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How the U.S. became a science superpower

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Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#121

Post by yubblegum »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #120
cs702 wrote: post #7

Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…

Total? Is this a lot? “Today, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to technology startups and existing companies”

Let's assume say a handful of key domains (as in bio-medicine, computing, energy, etc.) are there in a modern society. This gives roughly around 600 new innovations in a given top level domain (say biology) every year.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#122

Post by jack_h »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #113
jack_h wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that’s fair, but kind of tangential. The point I was making was that if discretionary spending, approximately 25% of outlays, could be completely cut we would still have a deficit. I’m not suggesting this is even possible, I’m merely using it as a demonstration of the scale of the problem.

Fair enough. I'd still quibble with your whole framing though. For example: > This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to provide government services. I don't know if you have a mortgage, but assuming you do, is it useful to say of the interest payments you make on that "this is X dollars that cannot be used to buy food, heat, gas or streaming services" ? I suggest that it is not, and for reasons that apply to…

I think we’re actually broadly in agreement. I’m unfortunately busy at work so I’m not articulating my position as well as I perhaps should, but I don’t think all debt or deficit spending is bad. It absolutely has a place and should be utilized. I don’t think this explains the US though. We’ve already hit 100% public debt to GDP (or 120% total debt to GDP) and I’m not seeing this slowing down. The last projections from the congressional budget going into reconciliation is a doubling of public debt in 10 years from what I remember.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#123

Post by Retric »

jack_h wrote: post #117
Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramaticall…

Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though;…

Noting people do is 100% optimal, but productivity gains mean resource constraint problems are more solvable than they first appear.

People are worried about automation driving people out of the workplace while others are worried about a lack of workers due to changing demographics. What’s going to happen is the result of a bunch of different forces, simplified projections are easy to make and unlikely to prove accurate.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#124

Post by fifilura »

arrosenberg wrote: post #115
fifilura wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah obviously. I am not from USA, but maybe you'll need to figure this out on state level? Country level seems rather blocked at the moment.

Can't do it, individual states can't print money and freedom of movement means the free rider problem will pop up quickly.

> can't print money

But can they raise taxes?

> freedom of movement

EU also has freedom of movement, but vastly different social security systems.

Language is of course an extra barrier, but how much people will move is overrated. And maybe you could restrict supposed benefits to people who have lived there in a few years.

Obviously IANAL, but i am thinking - seems like you generally hate your government no matter who it is, so maybe states should be a bit more independent.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#125

Post by throwawaymaths »

prpl wrote: post #89
oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systems don’t remain constant, though, and every system gets “gamed” once the incentives are well understood. I’m 100% for investment in scientific research, but I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that encourages that bad behavior as well as junk sc…

>>> We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions Can you define "many"? 100k reports? 10k reports? 1k reports? 150 reports? 15 reports? What's the incidence? What's the rate compared to the public and private sectors? What's the rate for defense contractors? Are we talking social sciences, hard sciences, health sciences? What's the field? "many" is just intellectu…

Even if it's a few. Imagine if honest researchers start chasing the fraudulent results. Now you have several people's time wasted. If the honest researcher is junior (PhD or Postdoc), their career is almost certainly over. Worse, assume the junior researcher is dishonest or marginal. The incentive is to fudge things a little bit to keep a career. The cycle begins anew... inherent in our system there is positive selection (in the 'natural selection' sense) for dishonest researchers.

This should give you pause.

Without claiming that any given administration is taking any action with deliberateness or planning... What is even more counterintuitive is that if the dishonesty hits a certain critical point, defunding all research suddenly is net positive.

I would also suggest you keep your ear to the ground. Almost every scientific discipline is in a crisis of reproducibility right now.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#126

Post by monknomo »

jack_h wrote: post #117
Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramaticall…

Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though;…

I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#128

Post by jltsiren »

9283409232 wrote: post #74
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

The problem with US debt comes from their unwillingness to tax billionaires. We just passed even more tax cuts for rich people and are scheduled to add more to the debt. Just tax rich people, it's not complicated.

From their unwillingness to tax people. American tax revenue as a fraction of GDP is 6-7 percentage points lower than in the average OECD country. That gap is over $1.5 trillion/year.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#129

Post by inglor_cz »

fallingknife wrote: post #105
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds Probably. But the solution almost certainly doesn't involve the federal government policing what is and isn't researched, discussed and taught. We had a system that worked. We're destroying the parts of it that worked, while retaining the parts that are novel. (Turning conservatives into a protected class, for instance--not even the CCP expl…

Why would the people paying for the research not control what it can be spent on? Letting the people who spend the money decide is typically not a good system.

typically

Pure science may not be a typical case, though, because the people who control the funds don't really have any idea whether the work they are funding is ultimately going to turn out productive or not. The work involved is far from routine and basically a jump into the unknown.

I get the risk of fraud and nepotism, but in some other situations (Bell Labs etc.), "choose very good people and let them improvise within certain limits of a budget" turned out to be very efficient. The devil is in the "choose very good people" detail.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#130

Post by ajross »

oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #63
cs702 wrote: post #7

Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…

Systems don’t remain constant, though, and every system gets “gamed” once the incentives are well understood. I’m 100% for investment in scientific research, but I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that encourages that bad behavior as well as junk sc…

> I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds

I think everyone would be. There's a lot of bad science that gets funded. The point, though, is that you can't pick the good science from the bad without DOING THE SCIENCE.

The easiest thing in the world is to sit back and pretend to be an expert, picking winners and losers and allocating your limited capital "efficiently". The linked article shows why that's wrong, because someone comes along to outspend you and you lose.

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