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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

#261

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

j2kun wrote: post #38

> Engineers design and build things on top of the discoveries of scientists I agree with a lot in this post, but I think it's also worth mentioning how this is a two-way street. Practical considerations often drive theory research as much as the other way around.

I like to imagine that thermodynamics happened because industrial metallurgy and boiler design advanced to the point where people started asking "what are the fundamental constraints?"

There's a chance that it didn't actually happen that way, though.

edit: I also heard that Louis Pasteur did work for breweries, answering the question "Why do some batches come out nasty while most are fine, given the same inputs?"

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

#262

Post by whatshisface »

echelon wrote: post #243
thunderfork wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lecture halls sit empty while universities build amenities to make college seem like a staycation. If a university truly needs more classrooms, so be it, but much of the spending is going to perks like gyms, saunas, and sports facilities.

If the free market says that young adults 18-24 want to spend thousands of dollars on gyms, saunas and sports facilities, why should government regulators get involved?

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

#263

Post by marcosdumay »

cratermoon wrote: post #62
terminalshort wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would companies not want to maximize their value before share buybacks?

Your question is a reflection of just how engrained the Friedman doctrine has become in business. Milton Friedman introduced his theory in 1970, but it really got a boost in the 80s. First in 1981 when President Reagan named him to his Economic Policy Advisory Board and again in 1988, when Reagan gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. There are still many competing theories of b…

Was anything form Friedman actually proven correct or worked on practice?

I don't understand how he became such a big name.

EDIT: Hum... Do the people downvoting have some answer?

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

#264

Post by nradov »

nyeah wrote: post #250
overrun11 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buybacks in theory do not cause share price to rise like your example though. Investors already price in that cash will be either reinvested at a high rate or returned to shareholders. You are reducing share count of a company that now has less cash which nets out in share price.

Demand tends to push price up. Investors don't really know who's buying until later. But yes, of course it's a toy example. I should probably have made the buybacks drive the price from $1.10 to $1.20 or something, with a much smaller reward for the founder & CEO. I got bored and kept it simple. (Or I got greedy for that $1 profit, maybe.) All the working parts of the example are on display. You can make other exampl…

Well there you go again, lying and making things up. The trades are executed in compliance with Rule 10b-18. If you want anyone to take you seriously then at least come up with a realistic example.

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

#266

Post by bamboozled »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #227

It feels like in the past 20-ish years, maybe longer, game-changing innovations have become rarer, making science lower ROI. If that’s true (maybe it’s not? all I have is vibes!), if it is indeed true, and science is becoming less able to convert into invention- it stands to reason that at some point it becomes rational for a country to direct resources elsewhere. Political will becomes strained, and politicians deci…

Maybe but the successful part of the US got there through science and tech. So I think more science and tech is a better prospect long term.

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

#267

Post by aurareturn »

terminalshort wrote: post #3

> 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…

Share buyback is the same as giving dividends - except the share holder doesn’t have to pay taxes until they sell. To the company, they spend the same amount on share buyback vs giving dividends. I don’t see how this argument holds up.

Further more, while some might argue that corporate R&D is better due to being closer to the problem but it is private research and not shared with the world like university research is.

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

#269

Post by epistasis »

fidotron wrote: post #64

There's something odd in this argument. If you come at it from a Canadian perspective Canada seriously spent on neural network computer science when almost no one else did (many in AI considered the entire thing discredited and impossible), now the (financial) gains from that are almost entirely in a foreign country. The US science establishment was all about buying and utilizing Russian rocket engines until he-that-…

"Seriously spent" where serious is less than the cost of a single bomber for the military. I forget what Geoffrey Hinton said it was, but it was an embarrassingly small pittance.

Military spending is largely economic dead weight, roughly the equivalent of handouts. And the end result is deterrence in a game of prisoners dilemma. Yet it is sacrosanct, and subject to ever increasing budgets for no gain.

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

#270

Post by gamblor956 »

terminalshort wrote: post #157
fidotron wrote: post #64

There's something odd in this argument. If you come at it from a Canadian perspective Canada seriously spent on neural network computer science when almost no one else did (many in AI considered the entire thing discredited and impossible), now the (financial) gains from that are almost entirely in a foreign country. The US science establishment was all about buying and utilizing Russian rocket engines until he-that-…

Not only did SpaceX make breakthroughs considered impossible by the "experts" in the industry, they did it by hiring a guy who literally built rocket engines in his garage to design the engines. The key here is personality. And the type of person who actually wants to build things and get things done absolutely recoils at bureaucracy and the type of people who like it. When you build something to the point where ther…

It's not like they were able to use NASA's designs for reusable rockets...

Oh wait..they did...

Because NASA thought reusable rockets were possible decades ago. The reason they never built them was because certain Congressmen blocked the funding.

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