The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by cryptonector » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

FRex wrote: post #48

cryptonector wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They did not achieve much in comparison to the rest of the world. Come on, it's obvious:

     - a non-hungry society?  NO
     - wealthy society?  certainly not
     - advanced and commercially successful airliners?  no (but you'll pick a nit here, I'm sure)
     - advanced medicine?  no (cue BS about how wonderful medicine is in Cuba, but still no)
     - advanced computing devices?  no, certainly nothing like those available in the West by 1991, much less anything since
     - the Internet?  NO
     - putting a man on the moon?  (hardly important, but) no
     - a myriad of consumer products of varying technological content, from the trivial to the highly advanced?  NO, see the first item
     - how about... cars... anti-lock brakes, catalytic converters, airbags...?  no

I could go on. But really, no, the USSR did not come close to the U.S. as to innovation, not because the USSR lacked talented people (it had them in spades) or a decent tech education system (it had a very good tech education system), but because its economic system could not make the best of those resources. It's that simple.

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

#92

Post by yangtheman » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

“One common trait of the U.S., Korea and China is that people accept failure as part of the process,”

I don't think that's true about Korea, and it is the core reason for the lack of vibrant startups in Korea.

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

#93

Post by watwut » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:31 PM UTC

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…

> 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

They did not cared, in the first place through. They were not capitalist. They actual failure is that they did not achieved world domination and that they did not managed to build that new superior human they wanted. Those were the ideological goals.

They also did monernized Russia after they came to power, monarchy they replaced was very behind the technology of the time.

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

#94

Post by banachtarski » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:31 PM UTC

> South Korea remained the global-innovation gold medalist for the fifth consecutive year. Samsung Electronics Co., the nation’s most-valuable company by market capitalization, has received more U.S. patents in the 2000s than any firm except International Business Machines Corp.

OK this is hilariously misguided as a metric. Also, I have some familiarity with the SK tech industry. They're catching up to US standards and hold themselves back by prioritizing the old-school mechanisms for upward movement which hinge on seniority/age and pedigree.

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

#95

Post by wenc » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

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.

> McGill the Harvard of Canada

You seem to have an axe to grind. No published ranking I know of ever uses that phrase. The phrase really only appears in newspaper articles, and only because American reporters want to pep up their piece about universities in Canada, which the average American knows close to nothing about.

McGill is a good school. It's silly to be a "Harvard" of anything.

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

#96

Post by baybal2 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #9

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.

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…

>it became harder to steal and reverse engineer than simply make themselves.

That

The very same thing is with China these days I say from my first hand experience.

Here is one example from great many:

I once worked with Rapoo, a PC peripherals and cellphone accessories manufacturer. They had a guy who was a brilliant industrial designer. He authored ALL of Rapoo's Red Dot award winning products (and they have many.) The only problem with him was (or how it looked to company's managers) that he had no degree, and he was a vocational school grad. He first came to the company as an unpaid intern, and he then designed their first award winning product while still receiving no salary. That product was his first design work at the company. He singlehandedly made them known and distinguished from the sea of noname OEMs all making products that looks like half-used soap bars.

It took his extreme efforts just to get his design being chosen over a yet another boring one bought from product design sweatshop.

When it became news that it was his design that won the company fame, the reaction from managers was not encouragement, but disdain! It was only enough to get him hired full time on a measly salary. He continued to work and win awards for them.

After years without any recognition, he thought it was enough when it came to yet another design review where he had to defend his vision in front of bimboish mid-managers. Contending with his design was one from a recently hired mediocre Italian designer (hired for an astonishing salary of 50k CNY per month, while his was just 12k.) After hours of intense debates with the "jury," they were both told to "just to do it like that Apple style" for the reason "Apple style is expensive." That was the last drop for him.

The guy now lives a comfy life and enjoys a dream job in one idyllic Alpine country.

What I wanted to say here: just like Soviets killed their own computer industry out of their own sense of insecurity and fiery inferiority complex, Chinese industry alienates its best genuine talents by not being able to admit over insecurities of the affluent class that Chinese tech specialists can produce superior original works themselves.

If only even 1% of Chinese corporate functionaries had little bit more of believe in themselves, along with self-esteem and self-confidence. If they thought in a way where they don't think "there is no chance that we can do this better than foreigners" before even trying, Chinese industry would've been like nothing it is today.

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

#97

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #73

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't. There are tons of EU countries missing from this list.

They should have rolled them all up into the EU. It infuriates me that no one does. Not for crime reports. Not for economic reports. The media doesn't do it right.

Does the EU? Do they produce EU-wide crime reports? EU-wide economic reports?

If not, don't blame the media...

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

#98

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #58

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The EU is a confederation. They need to be considered as a block now. Don't look at Germany. Look at the EU.

True, the EU is a confederation. Also true: it's not a country.

What's a country? Well, it has a single currency. The EU does... almost.

A country has a border that it controls. The EU does... more or less.

A country has a military. The EU absolutely does not.

And a country thinks of itself as a country. The EU does not. I suspect that this last reason is why the media doesn't report on the EU as if it were a single country.

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

#99

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

electrograv wrote: post #23

TimPC wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rankings need to account for mobility of high profile graduate students. For example some of the top CS programs in Canada have 50-75% of graduates leave for the US tech sector. Canada gets rewarded for it's STEM grads who end up working for US companies in the US market while the US gets punished for it's lower domestic STEM grad production. If the rest of the world is producing a fairly substantial number of…

Weighted score rankings are useless / statistically irrelevant, no matter how much careful hand-tuning we do. The only way to maintain accuracy and scientific responsibility in such things is to: 1) Formally define what is meant by "innovation" in terms of clearly measurable outcomes. 2) Measure this clearly-defined quality among all countries and many sample points through time. 3) Try to separate out explanatory va…

> Formally define what is meant by "innovation" in terms of clearly measurable outcomes.

Surely you can see that this is not possible, and any attempted would be superficial and would be gamed anyway?

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

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

potatoyogurt wrote: post #62

pimmen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is an odd redefinition of innovation. Is Snapchat more innovative than a proof of the Riemann hypothesis? Number of people who Snapchat: apparently at least 178 million. Number of people who want a proof of the Riemann hypothesis? Maybe a million? Out of which probably ten thousand will actually read it? Yes, the Soviet Union had many problems, but >how did they apply these technologies to create products the ma…

"Creating [new/different] products the market actually wants" is a pretty reasonable definition of innovation.

The Riemann hypothesis? That's research, not innovation. It's still valuable, but it's not innovation. (Is it as valuable as innovation? Arguably yes, but it's still not innovation.)