Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation • Hacker News Board

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#131

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #44

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because people being educated has become 'being elite'. Even in our own profession, I find it difficult to communicate with smart people who lack foundational knowledge, falter, ask for help and then ask me how I knew the right answer. I've had more than person tell me that there's no way this was taught at a university (threading, OS knowledge)

The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. The problem is political dynamics meant that the attitudes of the backward parts of the country have actually set policy for quite a while. That benefited American corporations in the short term - lots of CEO probably think for-profit, student-loan-driven education i…

> The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both.

There are a lot of really good schools in flyover states. Looking at the top 10 engineering schools in the US, depending on your definition of "flyover," there's CMU, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, and UT.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#132

Post by vlovich123 » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #97

didibus wrote: post #19

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "…

My hypothesis is that the US is a victim of its own success: several generations of living in a prosperous, stable society reduces the need for the average citizen to develop survival skills. Here I use the term 'survival skills' very generally: it includes specialized education and expertise in some area, financial planning and risk management skills, inter-personnel and conflict resolution skills, emotional resilie…

I think that’s an insane answer. We’ve divested in public schools over a prolonged period of time, plain and simple. The public schools that have not experienced that magically are in the wealthy “rich” neighborhoods. The system is working as intended. You want an educated population? Make sure schools have the proper investments. None of this 30 kids per classroom bullshit. Do 10-15 and see what kind of students you churn out.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#133

Post by akira2501 » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:13 AM UTC

didibus wrote: post #19

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "…

> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think

I think a lot of it is pricing and the debt model we use to fund it.

> Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore

The returns on that investment just aren't as good as they used to be, couple that with the required debt above, and stagnant wage growth in these industries and I'd say it's clear they aren't valued anymore.

> and has to either outsource the work or import workers who do from elsewhere.

That's actually seems more like part of the reasons for the above issues than it is something that follows from it.

Combine all this with the fact that total self-employment and other measures of entrepreneurship have been trending downwards lately while the level of corporate integration and mergers have been increasing and it's a recipe for the destruction of middle to middle-upper class incomes and careers.

> What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts".

This is a symptom of a sick system, and when the system is sick, it's inhabitants become sick as well.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#134

Post by unishark » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:20 AM UTC

SequoiaHope wrote: post #7

I am always curious what people think about the following subject: Do you believe patents promote innovation or hamper it? Certainly some business models are dependent on patents and intellectual property restrictions, but do you think it actually promotes innovation? My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patent…

> My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patents expired, innovation in the space boomed and the price of a decent 3D printer dropped by 100x.

I've seen this in other fields as well. Regular printers were mostly giant appliances until xerox's patents expired. I suspect the extremely slow start for VR (before it finally has started going somewhere now) is due to the flurry of patents you can see from the 90's finally expiring. I'm quite hopeful that a lot of technologies will take off in this way in the next few years, due to the expiration of patents from the internet bubble's R&D.

And regardless what one thinks about patents in theory, in practice it has clearly become a horrific mess, with the patent office rejected far too few applications. Applying technology everyone learns in college to a new problem actually counts as novel and non-obvious to them.

The "saving grace" is America's "ask forgiveness later" business culture. Basically violate patents as necessary, and if you make it big, pile up your own counter portfolio of patents to go to war with. The beneficiaries are the patent office and of course lawyers. Patent trolls become a problem though, as they have no products to get counter-sued over.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#135

Post by PeterStuer » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:21 AM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #84

natmaka wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it an effect of a feeling caused by governments using experts in a way letting (too often and a too large part of) the public think that they, at worst, are all (gov & experts alike) pushing their own short-termed and only self-beneficial agendas or, at best, nearly always devise some "Grand Plan" which then appears to cost much more than budgeted, gives less than promised and has unwanted unexpected side-effec…

It's a self fulfilling prophecy that's been ongoing since the 80s. An entire political party's ideology is based on the idea that government doesn't work and when in power they set out to prove it by making government dysfunctional by defunding agencies and confusing their mandates. That same party politicized clean air regulations, climate change, and wearing masks . This has crippled expertise because if one side c…

From a non-US perspective, you described the dominant ideology of both your political parties. I'm not saying they are 'the same', but they both are extreme neoliberale market proponents. They also both embrace a tight intertwined government and enterprise regimen to the point where it becomes very difficult to tell who owns who, or whether it is just one organisation.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#136

Post by techbio » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:23 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #54

didibus wrote: post #19

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "…

I don't understand China's educational strategy (no information), but their manufacturing strategy was highly decentralised. Shenzhen for example had a substantially independent government system with a modified tax code. They've been running a lot of independent experiments everywhere I looked, figuring out how to prosper. That might carry over to education. The biggest mistake the US seems to be making is centralis…

A big part of the Chinese education strategy has been to send lots of students to US universities to get advanced degrees and take that knowledge back to build China.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#137

Post by 0xfaded » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

moneytide1 wrote: post #6

I saw a "Just Have A Think" YouTube channel video recently describing the 1MV HVDC line being built across China. It is part of Belt&Road infrastructure project and will allow them to distribute excess loads to different time zones without skin effect losses of an AC line. This is a part of their COVID stimulus injection. When American $1.2k per citizen landed in accounts, I remember checking local Walmarts in the we…

Investment in public assets that take up the slack in the labour market and /remain/ public assets is the alternative to UBI I want to see.

An asset like a solar plant or a HVDC line produces revenue for the public. And there's no reason an independent publicly owned corporation can't function well.

I'll admit guaranteeing that the revenue isn't wasted by a government that becomes addicted to its revenue streams is another problem. (Denmark has a bridge with €30 plus tolls that were promised to become toll free once the loans were paid off. Never happened. Norway seems to do a better job with its oil fund.)

To bring China back as the reference, important government posts are extremely prestigious and held by very capable people. Outside of propping up their stock market, it is hard to fault their public investment stategy.

However, I disapprove of the surveillance state and the human rights abuses.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#138

Post by roenxi » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

sorval wrote: post #114

koolba wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cities and States with the worst public education systems and the highest crime rates have been run by one party, the Democrats, for 50+ years. Some 100+! They can and have continued to raise taxes and subsequently squander any money they collect. Any attempt to break that stranglehold, such as changing teachers union hiring practices or allowing for charter schools, is met with total resistance. You’re right tha…

Thats just utterly untrue and the reverse of whats actually true. "states that were coded as blue based upon results from the 2004 presidential election were significantly higher in education funding than were states coded as red. Students in blue states scored significantly higher on outcome measures of math and reading in grades four and eight than did students in red states." https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED5…

I note that koolba's comment was evidence-lite and really rather partisan. So it is probably incorrect.

However, claiming the reverse is true is also evidence-lite. That paper looks like it was a fairly cursory piece of work and didn't account for population size or characteristics (eg, number of disadvantaged students) in the correlation work.

I suspect what it really shows is that political affiliation isn't the biggest driver of outcomes. Looking at the table at the end of the paper and thinking about population, I suspect the aim would be more of what Massachusetts does and less of what California does (both Democrat states) if possible.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#139

Post by dayjobpork » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

lgleason wrote: post #69

"This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills." Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.

Bingo

It really annoys me when they bitch about not being able to bring in skilled workers from overseas because they can't find skilled people here... Hey, maybe they should fucking train someone!

Usually when a tech boss is complaining about not having skilled staff locally it's code for "... I want to find someone cheaper overseas". It's like seeing a job ad that wants a wizard at everything but has terrible pay, they just want to import a cheaper worker.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#140

Post by innagadadavida » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 6:28 AM UTC

didibus wrote: post #19

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "…

One other issue here is the disparity of salaries of finance/software folks make vs other engineers. This has caused a lot of folks to not pursue careers in aerospace, chemical, mechanical etc and just get software or finance jobs.

It’s hard to justify not working for a FANG and taking a pay cut.