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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

#481

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

gamblor956 wrote: post #456
oskarkk wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any American company could use NASA's designs for reusable rockets... Oh wait, only SpaceX did it. And 10 years after they did it, they're still the only company that did it (not counting New Shepard of course, as it can't put anything into orbit). Are some congressmen forbidding other companies to use their own money to make better rockets?

Lol. SpaceX wasn't the first private company to develop a reusable rocket. It was just the first one owned by a billionaire that convince other people to fund it. SpaceX is notorious in the aeronautical industry for attempting to interfere in the research and funding of other companies. Over a decade ago a competitor had viable plans for a 2 stage rocket... until Musk sued to block the funding.

SpaceX was funded by Musk until it started making money. I don't think he was even a billionaire when he founded it.

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

#482

Post by BurningFrog »

astrange wrote: post #299
BurningFrog wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been in the "don't intend to sell right now" situation for decades, the actual share price movements were always very relevant to me. I'm confident I share that psychology with almost everyone.

Stop looking. Well, "don't sell" is the wrong strategy anyway. Trade it in for an index fund.

Can I do that without paying tax on my gains?

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

#483

Post by runako »

terminalshort wrote: post #474
runako wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

National average SAT score is ~995. Georgia average is 1030. The Georgia university system has a set of goals for the advancement of the state of Georgia. It's difficult to make an argument that graduating seniors performing above average are unworthy of higher education, and that this would be best for the state. Georgia, like most states, recognizes that not every student will fit in every situation and has options…

It's very easy for me to make that argument because I think higher education is a complete waste of time and money for everyone who isn't going into a particular technical profession that requires focused training beyond HS, and that's maybe 5% of the population.

Thank you for adding that color, it is clarifying.

I would suggest that your position is a minority position. In particular, that view is out of step with most employers, who generally require college degrees (even non-technical ones) for most white-collar jobs.

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

#484

Post by ActorNightly »

exe34 wrote: post #338
ActorNightly wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automobile was improvement over the horse because things needed to get places. To improve on current automobile will require either massive government investment and regulation in the sense of flying cars, or full electrification with paradigm shifts in transportation, like induction charging roads or battery hot swaps or whatever else. The modern Corolla Hybrid is pretry much the peak optimal point of transportation…

high temperature superconducting would cause a big leap. cheap energy would also help. cheap compute-in-the-walls. machines doing all the dangerous jobs.

Cheap energy is possible now with solar. There is a reason why it hasn't been done yet. Nobody has a need for it. Remember, you may think it would be nice to have an electric car you can charge for microcents a mile, but most people dgaf about putting gas in their car.

Machines doing dangerous jobs also is a thing these days.

High temperature superconducting can potentially be useful in a few applications that involve high current, which mostly deal with transportation. The only real advantage of this is drone delivery service becoming cheaper, but that has big hurdles to cross.

There is a reason why being a streamer is the top choice of "what I wanna be" when you ask kids. Everything is about the internet now in terms of motivation. And unfortunately there, we already hit a hard limit of the speed of light.

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

#485

Post by astrange »

NickC25 wrote: post #480
astrange wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they are not oligarchs because that's not what that word means. Also, "net worth" is not "money". Shares of a company aren't money.

Shares of a company are indeed money - or can be used as money in a roundabout way. They can be placed as collateral in exchange for a loan or other similar ways to access capital immediately. If Zuck walks into a bank and asks for a million dollars cash on the spot and is willing to place a few thousand shares up as collateral, he gets that done in minutes.

He can get millions, but he can't get his entire net worth. His net worth is quoted as if the marginal price of one Meta share is the price you'd get for selling every Meta share at once. Which of course doesn't make sense.

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

#486

Post by astrange »

BurningFrog wrote: post #482
astrange wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop looking. Well, "don't sell" is the wrong strategy anyway. Trade it in for an index fund.

Can I do that without paying tax on my gains?

If you do it right when your RSUs vest you don't have gains.

Or if you're a multimillionaire: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-07-21/how-rich-...

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

#487

Post by astrange »

selimthegrim wrote: post #349
astrange wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to SJSU (now KSU) briefly before transferring to a better school (because I slept through all of high school and didn't do any homework) and I did not get the feeling that anyone else in my classes was going to be a successful software engineer. Rather I got the feeling their parents told them to do CS because they really liked video games. I took a group project game development class and it went beyond doing…

SPSU?

Oh yeah, the similar name overwrote it when I moved to Silicon Valley.

(The area code is also one digit off, 404 vs 408!)

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

#488

Post by AfterHIA »

ricksunny wrote: post #455
AfterHIA wrote: post #420

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCR_Licklider https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield If you know; you know. #ARPA

I remain perpetually perplexed why people who invoke Mansfield's name almost universally shrink from describing why they feel it is relevant to invoke Mansfield's name. Yes, there was a Mansfield amendment and a would-be 'nother Mansfield amendment. It had some (waves hands) ever-unarticulated effect on defense funding of research. Motivations of Mansfield are never articulated. Seems so self-defeating to not describ…

Going into the specifics of what motivated Mike Mansfield requires going beyond the conversation we're having about R&D into the domain of politics and ideology. I want to stick to relevant realities related to people in technology:

1) This killed research in the United States. This killed the program that paid for Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart's PhDs. This has led to or is at least heavily correlated with the decline in technology and science innovation that has occurred since the beginning of the neoliberal assault. In 1961 we get SketchPad at the University of Utah. In 1968 we get the Mother Of All Demos. What's been developed since with the same kind of impact? I'd argue, "not a whole lot."

2) This has inevitably led to a decline in the public's enthusiasm for technical innovation. I remember the early 1990's World Wide Web. I remember the feeling that a non-marginally better future was, "months away." Now the government and Google collude to spy on me and my family. Now I have a short-form video feed that is paid to deliver content meant to extremize me as a young adult.

The Mansfield Amendment is the technical glitch that may have cancelled a better future for technologists and especially technology literate young adults. It's difficult to say and we may never know. My feeling is that some day some country might achieve a level of social democracy where-in, "we get back to that." Time will tell. The irony is that it's the Adam Smith Societies pushing the hyper, "privatize everything agenda" that reifies the problem. Adam Smith actually advocated for strong public institutions- especially educational institutions.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x

https://knowledge.essec.edu/en/innovation/the-worrisome-decl...

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/12/03/survey-shows-...

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151a...

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

#489

Post by knowaveragejoe »

Vektorceraptor wrote: post #354
flanked-evergl wrote: post #34

Academia has become a racket that is actively hostile to technological progress. I want them to get exactly 0 of my tax money for anything.

[flagged]

The only people using the term NPC in this manner are, themselves, the real NPCs the term was devised to skewer

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

#490

Post by terminalshort »

runako wrote: post #483
terminalshort wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy for me to make that argument because I think higher education is a complete waste of time and money for everyone who isn't going into a particular technical profession that requires focused training beyond HS, and that's maybe 5% of the population.

Thank you for adding that color, it is clarifying. I would suggest that your position is a minority position. In particular, that view is out of step with most employers, who generally require college degrees (even non-technical ones) for most white-collar jobs.

Employers can only require those degrees because lots of people have them. Lots of people have them because we subsidize them. If we didn't, they would hire people without them. If you have any respect for employer posted job requirements you probably haven't read the listed requirements for the job you have now. If SWE doesn't actually require a degree, and I know it doesn't because I don't have one, then neither do 95% of jobs out there.
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