351–360 of 529 posts
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China is probably more likely to take over in science.
Not if the EU creates the conditions to attract the scientific talent wanting to leave the US.
They'll probably talk about starting to promote innovation. They kind of have to. But it's a paradigm shift.
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There are fixed costs associated with running research labs and facilities. Just because private funding can (sometimes) come with lower allocations for overheads doesn't mean that research can continue at pace without the public grant overheads. The vast bulk of research money is public not private. While I will happily concede that there is always room for improvement with how we fund research, your suggestions are…
I guess the problem is that I just don't trust them. It's a bunch of university administrators and government bureaucrats (two groups I trust on the level of used car dealers) spending other people's money. I think the solution to this is transparency. If these universities want to continue getting tax exempt status and generous overhead allocations out of taxpayer funds, then they should be required to release their…
In your mind it seems to be "those people come pleading for money so they can do research, giving it is essentially charity"- but it couldn't be further from the truth.
Most top-tier researchers can do their science anywhere. If you don't make stuff easy and comfortable enough to hold them, they'll just leave the country. A significant chunk of science spending is an attempt to bribe researchers to stay. Drop that and other countries are going to get those invaluable people.
I can tell you that several major EU universities have started massive outreach programs and are starting to snatch all the top researchers from the US. The damage this will cause to the US' scientific leadership is not even quantifiable, it's completely insane.
Shooting your own foot because you "don't trust bureaucrats". Oh well.
Anyway, at my university the first few top researchers already arrived, this is going to be exciting in european research. If you guys don't want this massive advantage, we'll gladly take it.
I'm surprised that there's been no mention of Operation Paperclip, neither in the article nor in the comments here. Seems like a huge part of the story to leave out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Hard to overstate how much effort the US put into collecting all the best scientists in the post WWII world.
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How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war…
> How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the w…
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No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food because we like to have a variety of produce year round and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise there would be famine. These are not equivalent situations.
It's true that the United States does not depend on food and energy imports. However, the growing fiscal situation and unsustainable costs of maintaining global hegemony are very similar to that of Britain in the 20th century, as is the declining competitiveness of American industry. You're never going to find any exact or perfect historical parallels but there are enough similarities to cause concern.
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>> There are far too many documented instances of it actually working to call it a fantasy. Markets are a tool which can work extremely well if deployed carefully and within a sensible regulatory framework. Given that the world CO2 level keeps rising, we can't eat fish because of heavy metals and we all have forever microplastics in us, I think it's fair to question some of our assumptions. >> Markets aren't expected…
> Wealth inequality can rise without regulatory capture. Government is not the source of all evil. Smaller govenrment would just lead to further concentration of wealth and power within the private sector. We need a balanced system, not blind devotion. But there's the problem: The person you're replying to clearly thinks there's too much government. You seem to think there's not enough. If I had to pick a side of thi…
To make a technical parallel can we really say "C is good, Java is bad"?
I think focus should be much more on discussing actual policies and their impact - which can become quite complex - rather than stamp everything with "more/less government/market" and then use the predefined belief that one or the other is good. I personally favor various policies, and I can't put all of them at the same time in a box with a label of "more government" or "less government".
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It is not only about learning material being available. It is also about live circumstances of people. Think about when you are doing your learning. When do you have opportunity to learn. Think about what other people might be doing at that time, that prevents them from learning. Think about the mental framework you have, that enables you to learn and that others might not have. Many times when I see some idle shop k…
My friend Eric Engstrom (yes, that guy) got a programming job at Microsoft despite having zero education beyond high school. He became a team leader for DirectX. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, not software. Yet I got jobs as a software developer with zero certifications. At the D Language Foundation, we have never asked any of our participants for there certifications. Some have PhDs, some have high schoo…
That isn’t an argument or solution for anything. That’s state some fact, then state your desired conclusion, without even an attempt at reasoning in between.
Show me any community that turns their success demographics around. Someone pointing at a few successful examples, and saying everyone should do that, won’t be how they did it.
People have suffered in disadvantaged demographics from the dawn of time. They are real. Nobody wants differences like that to exist, but they are pernicious. Context has a huge impact on people and bad contexts are often very self-reinforcing.
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…
Post-WWII the US had already become the superpower in science and technology and Europe was struggling to rebuild after the war (e.g. rationing ended in the UK only in 1954).
The brain drain started before the war, was amplified by the war, and continued after the war because the US were so rich generally. This has continued since. I don't think that what Trump is doing will have an impact because it may not last and the US will still overall much more attractive than, say, Europe.
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My friend Eric Engstrom (yes, that guy) got a programming job at Microsoft despite having zero education beyond high school. He became a team leader for DirectX. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, not software. Yet I got jobs as a software developer with zero certifications. At the D Language Foundation, we have never asked any of our participants for there certifications. Some have PhDs, some have high schoo…
This post is a great example of how very smart people can fall victim to their own biases. When you put the "all are welcome" sign on the door of your programming language organization, you're not sampling from "all" but just the people who are already interested in programming, and especially the design and construction of programming languages. These people are inherently motivated to learn and particularly self mo…
While I don't "get" their way of being, I have to acknowledge such people do exist, and it is wasteful to consider the people I "get". Otherwise the other "types" might gather around some stupid leaders that come with ideas like "science kills babies let's burn all scientists on a stake!" (exaggerating a bit, but similar things did happen)
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So a top TikTok influencer is more valuable than a surgeon?
Yes. They provide a scaled entertainment. You are forgetting the reach that this person has. Compared to a surgeon who's impact is more local, they might help a few patients in a week. Do you think a combat soldier is more important than a VP of Google?
The original example is that certain economic activities are force multipliers, the guy who actually does a good job in servicing the metro in my city (we avoid 10 minutes of delay) has more impact than most local CEO day to day. A good supply of bus drivers make certain services possible, which in turn boost productivity.
The social influencer entertains like shitty cocaine, we don't have a lack of inane shit, their absurd payout exists because ZIRP happened. Bad entertainment has costs beyond the directly measured by dollars.
Getting everybody addicted to nicotine is profitable but bad, correct?
A hypothetical world were we "stagnated" on MySpace equivalents could've existed and surely the generated value would be higher.