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China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

sciencemag.org

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Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#71

Post by chillacy »

maedla wrote: post #43
squidlogic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the humanities succumbed to postmodernism long ago. Since then it has been impossible to impose strict tests on veracity as you find in hard sciences.

What do you mean?

I can only guess but art is now considered to be inherently subjective. So you there's no way to make statements like "picasso is better than jackson pollock", or "cubism is not real art".

Going further there are a number of works meant to probe the exact limit of what we're willing to consider art. I recall a couple interesting ones:

1. An artist took a shit in a can and sealed it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit

2. I recall there was an artist who took an existing book and changed the author name to their own, I can't find a link right now though.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#72

Post by fsflover »

sudosysgen wrote: post #40
im3w1l wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you pay lip service to the right politics you can innovate as much as you want in science and technologies. You are free to use tabs for indentation or write your webservice in brainfuck if you want. What can be a drag on innovation is if there is nepotism. If the leader appoints his good-for-nothing nephew to science minister. Or if there is corruption, and well connected incumbents throw up endless barri…

Indeed. That's why the USSR has some really good scientific research sponsored by the state while a lot of the good art was underground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#73

Post by chillacy »

xenospn wrote: post #58
arcticbull wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an incredibly short-sighted way of looking at what's happening. If you want to become a Chef, you don't start by inventing new Michelin star dishes de novo. You copy your betters. Over and over and over. Then, once you learn how they do what they do, you innovate. Japan did this. Do not underestimate China.

There's one major difference - Japanese companies took mediocre western tech (autos, transistor radios) and made it better. Chinese companies just copy.

Everybody copies at first, then they start making state of the art improvements.

It takes time though, Toyota was founded in 1937, they started by reverse engineering Chrystler cars (they were surprisingly open about this in the Toyota museum). Chinese companies got started maybe around the 1980s with market reforms.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#74

Post by arcticbull »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #59
arcticbull wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novel R&D is more expensive than incremental catch-up R&D; you can catch up by spending less money since by definition you at least know where you're going. When you take into account that China's GDP is 70% of the US but has a PPP factor of about 1.6 (i.e. the same amount of US dollars goes 60% further in China than it would notionally in America) they're actually spending what amounts 2.6% of the US GDP in PPP doll…

Also on a per output basis spies are cheaper than scientists.

Yes.

(a) that changes nothing about what I said, and...

(b) do you really, truly, honestly, believe that if America were behind in tech the first thing they'd do wouldn't be to send in the spies? Of course they would. I know because that's what I would do. As a leader my obligation is to my people at the end of the day -- and this is true -- who's going to stop me?

In what world would you sit back and say, well, I think it'd be better if we just figured it out on our own, fair and square lol.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#75

Post by newen »

sudosysgen wrote: post #38
cma wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But their purchasing power parity is way higher so presumably they get more for less, other than stuff they have to import to support research.

I don't understand why this is downvoted. Money goes further in China than in the US, and the Chinese GDP PPP is indeed higher than the US, although barely.

$27.8 trillion vs $20.3 trillion is not barely.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#76

Post by smeeth »

mistermann wrote: post #64
smeeth wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said the "humanities", but the examples of research you'd like were from the "social sciences". The humanities deals with fields like comparative literature, poetry, history, Russian language studies, etc. I am personally quite happy my tax dollars do not fund a lot of that, though I know not everyone feels this way. Psychology and sociology are the fields that study the human happiness or social dynamics issues…

> You said the "humanities", but the examples of research you'd like were from the "social sciences". If we're being pedantic, I'd like to point out what I actually said: >> ~"the humanities" (culture, society, happiness, etc) It appears I've made an error in terminology, but I would have anticipated the additional words I included would have rectified my error. Apparently my heuristics failed in this case. > Psychol…

I apologize if my comment came across as pedantic, I certainly wasn't trying to be.

The way research in the humanities and social sciences are conducted are fundamentally different, which is why I think the lexical distinction is important in this case. Most social science research applies the scientific method (hypothesis testing etc.), most humanities research does not.

>The quirkiness of specific forum conversations (this one, for example) is one class of interactions where I believe we could learn something useful that may shed light on broader trends we see in society, if we put some serious effort into it.

I agree.

>although, it's completely possible they produce excellent results, and are completely being ignored (which should be noticed in a proper review)

If I had to bet on it I'd say this is the answer, though I'd add that in addition to being ignored the research is being used in ways you and I wouldn't like. I know for example that app/social media development 2005-today relied/rely heavily on psychological research pertaining to addiction, human computer interaction, etc. I'm positive some of that was NSF funded.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#77

Post by sudosysgen »

fsflover wrote: post #72
sudosysgen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. That's why the USSR has some really good scientific research sponsored by the state while a lot of the good art was underground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...

In this context I wouldn't really include the social sciences, which leaves Biology and Cybernetics that were indeed suppressed for 20-30 years.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#78

Post by gamblor956 »

arcticbull wrote: post #57
gamblor956 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that IP was stolen from US and EU companies. Cost isn't the only reason that manufacturing is moving out of China; companies are finally realizing that using Chinese factories is tantamount to giving the PRC access to all of your technical IP.

That's an incredibly short-sighted way of looking at what's happening. If you want to become a Chef, you don't start by inventing new Michelin star dishes de novo. You copy your betters. Over and over and over. Then, once you learn how they do what they do, you innovate. Japan did this. Do not underestimate China.

The difference is that a chef-in-training works for the Michelin-star chef in the "better" chef's restaurant, and then leaves to start their own restaurant.

China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products.

This cycle has already happened to over a dozen former clients. I went in-house years ago, but even before then my firm had begun discouraging companies from opening manufacturing facilities in China for any product with any sort of valuable technical IP.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#79

Post by mistermann »

smeeth wrote: post #76
mistermann wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You said the "humanities", but the examples of research you'd like were from the "social sciences". If we're being pedantic, I'd like to point out what I actually said: >> ~"the humanities" (culture, society, happiness, etc) It appears I've made an error in terminology, but I would have anticipated the additional words I included would have rectified my error. Apparently my heuristics failed in this case. > Psychol…

I apologize if my comment came across as pedantic, I certainly wasn't trying to be. The way research in the humanities and social sciences are conducted are fundamentally different, which is why I think the lexical distinction is important in this case. Most social science research applies the scientific method (hypothesis testing etc.), most humanities research does not. >The quirkiness of specific forum conversatio…

What I'm getting at, in not a very effective way, is that I see low hanging fruit everywhere I look, and I don't think I'm the only one. Where I do think I may differ, is that I also sense a strong aversion to discussing this low hanging fruit in extreme detail and unconventional ways.

For example, plenty of people think climate change is a legitimate threat, and that prudent societal responses are hampered by imperfections in democracy, and that beliefs such as racism play a role in voting choices. Nothing very controversial (from an HN perspective) so far I don't think. But an invisible line that I sense cannot be crossed here is the underlying reasons why people "are" "racist", or the degree to which mass heuristic-based theory of mind estimations (~mind reading) like this are even true, or even happening. Introduce this style of thinking and one will surely be rewarded with downvotes, if not stern "culture war guidelines violations" warnings. But one thing you'll never get is any substantial justification or reasoning behind why there are peer-enforced guard rails on things like:

- what can be discussed

- how (from what perspectives) certain things can be discussed

- at what level of detail things can be discussed

I think there is something very interesting going on here, and that there seems to be this strong, almost universal/multi-dimensional aversion to discussing it (the phenomenon) makes me even more curious.

Re: China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%

#80

Post by fsflover »

sudosysgen wrote: post #77
fsflover wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...

In this context I wouldn't really include the social sciences, which leaves Biology and Cybernetics that were indeed suppressed for 20-30 years.

why wouldn't you include the societal sciences?
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