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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

#361

Post by croes »

vinorathna-r wrote: post #360

Nice article, I completely agree that government funding is essential for America to sustain its technological advancement.. After reading it, we need to validate the following points: 1.The government should periodically review how many funded research projects are successfully completed and lead to tangible outcomes. 2. The government should ensure that research funding is properly utilized for the intended purpose…

Giant magnetoresistance was discovered in 1988, it became useful in HDDs in 1997.

If they had evaluated 1993 the discovery would be called useless and a waste of money.

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

#362

Post by jleyank »

vinorathna-r wrote: post #360

Nice article, I completely agree that government funding is essential for America to sustain its technological advancement.. After reading it, we need to validate the following points: 1.The government should periodically review how many funded research projects are successfully completed and lead to tangible outcomes. 2. The government should ensure that research funding is properly utilized for the intended purpose…

How can statistically generated tokens help in basic research to find things outside the training set? This is where things are “inefficient” as it’s driven by extrapolated knowledge and often requires money to proceed. Sometimes in quantity. And things often fail.

As basic research transitions to engineering, things built from the current knowledge base, if suitably updated, should be useful. And work within the training set should go well.

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

#363

Post by Yoric »

terminalshort wrote: post #129
intalentive wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read "stock buybacks in 1982" as shorthand for "financialization and short-term thinking at the expense of long-term gains", which certainly happened across corporate America and Britain starting with Reagan and Thatcher.

You state that as if it is a fact, but from what I see the tech industry has engaged in the longest term corporate strategies I have ever seen. Amazon took losses for the better part of two decades before it showed a profit, and public markets would never even fund a venture like SpaceX.

Good point. And both Google and Apple used to reinvest all benefits in R&D.

My impression is that as they calcify into money-printing machines, this stopped. An example being Google's famed 20% that are apparently a long dead memory.

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

#364

Post by vinorathna-r »

croes wrote: post #361
vinorathna-r wrote: post #360

Nice article, I completely agree that government funding is essential for America to sustain its technological advancement.. After reading it, we need to validate the following points: 1.The government should periodically review how many funded research projects are successfully completed and lead to tangible outcomes. 2. The government should ensure that research funding is properly utilized for the intended purpose…

Giant magnetoresistance was discovered in 1988, it became useful in HDDs in 1997. If they had evaluated 1993 the discovery would be called useless and a waste of money.

I agree that basic research like the discovery of GMR often has an unpredictable timeline and shouldn't be judged too early..

However, I still believe that a light-touch monitoring system is important. It's not about evaluating the usefulness of the discovery in the short term, but rather ensuring that:

Funds are being used for the stated research goals (fiscal responsibility).

The project is making scientific progress as defined by its own milestones (accountability).

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

#365

Post by howerj »

cjs_ac wrote: post #79

> Countries that neglect science become dependent on those that don’t. U.S. post-WWII dominance came from basic science investments (OSRD, NSF, NIH, DOE labs). After WWII ended, the UK slashed science investment which allowed the U.S. to commercialize the British inventions made during the war. > The Soviet Union’s collapse partly reflected failure to convert science into sustained innovation, during the same time th…

The UK has an extremely entrepreneurial culture as well, which is shown in the data (number of businesses registered, number of startups, both per capita), it ranks very highly, along with other indicators of innovation, it might not be as entrepreneurial as the USA, but globally it ranks very highly. The fact that you mention the Soviet Union and its central planned economy and the (outdated and stereotyped view of the) British class system almost like they are equivalent really undermines your point as well.

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

#366

Post by philipallstar »

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…

> I'm not seeing how you get from share buybacks to a shift in priorities in corporate research.

Share buybacks are just the new go-to thing to blame. Economics students (at least "development economics") are memorising this concept all over the globe, so you can expect it more and more.

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

#367

Post by mexicocitinluez »

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.

lol hwut?

Except for DNA, CRISPR, WWW, mRNA, the manhattan project, ARPA, GPS, etc

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

#368

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Just seems a very idealistic and almost simplistic view of how a thing should work best because it feels like it should work but the reality is academia gets completely outpaced by private companies. SpaceX, GPT4, Ozempic, list goes on.

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

#369

Post by jstanley »

nyeah wrote: post #161
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sha…

> Buybacks create a tendency toward higher share prices, but only while they continue.

Buybacks increase the share price because you have a company that is worth (for sake of argument) the same as it was worth before, except now there are fewer shares available.

A fixed market cap divided by fewer shares equals a higher share price.

In the limit case imagine buying back all but 1 share. Now that 1 share represents the entire value of the company, so the share price would equal the market cap.

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

#370

Post by eloisant »

xixixao wrote: post #59
twobitshifter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're thinking of companies as teams where employees are members, but c-staff just see their employees as expensive suppliers.
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