The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking • Hacker News Board

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#11

Post by cryptonector » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

dvdhnt wrote: post #5

virmundi wrote: post #2

Is the metric for most stem masters or phds useful? The Soviet Union use to produce many such people but never achieved much.

I disagree. Some of the Soviet scientists who won a Nobel Prize in science [1]: - 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm "for the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect" - 1962 Lev Landau "for his theories about condensed matter, particularly about liquid helium superfluidity" - 1964 Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the area of the quantum electronics, which led to…

But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it failed to overcome the downsides of communism. That's the point.

You can have lots of people with post-grad credentials whose creativity is not fully utilized. Or who don't really have the requisite creativity in spite of their credentials. The USSR may have had quality and quantity in spades (maybe it really did!) but their economic structure wasted that advantage.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#12

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #11

dvdhnt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Some of the Soviet scientists who won a Nobel Prize in science [1]: - 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm "for the discovery and interpretation of the Cherenkov effect" - 1962 Lev Landau "for his theories about condensed matter, particularly about liquid helium superfluidity" - 1964 Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the area of the quantum electronics, which led to…

But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it failed to overcome the downsides of communism. That's the point. You can have lots of people with post-grad credentials whose creativity is not fully utilized. Or who don't really have the requisite creativity in spite of their credentials. The USSR may have had quality and quantity in spades (maybe it really did!) but their economic structure wa…

> But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it failed to overcome the downsides of communism.

You mean “the downside of starting off as a poorly-developed state engaged in a multi-generation combination of outright war and proxy wars and military spending races with the most advanced countries in the world”.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#13

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #8

What drags the US down most in these rankings is "tertiary efficiency": roughly the fraction of people in grad school or with graduate degrees. Ranking countries is a dodgy business, even more than ranking colleges. A different set of weights or ways of measuring things could give you totally different answers. If you're looking for a way to claim the rankings are biased, you might argue that this up-ranks countries…

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#14

Post by CodeSheikh » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

Part of the problem, money is flowing more towards sinks like "Social Influencers", "V-loggers" and other similar jobs. Younger generation is focusing more on instant fame/money/reward/acknowledgement than investing in long term initiatives like pursuing STEM based programs. Sadly we live in a time where a 15 year old is making more money posting his/her pictures than someone holding a Phd. Forget about academia jobs there are no more jobs in post-docs positions in USA anymore.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#15

Post by dba7dba » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

creaghpatr wrote: post #10

I mean, sure, it's feasible that Israel unseated the US at no. 10, but also the US gives Israel tens of billions of dollars in support.

Don't other nations also receive much aid from US but score low in this ranking?

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#16

Post by electrograv » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #8

What drags the US down most in these rankings is "tertiary efficiency": roughly the fraction of people in grad school or with graduate degrees. Ranking countries is a dodgy business, even more than ranking colleges. A different set of weights or ways of measuring things could give you totally different answers. If you're looking for a way to claim the rankings are biased, you might argue that this up-ranks countries…

When casual readers see results titled "Bloomberg Innovation Index" (myself included, a while ago), there's a tendency due to brand reputation (Bloomberg!) to believe that this is some scientifically and statistically rigorous analysis of a well-defined "innovation" that can be trusted. This is dangerous, and IMO disappointing (I know, I was naive and optimistic) regarding the statistical credibility of many "reputable" sources.

In reality (as you describe), these are completely arbitrary human-designed heuristic scores with most likely no statistical significance.

I really wish we could qualify these "rankings" with a more honest term , like:

"statistically useless, arbitrarily rated average of multiple human designed score scales, meant to loosely relate to some quality we want to measure, but in reality is more a game of politics and adversarial score optimization."

But that doesn't have the same 'ring' to it as "top country rankings in innovation".

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#17

Post by TimPC » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #8

What drags the US down most in these rankings is "tertiary efficiency": roughly the fraction of people in grad school or with graduate degrees. Ranking countries is a dodgy business, even more than ranking colleges. A different set of weights or ways of measuring things could give you totally different answers. If you're looking for a way to claim the rankings are biased, you might argue that this up-ranks countries…

These rankings need to account for mobility of high profile graduate students. For example some of the top CS programs in Canada have 50-75% of graduates leave for the US tech sector. Canada gets rewarded for it's STEM grads who end up working for US companies in the US market while the US gets punished for it's lower domestic STEM grad production. If the rest of the world is producing a fairly substantial number of educated people who work for US companies on US innovations does it make sense to say it's less innovative? Sweden is #2 in Large part because there aren't categories that measure Venture Capital Invested in Country or New Business Formation. Is it really the case that a few more net patents filed is more valuable to innovation than having companies like Dropbox, AirBnB and Stripe? (Feel free to pick your start-ups of choice here).

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#18

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

zakk wrote: post #3

virmundi wrote: post #2

Is the metric for most stem masters or phds useful? The Soviet Union use to produce many such people but never achieved much.

They beat the US in sending the first man to space. Saying that “they never achieved much” is a gigantic understatement!!

And today, when American astronauts need a ride to space, guess who we have to bum it from?

It's a disgusting state of affairs, regardless of anyone's opinion on Russia.

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#19

Post by virmundi » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

zakk wrote: post #3

virmundi wrote: post #2

Is the metric for most stem masters or phds useful? The Soviet Union use to produce many such people but never achieved much.

They beat the US in sending the first man to space. Saying that “they never achieved much” is a gigantic understatement!!

Fair point. Poor wording on my part.

Given the way the ranking under discussion values tertiary education and given how much the Soviets had them but didn't succeed economically, is having a high number of them really beneficial? It takes resources and time to get a PhD or a masters. Are these the best thing on which to spend them? Do they really matter? Can you be more practically innovative with simple undergrad degrees?

Re: The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

#20

Post by blahman2 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

Many of the comments here show why critical thinking is a useful skill esp with articles such as this one, but given how much volume there is nowadays, and the fact that we are not all subject matter experts, it becomes a bit cumbersome.

I wish these articles had a "Ways in which our claim could be wrong" section. Maybe every article should. E.g. Here is what i think, but here are aspects of it that I haven't looked into that could make me change my stance.

At the very least, you'd know the author made some effort to be truthful, and not just sensationalist/misled.

Perhaps we can have a browser extension that aggregates and ranks crowdsourced feedback on articles such as this one? :P