41–50 of 218 posts
There's a reason the Americans discovered how to make atomic weapons first and it's because their researchers were living under a less oppressive state that wasn't motivated by anti-intellectualism and dumb ideology.
Go deeper - why does anti-intellectualism emerge?
"Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"
I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science. Sure private donors have interest driven motives too but it would be diffuse across many areas not concentrated like a political party’s interests.
> I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. Two reasons. First, private philanthropy is neither sustainable nor sufficient in scope. Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued. > It seems like an obvious channel for cor…
I agree with you but there's irony (and a possible lesson about motives) in the current situation.
How much of this shit is even legal?
How much of this shit is even legal?
This last election was the end of American democracy.
Related paulg tweet: https://x.com/paulg/status/1951996478555357530 "The Trump administration has suspended the funding of Terence Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA."
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But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of those “enlightened centrists.”
This ends science in the United States. You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. Two reasons. First, private philanthropy is neither sustainable nor sufficient in scope. Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued. > It seems like an obvious channel for cor…
> Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued. I agree with you but there's irony (and a possible lesson about motives) in the current situation.
I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science. Sure private donors have interest driven motives too but it would be diffuse across many areas not concentrated like a political party’s interests.
The market can't provide public goods like basic research since it's non-excludable. This is a market failure, causing inefficient allocation of resources.
Therefore, the government has to provide it. This can improve efficiency of resource distribution, if done well.
Whether it's done well is not a foregone conclusion. That's why we need effective and technocratic state capacity, free from corruption and independent of political influence.