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Why Does DARPA Work?

benjaminreinhardt.com

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Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#81

Post by killjoywashere »

It's worth viewing DARPA from their customer's perspective. What DARPA brings to the DoD in a crisis is a stable of highly competent engineers and scientists who want to push the envelope and are smart enough to not let a crisis go to waste. I'm on the demand side right now and it's been awesome to see all these crack folks swarm down on my requirements.

If you think the DoD is behind the power curve, um, well, I have seen things that don't officially exist show up, obviously already engineered, so fast you can calculate from the shipping label how long it took someone to get off the phone and get it onto a plane.

So, yes, there are absolutely the long game 5-year efforts (which are often really sprouts of 20 or 30 year efforts). But it's a bit like YC: the alumni network is amazing.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#82

Post by shoguning »

koheripbal wrote: post #71
shoguning wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: I have a contrarian opinion about the impact of DARPA and related programs (ARPA-e especially). To some extent, there is a confusion of cause and effect. DARPA is good at identifying possible nascent technologies and funding them. They then have a flag planted, and can claim "we helped invent X", which is hard to disprove. But was it because of DARPA involvement, or was…

There is a feedback loop here. They help fund existing ideas, get more people/companies involved, raise awareness on certain problems, and motivate more participants to do relevant research. So do they "invent"? ...well that's a semantic argument. The point is they absolutely help make things happen.

My question is... do they really? They happen to be around when tech moves, but would it have moved without them? It's a historical counterfactual, and hard to argue about. I'm skeptical and I'm more skeptical of ARPA-e.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#83

Post by darpa_commentor »

raziel2701 wrote: post #57
darpa_commentor wrote: post #23

DARPA is effective, but this document paints a rosy picture that is far from the truth. I've been a part of DARPA projects both commerical, university and on the government side. The real process is: 1. PM gets picked due to knowing someone or being a former employee. 2. The biggest test of a program isn't if it's doable or a good idea, but if its able to be transitioned to another government agency with deeper pocke…

What is a better track record? I don't know what that means? More papers? More consumer products? More social impact?

Projects achieving their initial goals. Government keeps metrics on all grants, projects and contracts. The reason NSF is low is because they rely on universities who have poor quality control standards as they don't pay their researchers enough.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#84

Post by WaxProlix »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #69
maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

My impression is that it's not at all that consistent. The total spending is constant at a few billion per year, but what that gets spent on depends entirely on the taste of the program managers, which in turn depends on the darpa director. The program managers only serve for a few years at a time, and the director for a bit longer, so it can change drastically. I think the trends are typically last a decade: in the…

Certainly it's up to the vagaries of fate and such, but when I was in school I worked in a lab that for several years got fairly reliable DARPA funding for NLP work, and while they never built the department around it or anything it was nice to have that consistent year over year assumption that one or two projects would be interesting to the DARPA folks.

For them (us?) it was more a matter of "well this doesn't necessarily merit or reach the requirements for quote-unquote 'real' research, but it's really interesting and you know some investigation couldn't hurt". Those got pitched to DARPA, they asked "can you do it with Arabic and Chinese too?" and we said "no" and they funded us anyway a few times out of ten. Not bad, really.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#85

Post by stx »

maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

I do think there is something to this. Not just that they spend allot of money consistently but consistently stick with a project to see it to completion. In organizations that I have seen lack of progress they jump from one fire to the next. This means that they work on A for a few months and then suddenly drop it to work on B because B is higher priority. Only to later realize that A was more important and switch back. DARPA having a large budget also allows them to see through projects to the end.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#86

Post by nl »

godelmachine wrote: post #56

There's an organization closely resembling DARPA but with exclusive focus on computing. Wish more gets written on it → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Advanced_Research...

I've done some work around the edges of IARPA. It's not exclusivly computing BTW.

It's pretty much DARPA with smaller budgets. Some pretty interesting projects - the one about increasing human intelligence with magnets is pretty far out!

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#87

Post by hutzlibu »

scotty79 wrote: post #50

My more top level view is that DARPA and such are just side channels to sneakily funnel public money into research. In theory free market should take care of the economy. It's really good at optimizing manufacturing processes and getting stuff as cheaply as possible into hands of as many people as possible. However there's one thing essential to the economy that free market sucks at. It's research. And that's not bec…

Well, the public does support money going to universities.

And I believe there are quite some people, who opposes more money going to the military.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#88

Post by hutzlibu »

nl wrote: post #86
godelmachine wrote: post #56

There's an organization closely resembling DARPA but with exclusive focus on computing. Wish more gets written on it → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Advanced_Research...

I've done some work around the edges of IARPA. It's not exclusivly computing BTW. It's pretty much DARPA with smaller budgets. Some pretty interesting projects - the one about increasing human intelligence with magnets is pretty far out!

"the one about increasing human intelligence with magnets is pretty far out"

Sounds very esoteric to me. Is there a link somewhere? I would like to know, if there is substance to it, or that someone was able to talk quite good.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#89

Post by semi_good »

b20000 wrote: post #76

it works because there are no google bros

This is correct. The privately run version of this setup Alphabets Project X was wrecked by lousy hiring decisions. Who the heck recruits people like this?

“ As the Times reported, DeVaul, whose title is “director of rapid evaluation and mad science,” told a young female job candidate during a 2013 interview that he was in a polyamorous relationship. Later, when he saw the woman at Burning Man while she was still waiting to hear back about the job, DeVaul asked her if she would take off her shirt for a back massage.”

https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/google-x-sexual-harassm...

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#90

Post by nl »

hutzlibu wrote: post #88
nl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done some work around the edges of IARPA. It's not exclusivly computing BTW. It's pretty much DARPA with smaller budgets. Some pretty interesting projects - the one about increasing human intelligence with magnets is pretty far out!

"the one about increasing human intelligence with magnets is pretty far out" Sounds very esoteric to me. Is there a link somewhere? I would like to know, if there is substance to it, or that someone was able to talk quite good.

It's actually both magnetic (transcranial magnetic stimulation) and electro-magentic stimulation (transcranial direct current stimulation): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/prepare...

There's a reddit dedicated to people trying it on themselves: https://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/

I wouldn't say the results are exactly conclusive, but there did seem to be some results showing that pain can be reduced in some circumstances.

And while "magnets" sounds like some kind of crystal therapy or something, ignoring those aspects it's actually exactly the kind of way-out things that *ARPA should be funding.

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