past several decades major research institutions both public and private have all had shrinking "time-horizons" for their research. The time-horizon is when the research (if fruitful) could result in technological advancement. In the short term a transition to industry funded research would only accelerate that trend.

In conclusion, science funding and science in general is deeply dysfunctional right now. A lot of time is spent of obtaining and keeping funding. Our funding system has likely caused a over supply of entry level researchers which has fueled low wages. But at the same time, we do not know of a better way to fund research at the moment. If non-governmental funding is better there is no real way to try it that won't cause massive structural unemployment and pain throughout our economy. As much as I would love to see the scientists I know receive good wages for their important work I think it is about as likely as properly paying pre-school teachers.

The question on the subtitle:

> Does scientific research drive innovation?

This is so obvious that it becomes stupid. Of course it does, there's a lot of research that had to occur before most innovations in history, and most of it was not lucrative by itself.

But then, there's something to be said about bottlenecks. Basic research has been far ahead actual production for a long while. As a consequence, one will really not see any correlation between them.