71–80 of 529 posts
Being the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.
Canada and Australia are smaller but surely count as industrialized western nations (Canada is like 9th by GDP) whose infrastructure was not bombed to rubble.
Being the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, being far enough from Europe that a huge amount of talent decided the U.S. was a better bet for getting away from the Nazis. And then taking a large number of former Nazi scientist's post-war as well. The article mentions but underrates the fact that post-war the British shot themselves in the foot economically. As far as I'm aware, the article is kind of wrong that there wasn't a successful British computing i…
And yet here we are with Arm cores everywhere you look! :-D
If the main failure of British companies is that they don't have U.S. company market caps, it seems more off base to blame this on government science funding policy instead of something else. In almost every part of the economy, U.S. companies are going to be larger.
Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…
> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Systems don’t remain constant, though, and every system gets “gamed” once the incentives are well understood. I’m 100% for investment in scientific research, but I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that encourages that bad behavior as well as junk sc…
Sure, but what has that to do with the administration's attack on funding and independence? As someone whose lost a grant award under the current administration's attack on science, I can tell you with assurance that this is more about political power and revenge than it is about improving scientific rigor. If we continue on this path, we will only get worse at science as a nation. There are reforms that should be pu…
I'm sorry to hear this, but curious what makes you certain of this? Revenge for what? I ask, because I hear this same template over and over with this administration. eg. DOGE isn't about government efficiency its about revenge.
Being the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.
Sweden was not bombed.
Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…
The glaring difference in how the US approached R&D is rather the way in which they manage to integrate the private sector, manage to convert research into products and manage to get funded for these rather risky private projects.
Also, with regards to why researchers flocked to the US, post-WWII, it was for the same reason that other people were flocking to the US (and Canada, and Australia): the new world had good economic prospects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but what has that to do with the administration's attack on funding and independence? As someone whose lost a grant award under the current administration's attack on science, I can tell you with assurance that this is more about political power and revenge than it is about improving scientific rigor. If we continue on this path, we will only get worse at science as a nation. There are reforms that should be pu…
> As someone whose lost a grant award under the current administration's attack on science, I can tell you with assurance that this is more about political power and revenge than it is about improving scientific rigor. I'm sorry to hear this, but curious what makes you certain of this? Revenge for what? I ask, because I hear this same template over and over with this administration. eg. DOGE isn't about government ef…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People are making smart, individual decisions to head overseas for work. Places like China are rewarding them. Wait what? I know that many Chinese students are staying in China, but this is the first I've heard of a substantial demographic immigrating to China to work there, esp from the US. Do you have data?
One annecdata. When I handed in my doctoral thesis in Oxbridge, I was contacted by a recruiter from PRC that offered me generous startup funds ($600k-1M) and salary to bootstrap my own academic lab at Tsinghua, Fudan, or other top universities. It'd take me 4-6 years to get an equivalent offer in UK or EU where experience and connections are much more important than talent. I am European and I do basic research in sc…
Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…
> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…
Really...? Until Liberation Day the other week, I would doubt this. The whole world holds the US dollar, if the USA fails (side-glare at Donald and Elon), the whole world goes into chaos. If President Harris had said "OK world, we need to borrow x more dollars to keep this country running", people (private creditors and nations) would say "I'm pretty sure the USA will still be a solid economy in 10 (or 30 years), x% ROI if I lend them money? Sure!".
And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina": https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-...