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

bloomberg.com

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

#41

Post by FRex »

pimmen wrote: post #39
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…

Yep, they produced a lot of research. So, how did they apply these technologies to create products the market actually want? And abundance for all people to lead better lives?

The original point was that SU never achieved much in any area (which is clearly not true). A point could today be made that lots of research in the USA with its growing inequality is also not being used to create 'an abundance for all people to lead better lives'.

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

#42

Post by pimmen »

FRex wrote: post #38
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.

The first nuclear power plant connected to the grid to actually power stuff was one in the SU. The first artificial satellite, first animal in orbit and first human in space are all from SU. The first properly continuously inhabited space station Mir was also theirs. Then they (Russian which is de facto descendant of and was most important part of SU before it dissolved) also contributed to the ISS along the US. They…

And yet they didn't produce that much stuff that people actually wanted. If you went to a grocery store in Moscow in the 80s the shelves were empty unless you knew when the store would buy the allotted inventory.

Not saying the USSR didn't produce a lot of good research and science but they weren't the best at transferring that research into technology the people really wanted. Because of the free market the US and Europe could try all different kinds of hardware and software ideas that lead to the ecosystem we have today, for example. Same thing with finance.

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

#43

Post by Bucephalus355 »

vidoc wrote: post #28
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 50% or so of Russian PhD Dissertations are plagiarized. Here’s your source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/... Russia did a lot of innovation in the 1950’s - 1970’s. They then made two terrible decisions. One was to stop producing their own computer parts and steal from abroad, which worked at first but then it became harder to steal and reverse engineer than simply make themselves…

> Around 50% or so of Russian PhD Dissertations are plagiarized. Your "source" looks like a troll to me

It’s a serious article from the Washington Post?

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

#44

Post by pimmen »

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.

I don't know if you're American but wouldn't it then be reasonable to say that the idea of supporting Israel with billions of dollars was America's own idea that it has to take responsibility for? The US is free to spend its money and political power in any way it wants and will take the consequences for it.

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

#45

Post by fauigerzigerk »

martinshen wrote: post #6

Honestly a lot of these "global" rating systems are ridiculous. The US easily produces the most innovation globally. This is similar to ranking systems that consider McGill the Harvard of Canada or consider Babson College the #1 for Entrepreneurship.

>The US easily produces the most innovation globally

As would be expected given the size of the US population. The only two more populous countries are both developing nations. But a ranking that didn't normalise over the size of the population would make even less sense than this one.

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

#46

Post by vidoc »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #43
vidoc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Around 50% or so of Russian PhD Dissertations are plagiarized. Your "source" looks like a troll to me

It’s a serious article from the Washington Post?

Do you find the title serious? And how about the illustration? Did you ask yourself if this could possibly be a russian bashing wapo article by any chance?

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

#47

Post by notatoad »

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…

>Or you might claim that the US is a developed country with a developing country attached

huh?

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

#48

Post by FRex »

cryptonector wrote: post #35
dragonwriter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”.

No. A number of successful countries started off "as a poorly-developed state engaged in outright war and proxy wars". The U.S. itself, for example. And Israel, for another. Stop making excuses. And, as if the arms race of the Cold War did not involve choices made by the Soviets! Come off it. They could easily have chosen not to get dragged into an arms race. But instead they chose no only to play that game, but to t…

So? The original point being disputed was that SU and Soviet people "never achieved much" which is not true in many areas, one of which is becoming a militarily powerful country able to engage in a stand off with USA while 100 years ago Poland beat Soviet Russia in a war a year after gaining its own independence.

Saying that "they are stupid because they were still communists" or that other countries were successful is moving the goal post.

Israel was a very special situation due to UN, Holocaust, ties to the West, etc. and USA is on outright easy mode in comparison because of their remote placement, size and abundance of everything and it has had tons of quiet time to develop and attracted the brightest people from the world for a while to come to live and work there. I'd say Japan or Prussia or Singapore were better sudden (under 100 years) success stories.

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

#49

Post by digikata »

pimmen wrote: post #42
FRex wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first nuclear power plant connected to the grid to actually power stuff was one in the SU. The first artificial satellite, first animal in orbit and first human in space are all from SU. The first properly continuously inhabited space station Mir was also theirs. Then they (Russian which is de facto descendant of and was most important part of SU before it dissolved) also contributed to the ISS along the US. They…

And yet they didn't produce that much stuff that people actually wanted. If you went to a grocery store in Moscow in the 80s the shelves were empty unless you knew when the store would buy the allotted inventory. Not saying the USSR didn't produce a lot of good research and science but they weren't the best at transferring that research into technology the people really wanted. Because of the free market the US and E…

Ironically though, many rockets built by companies specializing in the US defense are dependent on Russian rocket engines to send their vehicles into space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180#Replacement_for_the_RD-...

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

#50

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

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…

So how would one measure a region's demonstrated capacity for innovation, in a meaningful way?
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