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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

#391

Post by littlestymaar »

BobbyJo wrote: post #194
grafmax wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the free market will self-correct and optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy. Markets don’t account for externalities, they concentrate wealth (and therefore political power), and they routinely underprovide merit goods like education, healthcare, and basic research (things that benefit society broadly but aren’t immediately profitable). As for how to address budget issues, the solution is simpl…

Im afraid you'd need to be pretty liberal with your definition of rich at this point to dig us out of this hole through taxes alone.

No, you are just underestimating how rich the rich are.

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

#392

Post by littlestymaar »

SecretDreams wrote: post #380
BobbyJo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im afraid you'd need to be pretty liberal with your definition of rich at this point to dig us out of this hole through taxes alone.

Tax wealth somehow, not just income. It's clear the accumulation has become a generational problem. Your great grandkids could cure cancer and bezo's could do nothing and yours would never have a fraction of the wealth his have.

Even with their preposterous salaries, NBA stars would have to work for millenia without spending anything before getting Bezos-level wealth.

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

#393

Post by littlestymaar »

jack_h wrote: post #52
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…

> 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 US debt is starting to become an existential problem.

It is not existential except for the financial markets, because they need safe securities: remove US bonds and modern finance grinds to halt.

US debt is high just because the US government decided in the 80s that they will start borrowing money from the rich instead of taxing them. The money exists, and it doesn't have to be borrowed just because Laffer draw a cute curve on a restaurant napkin.

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

#394

Post by philwelch »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #187
philwelch wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it really, really isn't. The key difference is that the US can finance deficits and Britain couldn't. There's huge appetite all over the world to buy US government debt and to invest in the US. The UK needed massive foreign aid just to survive.

As long as you can still find someone to lend you money, debt isn’t a problem? Good to know.

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

#395

Post by throwawaymaths »

sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #300
throwawaymaths wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 selec…

You might think crisis of reproducibility means everyone is faking data. No, that does not mean that. There are many factors to a crisis of reproducibility. One is fake data. A bigger one is a lack of incentive and a lack of complete data gathering details on some metric. Generally even if there is a crisis is subjective. There's also usually a mismatch between what older scientists and younger scientists think are t…

> Most issues are small nudges or selective data (e.g, retesting when data doesn't support your expectations), not blatant lies.

Yeah you missed it. When you do small nudges or selectively report data that's even worse than faking data. Not all villains twirl their mustaches. It's the ones that don't that are the most dangerous, these are the ones that are going to suck time and effort away from the collective endeavour the worst. Everyone knows that leclair can't do synthesis. But how certain are we that Phil Baran's Xenon oxidation really worked?

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

#396

Post by thrance »

blululu wrote: post #193
csa wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> papers from China have gone from sparse and poorly done imitations of western papers (~15-20 yrs ago), to innovative must reads if you want to stay on top of the field. Usually when I think of a new idea, it has already been done by some Chinese researcher. Not germane to the main thread, but are the “new idea” papers written by Chinese authors mostly published in English, Chinese, or both? If Chinese is part or al…

In my experience Chinese academics are far more bilingual than western ones. I think that for Chinese academics the English publications are generally of a higher quality and more prestigious, but I’m sure that too will change over time. I can definitely say that Chinese publications have gotten much better in terms of quality over the last 20 years and there are now a lot of results worth translating. At this point…

*Chinese academics are far more bilingual than English-speaking ones.

Here in France, every academic I know, and I know quite a lot of them, are all perfectly fluent in English. Most of what they write is in English, or at the very least translated into it.

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

#397

Post by jt2190 »

jack_h wrote: post #52
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…

> 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…

So your argument is that the U.S. is currently like wartime Britain, and that science funding specifically must be sacrificed despite the fact that is has created an economic boon that would help to pay down the debt: We just desperately need the money now for else the country could cease to exist, and we’ll sort out how to restore a science driven economy once the crisis is over?

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

#398

Post by SecretDreams »

littlestymaar wrote: post #392
SecretDreams wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax wealth somehow, not just income. It's clear the accumulation has become a generational problem. Your great grandkids could cure cancer and bezo's could do nothing and yours would never have a fraction of the wealth his have.

Even with their preposterous salaries, NBA stars would have to work for millenia without spending anything before getting Bezos-level wealth.

Everything about this sentence makes me sad lol

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

#399

Post by kensai »

grafmax wrote: post #174
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 idea that the free market will self-correct and optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy. Markets don’t account for externalities, they concentrate wealth (and therefore political power), and they routinely underprovide merit goods like education, healthcare, and basic research (things that benefit society broadly but aren’t immediately profitable). As for how to address budget issues, the solution is simpl…

We should be thankful you did not write: eat the rich.
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