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How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

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Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#31

Post by the_af »

igtztorrero wrote: post #18

The Manhattan Project is the most important example of the power that can be achieved through collaborative work between the private sector and the government. It allowed us to win the war and surpass Hitler's scientists. All thanks to Roosevelt's understanding of the letter from Einstein, Szilard, Teller & Wigner.

The Manhattan Project was not how the war against Hitler was won. I'd say it factored very little, if at all, in the European theater of war.

It was also not how the war against Japan was won, that was merely the coup d'grace against an already defeated Japan (in American storytelling, it was also a way to minimize casualties during the last moments of the war; this view isn't widely held in the rest of the world though).

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#32

Post by thisisit »

spamizbad wrote: post #2

This saddens me greatly. I think to certain people, this is viewed as a necessary trade-off to curb the political power and influence of the so-called "Professional Managerial Class" in the United States, due to fears that a version of James Burnham's prediction[1] would come true. When this discourse comes up on sites like Twitter, and people ask why we're doing it, supporters of these cuts ultimately lay the blame…

> the response to COVID (Masking, vaccine mandates, etc) This is something which I find quite saddening. The ire seemed to be directed at "scientists". The funny/sad part happens whenever you try to concede and say - Lets concede that scientists were wrong. How was the handling from POTUS at that time? People start getting into whataboutism. The most sad part is that they think POTUS is simultaneously responsible for Project Warp Speed and also that fast approval made the vaccine suspect.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#33

Post by jhbadger »

fluidcruft wrote: post #27
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting administration achieves these goals. (It's not the skyrocketing number of tenured professors that is driving college costs.) Now, do you have to cut research in order to cut administration? Research takes a lot of administration, but that should be paid for by the research , not by the students.

It seems like capping indirect rates achieves the goal of defunding administrative bloat while preserving funding to the actual research?

No. Indirect costs on grants aren't some slush fund used to fund whatever but are real costs involved in doing science. It costs money to build lab facilities, maintain and repair lab equipment, pay salaries of support staff like IT folks and lab techs. If indirect costs get capped, more of the actual grant will have be used for these things and less science will get done.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#34

Post by owebmaster »

Severian wrote: post #9

We need another Bell Labs where people can experiment without immediate monetization. Look at the history of lasers and such. Took decades but now we have femto pulse lasers for Lasik and such.

Google just did that with LLMs and decided (with the endless layoffs) that they would not continue "subsidizing" their competitors.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#36

Post by fluidcruft »

jhbadger wrote: post #33
fluidcruft wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like capping indirect rates achieves the goal of defunding administrative bloat while preserving funding to the actual research?

No. Indirect costs on grants aren't some slush fund used to fund whatever but are real costs involved in doing science. It costs money to build lab facilities, maintain and repair lab equipment, pay salaries of support staff like IT folks and lab techs. If indirect costs get capped, more of the actual grant will have be used for these things and less science will get done.

Included in this overhead is administrative staff salaries and administration's facilities that researchers themselves have no control over. That's all spending controlled by research administrators and the institutions administrative layers that control research including decisions about who they hire for administrative roles and various aspects of strategic planning.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#37

Post by beachtaxidriver »

arisbe__ wrote: post #17

Professionalization and high employee debt means that the employees will choose sel-prezervation over creative inquiry and truth seeking. Carring on with this too blantly and over time, it seems self-undermining. I'd guess Science died the day it was born as "Science". So being a Science superpower really means being a gatekeeping Science-containment Superpower. Antiscience?

Exactly. When the average house in urban areas started being around $1M... There is no more truth seeking.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#38

Post by jaybrendansmith »

Please unflag this post. Steve Blank is an extreme moderate in the sense that he is non-political. So is this post. It is laying out an uncomfortable truth that impacts hackers in the US and everywhere. The simple facts is, our startup culture is under attack by the current administration. Should this attack be successful, we will no longer have startups, because without scientific research from US universities, supported by public grants, we will no longer have round A/B/C. It's game over for YCombinator and hacker culture in the US. We will all need to move to China. Sound extreme? It's not.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#40

Post by HankB99 »

ne0flex wrote: post #24
jagger27 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the best science ever done was done in a military context.

Very true, among them: - Nuclear energy - Internet & GPS - Numerous medical advancements (rapid medical response techniques, advanced trauma care, etc.) It's a dual-edged sword.

> sword

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but I bet a fair bit of metallurgy was learned producing a better sword.

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