31–40 of 210 posts
I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community. As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge political risk around pe…
That’s great. Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, ‘it was obvious that was going to fail’ is a step in the right direction. If western societies insist on outsourcing R&D through misguided tax laws, they have no idea the amount of harm they are doing to the next generation of young people (who will be subservient to the innovating countries that were smarter in their policies).
Government should absolutely have to justify how it allocates funds and which projects are taken on. This is a transparent attempt at avoiding the need to justify what is done with public money.
> Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, ‘it was obvious that was going to fail’ is a step in the right direction.
It really isn't. Covering failures up only makes the problem worse. Anything that does eventually leak will be blown much further out of proportion than if it has been clearly stated that it will probably fail from the start, but the benefits should it succeed outweigh the risks.
You would do even better to build a culture tolerant of failure. But the emergence of that culture depends on improving people's standard of living.
That this secret spending is coming from the same party that just months ago insisted there was no money to continue feeding children during a pandemic and who are also mired in corruption scandals regarding nepotism in government contracts just makes the idea look even more grotesque. Trying to do it during a pandemic you've just majorly fucked up the handling of makes it even less endearing.
Incidentally I happen to be in the middle of reading "The Dark Forest" by Liu Cixin. A core element of the book is how humanity is affected when standard of living is reduced and basic needs are unmet in order to meet technological research goals that will curtail an "undefeatable" foe. It generally leads to discontent towards the projects that are supposed to "save" them.
If the goal was to prevent the outsourcing of R&D then the government would be much better off taking a greater stake in universities and making sure both parties are compensated more from companies who go on to exploit that research.
* let universities and public research starve for money * drown them in documentation paperwork for the little money they get * give money to private companies for free and without transparency Corruption.
* let universities and public research starve for money * drown them in documentation paperwork for the little money they get * give money to private companies for free and without transparency Corruption.
Tories* When the tories give out money to their friends, it's for the greater good, remember?
We did this already and then privatised it as Qinetiq. Round and round we go again.
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/4665/documents...
If its our answer to DARPA then good. I only hope the money will be disbursed in ways similar to the DARPA challenges and not in the usual chronyist way of the UK There's a shocking number of people high up in UK tech influence circles who got there solely by networking, holding events and being on the peripheries of successful startups
Like Boris Johnson's lover.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tories* When the tories give out money to their friends, it's for the greater good, remember?
Politicians as a whole are known for lies, deciet and corruption. It's not limited to one specific party nor country. The visibility of corruption may change, but its presence never will.
The Good Law Project is a great example of the kind of organisation that investigates this. The Guardian does good work here too. I'm surprised to say it, but even Labour are making noise about it in Parliament. This is historically unusual and a sign of the return of the Old Boys' network. It is a bad sign for democracy.
https://goodlawproject.org/case/end-to-cronyism/ is a good start to read from.
* let universities and public research starve for money * drown them in documentation paperwork for the little money they get * give money to private companies for free and without transparency Corruption.
Congratulations on fathering the dumbest comment of the internet today
If its our answer to DARPA then good. I only hope the money will be disbursed in ways similar to the DARPA challenges and not in the usual chronyist way of the UK There's a shocking number of people high up in UK tech influence circles who got there solely by networking, holding events and being on the peripheries of successful startups
> There's a shocking number of people high up in UK tech influence circles who got there solely by networking, holding events and being on the peripheries of successful startups Like Boris Johnson's lover.
(Apologies if I just ruined the joke and you didn't really mean Carrie Symonds)