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Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

nytimes.com

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Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#21

Post by beloch »

jrs99 wrote: post #15

I don't know why you would employ a science adviser who thinks that physics isn't "sexy." It's damn sexy. And anyone who really understands even a small amount of physics will think that physics is "sexy."

Think about what these uber-rich entrepreneurs would find sexy. Curing cancer, a condom people actually want to use, extending human life, saving the world from meteor impacts, bringing mammoths back, flying to space... It's all near-future, commercializable stuff. Next, go read some article titles/abstracts under quant-ph on arxiv and think about how many would of those would really grab these rich dudes by their eyeballs and make them drop a few million.

A huge portion of physics is driven by basic curiosity, has no commercial applications in the near future, and is so esoteric that even other physicists have to work very hard just to understand what's going on. Much of this stuff will wind up being dead-ends, but some of it is the foundation the future will be built on top of. No trained physicist currently alive can predict what will change the world and what won't. Why should we let people whose only qualification is money try to decide what's important?

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#22

Post by [deleted] »

angersock wrote: post #17
rjzzleep wrote: post #12

here's an anecdote from a german communication network professor i was sitting at lunch with. as comparison, the pay for a professor here is 50k a year, but can be more. you heard that right, that's what a bsc in low pay southern states gets. he said the following thing which made me rethink the whole thing a little: "conversely i get to research anything i want to, and i don't have to worry about pleasing business w…

"conversely i get to research anything i want to" [that there is funding and no competition for].

[deleted]

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#24

Post by wolfgke »

_delirium wrote: post #9
kiba wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that we are already in deep debt. We may have allocate part of our budget from other areas to science. For example, reallocate defense spending to pure scientific research.

It seems to have gone more in the other direction. At least in CS, if you want big funding nowadays you need to do DARPA research, because their budget has fared better. And DARPA research has gotten more micromanaged; gone are the days where they'd hand out large block grants to promote general American excellence in areas of "national importance". Nowadays they partner you with effectively a professional "minder" (…

> Partly because I think we no longer feel much of a need to prove we're better in science/tech than a major rival, which was once the Soviets, so general science/tech advancement is a harder sell.

Isn't China a new "dangerous" competitor?

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#26

Post by tsotha »

Aqueous wrote: post #5
jdonaldson wrote: post #3

Universities also privatize science through patents and IP. Research publications privatize research by bundling and charging exorbitant fees for journals and proceedings. Our generation doesn't have a NASA or Bell Labs. The closest thing to those outfits are vanity projects from billionaires... SpaceX, etc.

The only reason we have a shot at affordable commercial spaceflight, as well as an eventual affordable journey to Mars, is because of that vanity project. If it was left up to the public sector alone, I don't think we'll be able to go to Mars in 20 or 30 years. But this hasn't really changed. Even in NASA's hey day space missions weren't government-only projects - The space capsules and Saturn V were built by contrac…

>The only reason we have a shot at affordable commercial spaceflight, as well as an eventual affordable journey to Mars, is because of that vanity project.

I'm not sure why you're calling SpaceX a vanity project. The company is already profitable, and if things play out like Musk is planning the company stands to make a lot of money. That's not a vanity project; that's a business.

Now, a Mars shot would be a vanity project if it were self-financed. But I doubt it will happen if taxpayers aren't willing to pay for it.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#27

Post by tinco »

jdonaldson wrote: post #3

Universities also privatize science through patents and IP. Research publications privatize research by bundling and charging exorbitant fees for journals and proceedings. Our generation doesn't have a NASA or Bell Labs. The closest thing to those outfits are vanity projects from billionaires... SpaceX, etc.

I feel conflicted, at one hand you're complimenting Elon Musk's achievements by comparing SpaceX to NASA and Bell Labs, on the other, you are calling it a vanity project. Which I am sure Musk would not agree with.

Donating money and having your name on a University building, that might be vanity, but more importantly charity. Let's not put mundane judgements on such niceties.

But investing in and aiding in the realization of an operation that comes close to bankrupting and ruining you, that's not vanity, that's a man achieving his dreams and life goals. I'm sure he's flattered and proud of being compared to Iron Man, but I don't think "be likened to Iron Man" is as high on his bucket list as "change the world for the better" is.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#28

Post by ThePhysicist »

Seems like the US response to the EU flagship research and innovation programme, "Horizon 2020", which aims to provide 80 BN € (110 BN $) for groundbreaking research withing the next 7 years. One of the "flagship projects" selected for this programme is the "Human Brain Project", which seems similar to what Obama calls “the next great American project: a $100 million initiative to probe the mysteries of the human brain.". Although he should probably add a few digits to that number if he really means what he says, because I think 100 M$ will hardly be enough to unravel the mysteries of the brain.

In any case, as a scientist that's exactly the kind of competition I want to see more of!

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#29

Post by rjzzleep »

facepalm wrote: post #14
rjzzleep wrote: post #12

here's an anecdote from a german communication network professor i was sitting at lunch with. as comparison, the pay for a professor here is 50k a year, but can be more. you heard that right, that's what a bsc in low pay southern states gets. he said the following thing which made me rethink the whole thing a little: "conversely i get to research anything i want to, and i don't have to worry about pleasing business w…

Does it really work that way? My impression was that professors are constantly trying to raise money from the government. Instead of proving industry value, they have to convince bureaucrats that their ideas are worth pursuing. I think strong cases have been made that that's not the optimal way of allocating money for scientific research. For example: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/posi... (g…

german academics get a lot of money from industry too. but the numbers are absolutely not comparable to the numbers in the us.

this is not always the case as you can see from the nepomuk thing[1]

but to further strengthen your point, in europe program code or implementation is not considered research. european scientific funding is reserved for research, so a lot of the research you see will never be turned into viable products. that notion also exists in german universities. universities of applied sciences see this differently, but people sometimes joke that these are not real universities.

a lot of what was turned into money is actually european inventions. most americans, don't even know that europe has a lead in neuroscience research(that includes countries like spain). or at least used to, most americans also don't know how great the cs dpt of the tu wien(vienna) is for example.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEPOMUK_(framework) rdf based semantic metadata thingie with a cost of 17 million that is now being ditched partly because it's rdf

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