Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How much countries spend in R&D

uis.unesco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 88 posts

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#31

Post by voltooid »

throwaway_tvs wrote: post #28

India's is a sad state. It is partly to do with the fact that the nation maintains (rather proudly IMO) the colonial structure of being a mere 'training ground' for Engineers and Scientists before they move to the US/UK/rem. Anglo-Saxon nations. K Vijayaraghavan, the DBT secretary, and a NAS fellow, has written a piece on the matter. https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/india-must-shed-inte...

Respectfully, it seems to me that India (and other countries in the region and maybe elsewhere) has a problem with strictly hierarchical structure, issues with accessibility and availability of resources. There is no investment in improving training for teachers. Typically, people that don't find jobs anywhere else take up teaching. Teaching is also typically a high-stress, low-paid job. It seems to have not a lot to do with language. There are more factors here.

Yes the Germans are able to get ahead cause of the use of both German and English. But it seems like lazy reasoning to suggest that this is solely the reason why they do better. How about looking into what else their education system does that is possibly absent in the Indian system? How about comparing the structure, the resource usage, the training for educators and managers in education and research? Surely, language is not the only difference between the two systems?

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#32

Post by philipps »

baddox wrote: post #16
PeterStuer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, GDP. I always think of a toy-world example of a circle of 10 people cooking their own dinners. The GDP of that circle is 0$. Now if every person in the circle cooks not his own dinner but sells his dinner to the person on the right of them for 100$, suddenly the circle's GDP has shot up to 1.000$, while in fact nothing has changed. Now I know very well that this is an oversimplification, yet it is not so outland…

Even your example doesn’t seem that pathological if you assume that the individuals are actually pursuing their preferences rather than deliberately trying to inflate their group GDP.

Which is why a more exaggerated comparison would be this: a person who walks home after finishing work to cook dinner with the family using vegetables grown in the backyard vs a person who eats out in a bar, drives home drunk, gets into an accident, ends up in hospital, and creates a huge increase in GDP.

The example downplays the positive impact of the increase in GDP (eg the drunk driver creates jobs for car manufacturers, police officers, and doctors) but it shows how our narrow focus on GDP rewards behavior that may not be desirable.

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#33

Post by throwaway_tvs »

voltooid wrote: post #31
throwaway_tvs wrote: post #28

India's is a sad state. It is partly to do with the fact that the nation maintains (rather proudly IMO) the colonial structure of being a mere 'training ground' for Engineers and Scientists before they move to the US/UK/rem. Anglo-Saxon nations. K Vijayaraghavan, the DBT secretary, and a NAS fellow, has written a piece on the matter. https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/india-must-shed-inte...

Respectfully, it seems to me that India (and other countries in the region and maybe elsewhere) has a problem with strictly hierarchical structure, issues with accessibility and availability of resources. There is no investment in improving training for teachers. Typically, people that don't find jobs anywhere else take up teaching. Teaching is also typically a high-stress, low-paid job. It seems to have not a lot to…

You might be right to the first order about language, but having a 'colonial' system is very insidious IMO.

First it means that a large fraction of the population is implicitly denied resources to develop their abilities. Second it means that people who do make it through the system (as it is) have no real incentives to stay back, neither cultural, nor fiscal, nor institutional.

Personally, none of the people I studied with/worked under ended staying in India. It's interesting that British India managed to sustain better state universities, than today.

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#34

Post by sanxiyn »

throwaway_tvs wrote: post #30

I really admire Israel on the intellectual front. This is a nation that starts using an obscure liturgical language (Hebrew) at the turn of the 19th century, and today has Silicon Wadi which is second only to SV, the highest proportion of PhDs in the population, and a couple Nobels, Fields, Turing and Wolf prizes! I wonder if there are some aspects of Jewish culture than can be incorporated the world over. India on t…

Not Jewish culture, but Jewish genetics.

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#35

Post by iagovar »

throwaway_tvs wrote: post #30

I really admire Israel on the intellectual front. This is a nation that starts using an obscure liturgical language (Hebrew) at the turn of the 19th century, and today has Silicon Wadi which is second only to SV, the highest proportion of PhDs in the population, and a couple Nobels, Fields, Turing and Wolf prizes! I wonder if there are some aspects of Jewish culture than can be incorporated the world over. India on t…

But why does this happen in Israel? They don't benefit from the huge capital flows and single market of the US

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#36

Post by ekianjo »

PeterStuer wrote: post #9

A large proportion of the so-called public R&D spending is actually backdoor subsidies to company's normal production activities. Here in the EU there has been a relentless lobbying push by industry to redefine 'Research' to include the higher 'Technology Readiness Levels' [1]. Traditionally 'Research' was deemed to be up to TRL-3, and 'Development' up to TRL-5. The distinctions are important as there are far stricte…

How about stopping subsidies to companies altogether? Its not a necessary market mechanism.

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#37

Post by [deleted] »

sanxiyn wrote: post #34
throwaway_tvs wrote: post #30

I really admire Israel on the intellectual front. This is a nation that starts using an obscure liturgical language (Hebrew) at the turn of the 19th century, and today has Silicon Wadi which is second only to SV, the highest proportion of PhDs in the population, and a couple Nobels, Fields, Turing and Wolf prizes! I wonder if there are some aspects of Jewish culture than can be incorporated the world over. India on t…

Not Jewish culture, but Jewish genetics.

[deleted]

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#38

Post by the6threplicant »

throwaway_tvs wrote: post #33
voltooid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, it seems to me that India (and other countries in the region and maybe elsewhere) has a problem with strictly hierarchical structure, issues with accessibility and availability of resources. There is no investment in improving training for teachers. Typically, people that don't find jobs anywhere else take up teaching. Teaching is also typically a high-stress, low-paid job. It seems to have not a lot to…

You might be right to the first order about language, but having a 'colonial' system is very insidious IMO. First it means that a large fraction of the population is implicitly denied resources to develop their abilities. Second it means that people who do make it through the system (as it is) have no real incentives to stay back, neither cultural, nor fiscal, nor institutional. Personally, none of the people I studi…

Can I ask where there people from different castes there or is it totally ignored?

Re: How much countries spend in R&D

#39

Post by samuell »

throwaway_tvs wrote: post #30

I really admire Israel on the intellectual front. This is a nation that starts using an obscure liturgical language (Hebrew) at the turn of the 19th century, and today has Silicon Wadi which is second only to SV, the highest proportion of PhDs in the population, and a couple Nobels, Fields, Turing and Wolf prizes! I wonder if there are some aspects of Jewish culture than can be incorporated the world over. India on t…

I really enjoyed reading "Start-up Nation" by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Some clues, and lots of inspiration there.
Post reply on HN