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No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

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Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#161

Post by nyeah »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #156
triceratops wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all shareholders That's the key phrase, they benefit all shareholders. Buybacks on the other hand only benefit the following shareholders: 1. those with regularly vesting stock options and stock grants - basically employees. For non-tech companies especially, this only means high-ranking employees 2. those who intend to sell - that is, soon-to-be-ex shareholders 3. those who borrow against their stock - typically h…

4. Those who intend to re-invest all returns in to the stock, who avoid a taxable event when their ownership of the company goes up without having to first pay tax for the dividend. A stock buyback rewards all stockholders equally . Those who sell, get their reward in cash. Those who do not sell, get their reward in the proportion of their ownership of the company going up.

There is supply and demand to consider. Buybacks create a tendency toward higher share prices, but only while they continue. That demand cuts off when the buybacks stop.

If the buybacks are at a discount to whatever the stock turns out to have been worth at the time, then that benefits all the shareholders. That can be a great use of money for all shareholders.

But buybacks at inflated prices benefit only exiting shareholders. Exiting shareholders tend to include hired management. Of course nobody really knows the valuation that well, so obviously there's a guessing game.

This is pretty hard to argue against for anybody who agrees that valuation is a thing at all.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#162

Post by terminalshort »

fundad wrote: post #107
echan00 wrote: post #9

this is great except nobody who should read this article is reading it

The people who should read this article and won't are actually an anti-growth movement. The silicon valley bros I work with are lapping up the sabotage because they want a lower standard of living in America and less science and innovation because they are already comfortable enough. Their sites are set only on the short-term gains of anti-Muslim and anti-abortion sentiment and "though talk" on immigration. Results a…

SV bros want less science and innovation, and are anti-abortion / anti-immigration? Have you been to SV?

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#163

Post by JohnMakin »

mike_hearn wrote: post #150
JohnMakin wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a critical thinking requirement that multiple courses fulfilled. One was a critical thinking english class that involved a lot of writing. I didn't want to write, so I chose the philosophy course (which still involved writing). Here is a state school that has a foundation requirement in critical thinking with several courses: https://www.csulb.edu/student-records/ge-approved-courses-ca...

Yes, but, thinking critically about this, why would learning how to hand-weave on a loom teach critical thinking? I get that you weren't doing these courses at Stanford but it's this kind of thing that makes people skeptical when universities make grandiloquent claims. Stanford is supposed to be the gold standard, so when it makes it appear that they teach critical thinking but actually don't (or it's at least very e…

Your original claim was "there is no evidence to suggest this is true (teaching critical thinking)". I presented my own anecdotal evidence, and then a counterexample. I'm sure there are many, many more. Moving the goalposts is not a discussion I'm interested in having and you seem to have a very set viewpoint on this topic.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#164

Post by terminalshort »

ortusdux wrote: post #18
aeonik wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's short term thinking. You can't stop innovation across the planet, you will lose control over time as adversaries continue to innovate and subsume antiquated control structures.

Everything that is happening in the US screams short term thinking. It feels like the scramble after a leveraged buyout.

Funny that you mentioned an LBO, which is a strategy that requires long term success to succeed.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#165

Post by thunderfork »

echelon wrote: post #154
some_guy_nobel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising (already record high) tuitions that have far, far outpaced wages and inflation should be a last resort. You can start by cutting bloated admin, reduce fraudulent procurement/graft (e.g. the $700k Berkeley Chancellor's fence: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/700k-iron-fence-co... ), vanity construction, study abroad admin budgets that dwarf actual student grants, and the executive compensation/perks b…

This. Cut spending on admin staff and facilities. Schools do not need amenities to attract students. They need lower tuition. You could teach students out of a tent and do away with all the flashy health spas and do a better job at the core mission of empowering students. No new buildings, no land acquisitions, no taking over facilities from the state for millions of dollars. University leadership does not need to ma…

I don't see how "uncap admissions" and "don't take on any new infrastructure" are compatible.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#166

Post by mike_hearn »

bena wrote: post #148
hyperpape wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shareholders will sue them for failing to maximize shareholder value That's quite a bold claim. Do you have an example in which a company/CEO/board was sued specifically for not doing enough buybacks?

A lot of this comes back to Dodge v Ford. The Dodge brothers sued the Ford Motor Company because Ford wanted to cut prices and invest in the company while removing dividends to shareholders. The Dodges disagreed with this and sued. The courts found in favor of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co .

Ford was an egregious case though. The court's judgement was surely correct but it also hardly matters for the real world. CEOs usually don't publicly announce they plan to literally and deliberately burn all their profits, even if it in reality they absolutely plan to spend it on vanity projects or whatever.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#167

Post by terminalshort »

moffkalast wrote: post #126
7thaccount wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing against research universities as good stuff does occur there, but it just seems like it was such a a huge loss seeing those corporate labs disappear. I think it helps to have scientists and engineers closer to the problem and who don't have to spend a huge amount of their time writing grants and training grad students.

Yeah if you go check almost any major scientific breakthrough of the past century it usually starts with "some guy was working in a corporate lab with an unlimited budget". We're stagnating as a species a lot more, but at least the shareholders got a payout for their hard work of doing literally nothing. Rent seeking at its worst.

Yes, let's not pay out the investors. That's how you get lots of funding.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#168

Post by mike_hearn »

ModernMech wrote: post #152
intalentive wrote: post #102

"Government funding is the engine of economic innovation" is a tacit admission we have a planned economy.

That would depend on how the funding is controlled. If funding approvals had to go through partisan bureaucrats in the White House for approval, yes, that's a planned economy. Historically it's been disparate groups of scientists who decide how block grants from Congress get divided. I've had colleagues who go and work at the NSF just for that role. I wouldn't say that guy making decisions about what kind of programm…

The difference between a planned and unplanned economy isn't whether the bureaucrats claim to be politically neutral, scientists or anything else. The first head of GOSPLAN was a scientist and its members were academics.

Academic funding is absolutely a planned economy. No way around that. It's literally committees of people allocating money requisitioned through tax and deciding what to spend it on, whilst having no skin in the game themselves.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#169

Post by moffkalast »

terminalshort wrote: post #167
moffkalast wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you go check almost any major scientific breakthrough of the past century it usually starts with "some guy was working in a corporate lab with an unlimited budget". We're stagnating as a species a lot more, but at least the shareholders got a payout for their hard work of doing literally nothing. Rent seeking at its worst.

Yes, let's not pay out the investors. That's how you get lots of funding.

You get funding by inventing and selling shit people need, not by pretending to be something people want.

At least in a sane world it would be.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#170

Post by metal_am »

ActorNightly wrote: post #155
convolvatron wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that patently ridiculous, we're just getting started

Really? What is so innovative? LLMs are just better google. In the past, you used to google shit, and copy paste from stack overflow, now you just skip the middle man and go directly to Chat GPT. Anyone that has been programming for a while can attest to that the answers aren't any better, its just more efficient to iterate on them now. AI hasn't even begun to be solved yet. Everyone is focused on feedforward transfo…

This is a very surface level analysis like saying that the automobile was just an iterative improvement over a horse. Or a computer is just a better abacus. Fundamental research is all about diving into the weeds and finding new problems to solve. It's true that some of the "low hanging fruit" no longer exists (you won't see someone like Euler or Newton who's names pop up all over the place), but I can promise you that real gains are being made on a lower level. These small gains in fundamental research snowball into bigger advancements. As an example, the transformer architecture used by LLMs was first published in 2017.
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