Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think they don’t teach critical thinking?
We have all met college graduates.
Some of us are even college grads ourselves!
No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
51–60 of 528 posts
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#52> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…
The article doesn't mention that Bayh-Dole made it legal for a university to exclusively license a patent generated by a government-financed researcher to a corporation. Prior to this, if a corporation wanted to have exclusive rights to basic patents, they'd have to run their own private research labs to generate those patents. Prior to Bayh-Dole, university inventions were patented but there were no exclusive licens…
> So corporations largely stopped funding private research labs like Bell and instead entered into public-private partnerships
They didn't though. Bayh-Dole was 1980. All the big tech firms have invested massively in R&D since then, and I think it's also true for many non-tech industries or tech-adjacent (e.g. chip manufacturing, oil and gas).
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have all met college graduates.
I don’t understand, can you elaborate? I’m trying to understand your perspective. New college grads I generally meet and work with are bright, hard working, curious and have a deep desire to learn. I don’t think we’re having the same experiences so I want to know more about yours.
Most fresh college graduates I have worked with are anxiety ridden wrecks incapable of developing skills on their own and lack fundamental knowledge of industry practices.
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#54>> Scientists are driven by curiosity Ok, then why do they get affected by funding? The truth is, today there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding. The era for curiosity-driven science is was over a long time ago. The direction of research or science is all driven by funding.
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Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#55>> Scientists are driven by curiosity Ok, then why do they get affected by funding? The truth is, today there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding. The era for curiosity-driven science is was over a long time ago. The direction of research or science is all driven by funding.
I believe that most scientists start out being driven by curiosity. Just like most politicians start out being driven by ideology.
Unfortunately, we've created a system that wears them down to being driven largely by self-preservation.
Many people eager to better the world come of age every second. It's just that once they've amassed enough power to make a dent, most of them have been worn down.
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#56[flagged]
Why do you think they don’t teach critical thinking?
Because whilst universities claim they do that, there is no evidence to suggest it is true. People genuinely trained in critical thinking would be highly skeptical of this claim. For example,
- What exactly is the definition of critical thinking they are using?
- Which part of a {computer science, art history, etc} course teaches this?
- How is it assessed?
- If it's a teachable skill, why are there no qualifications in it or researchers studying it specifically?
- If it's something universities teach, why are there so many bad papers full of logical fallacies and obvious fraud?
I know some like to argue philosophy is such a course but very few people do philosophy degrees, so even if that were true it could hardly be generalized to all of university teaching.
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even clear that the premise is true. There's lots of 'research' done in the big tech companies. The biggest reason why companies don't seek to emulate "Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE", is probably that it reads like a list of textbox examples of "companies that failed to execute on their research findings", so clearly there was something wrong with this approach.
Xerox and Kodak, at least, stumbled into the future and then refused it. The same thing will happen to Google & co. And DuPont is very much alive doing DuPont things.
...and there's 3M and Würth.
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#58> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…
Not why it can’t be done so much as why it isn’t done. Share buybacks allow companies to reward executives directly as their compensation is tied to stock price. If we started not doing that, the priorities might shift, but those executives like things the way they are. Before Tim Cook Apple had never done a buyback - Jobs was always thinking Apple could do better with the money in R&D than paying off shareholders. W…
But dividends also result in a concrete financial reward for all shareholders, yes?
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#59> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…
Not why it can’t be done so much as why it isn’t done. Share buybacks allow companies to reward executives directly as their compensation is tied to stock price. If we started not doing that, the priorities might shift, but those executives like things the way they are. Before Tim Cook Apple had never done a buyback - Jobs was always thinking Apple could do better with the money in R&D than paying off shareholders. W…
Dumb maybe question: Why couldn’t the companies with excess profits just pay they employees more in salaries?
Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off
#60> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…
Of course the relation is minimal if it exists at all.
Stock buybacks are simply a more tax efficient dividend.