Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

391–400 of 562 posts

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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Chinese xenophobia is not American style. Sure they lack immigration but so many Chinese travel outside for education and business that they are in fact hyper aware of cultural differences and are upskilling themselves en masse in dealing with various cultures. They bring that skill back home to build companies and sub cultures that ape the best of other countries. This is very unlike US style xenophobia where Mu…

China and most Asian countries are ethonostates. In America, if you suggest that we should be an ethnostate you would not only be called a white supremecist, you'd likely lose your job. In fact, today to even suggest reducing immigration (like Trump) you get called a white supremecist. That is just a reality. So to say that China is less Xenophobic seems crazy to me. If China had the same immigration levels that Amer…

> China and most Asian countries are ethonostates. In America, if you suggest that we should be an ethnostate you would not only be called a white supremecist, you'd likely lose your job. In fact, today to even suggest reducing immigration (like Trump) you get called a white supremecist. That is just a reality.

Xenophobia has gradients and degrees:

What I am talking about: The number one reason why the US was able to be so dominant technologically for such a long time was because of multiculturalism and innovation/frontier/development mindset, regardless of a human's background or origin.

That attracted the best foreign minds (including best Chinese minds) out of China and they became US citizens and their children probably do AI at 3-letter institutions for us.

We put the barrier on smart people coming in. They went to the next best place, in China's case, that is China. They are innovating there and their kids are working in 3-letter companies in China. This is freaking the crap out of USA and it shows with so much news about China bothering so many people.

But we are to fault ourselves. Out of xenophobia, not only did we stop encouraging smart people from coming to the US and building businesses or innovation here, we also ourselves don't go out to other countries too much because "we numbah 1".

What you are talking about: Problems with multicultural society. You hold a very narrow view of multicultural societies. America has NEVER been monocultural in its history. It was always anglos vs dutch or protestants vs catholics or Irish hate or Italian hate or Polish hate and of course slavery and xenophobia.

America was a great success until recently, fighting through past civil wars and hard earned unity, until recently where the leaders abandoned our strengths for political gains (and I'm going to call out Republicans here for racism).

China, India and EU are large successes in multicultural societies themselves. People in China might look the same to the western eye but they are all different peoples, from different tribes and different cultures. China has been working to UNITE its peoples, America has been working to DIVIDE its peoples. And I say this as a patriot who hates PRC.

A united America will always be better than mono-China. But China unifying its peoples to interact with the world. And America wants to go back to civil wars era. These two forces together will ensure Murica numbah one is pretty much dead.

An open America will crush the xenophobic China that you refer to. But a xenophobic America has more to lose.

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

#392

"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.

Internet told me that best performing students in USA are mostly Asians If that's true, then his point stands, I guess?

Just go see the latest papers in CS - https://arxiv.org/list/cs/recent A lot of authors have Asian names (Chinese and Indian)

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

#393
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe. But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition There is for example no way a sw…

It's also important to consider that until the fall of the iron curtain the US needed western Europe to be strong economically and now does not care about Europe that much anymore, so they use industrial espionage, etc. like against the rest of the world.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help. But somehow China a country with even more Xenophobia and nationalism is catching up to us. And the U.S. used to have more Xenophobia and nationalism in the past and was also substantially more innovative. Maybe the real problem is that the U.S. (all the way up to the top) has become anti-intellectual. We have completely dumbed down our culture so that children today want…

But Chinese xenophobia is not American style. Sure they lack immigration but so many Chinese travel outside for education and business that they are in fact hyper aware of cultural differences and are upskilling themselves en masse in dealing with various cultures. They bring that skill back home to build companies and sub cultures that ape the best of other countries. This is very unlike US style xenophobia where Mu…

I would respectfully suggest that you're letting your opinions on American politics color your perspective here, because "my country number 1 and foreigners suck" is a pretty universal style of xenophobia. I don't know enough about Chinese culture specifically to say for sure, but I'd be very surprised if they don't have nationalists in that vein, since every country I'm familiar with does.

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

#395
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google definitely could of created a research laboratory. Wasnt it not long ago that companies would invest a lot more money on research? That was why we got so many impressive projects out of Bell Labs and I am sure other companies. Its a shame that horse race ended. Whats worse is Google wants all their software to be as intangible as possible by forcing it all on their servers. Google hasnt had many desktop apps y…

Google and Microsoft do a lot of interesting research. Waymo is a good example. I'm not sure what Apple does. My issue with big tech is not lack of innovation or research, but rather that it's all private. We're driving people out orgs that share their research with the world and into ones that lock it away.

This. At least from my understanding Bell Labs and PARC published papers continuously (I’ve read many over the years, not sure how much got published vs not).

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help. But somehow China a country with even more Xenophobia and nationalism is catching up to us. And the U.S. used to have more Xenophobia and nationalism in the past and was also substantially more innovative. Maybe the real problem is that the U.S. (all the way up to the top) has become anti-intellectual. We have completely dumbed down our culture so that children today want…

But Chinese xenophobia is not American style. Sure they lack immigration but so many Chinese travel outside for education and business that they are in fact hyper aware of cultural differences and are upskilling themselves en masse in dealing with various cultures. They bring that skill back home to build companies and sub cultures that ape the best of other countries. This is very unlike US style xenophobia where Mu…

China is an ethnostate that is actively committing a genocide. If that is not xenophobic I don't know what is.

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

#397

"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.

America is under-investing in technology and investment because the US is increasingly filled with people who aren’t American, and don’t ever aspire to be American – they just want what Americans have. The social and cultural values that allowed America to become the light on the hill, to generate the sort of excessive social capital that allowed the Apollo program, now needs to be diverted to support those who just want the lifestyle that living in the US economic zone enables, without the responsibility or cultural ownership of the values that made it possible.

America was a success before the Immigration Act of 1965, what diversity has delivered to America is division and destruction, as imported people and cultures predictably demand their values and needs be attended to in primacy to all others. Instead of investing in STEM to build the next epoch changing era of technology, we are investing in social sciences that specialise in division and enjoy pulling apart cohesive societies like a psychopathic doctor pulling apart wounds with tweezers.

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

#398
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google definitely could of created a research laboratory. Wasnt it not long ago that companies would invest a lot more money on research? That was why we got so many impressive projects out of Bell Labs and I am sure other companies. Its a shame that horse race ended. Whats worse is Google wants all their software to be as intangible as possible by forcing it all on their servers. Google hasnt had many desktop apps y…

Google and Microsoft do a lot of interesting research. Waymo is a good example. I'm not sure what Apple does. My issue with big tech is not lack of innovation or research, but rather that it's all private. We're driving people out orgs that share their research with the world and into ones that lock it away.

I think Apples research is seeing what happens when you sit on a quarter of a trillion dollars. Without veering far off topic. I don't think apple really has a culture of innovation anymore. Each rectangle looks the same. Remember when nokia had all their crazy feature phones. Taking a 30% cut on apps isn't that.

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

#399
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe. But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition There is for example no way a sw…

Corollary: regulation is not what's preventing European innovation from thriving.

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

#400

Late to this thread, sorry. I have two tangental questions. #1 In general terms, what's China's commitment (investment) in higher ed? Compared to the USA and other economies? USA's tuition, loans, student debt is always good for an argument on HN. Almost no one mentions that the USA decided to privatize higher ed some decades back. So I was wondering if China and others made the same mistake. #2 How does current Chin…

The problem with making higher ed only a public service is you run into rationing. If all positions have to be government funded there tends to be fewer positions.

There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a EU country.

Post reply on HN