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Why Does DARPA Work?

benjaminreinhardt.com

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Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#91

Post by hutzlibu »

nl wrote: post #90
hutzlibu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 i…

Thanks for the links.

"but there did seem to be some results showing that pain can be reduced in some circumstances"

Even though that sounds not more deep than placebo.

Apart from that I am also open to crystal therapie. You know, the world is quite made up of quants and crystals can focus and polarize quants .. so if someone has some claim with more substance than that and wants to do a scientific research about it, why not. But so far I have seen only esoteric "research".

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#92

Post by fastball »

jariel wrote: post #16
fastball wrote: post #2

I'd like to write a comment but I generally prefer to have read the entire article before I do... see you in a week or so. Jokes aside, I agree with the author (I think) that DARPA has been a surprisingly effective org in an age of frequent failures of other orgs with similarly lofty goals. DARPA is effectively what things like the SoftBank Vision Fund should've been (wanted to be?). It would certainly be interesting…

Vision Fund is there to throw huge amounts of money at a business in order to ramp it up quickly and capture large, global markets. Think Uber: disrupting the Taxi business (or just regulations ...). Once something like Uber starts to work, a 'Vision Fund' takes this fledgling thing and backs it with billions to conquer the world. It's not about moon-shots, it's about market power and speed on a global scale. Like hy…

Oh yeah, absolutely. I just kinda wish we had that level of private interest/investment with similarly lofty goals. Not just "eat the world".

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#93

Post by throwawaygh »

m-ee wrote: post #75
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keyword is "former". She probably left because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan#Potential_conf... I don't think a single person that no longer works there can represent the entire process of an agency. If anything, Facebook's building 8, only reflects badly on her and Facebook.

That’s a fair point. For what it’s worth the complaints I heard about her management from PI at building 8 were strictly about her style of extreme micro management which seemed to be pretty different from the rest of Facebook, he never mentioned any of the corruption allegations. For example laying out years of research with what she called “inch stones”of weekly expected progress in the initial proposal. I’ve never…

> I’ve never worked with DARPA myself so I can’t say whether that was something unique to her.

Up to the PM. DARPA is definitely more heavy-handed than other funding orgs, for whom annual reports are pretty common. But monthly check-ins is on the extreme end of things even for DARPA. Quarterly/six month are more common. Never heard of weekly, and I doubt many PIs would put up with that for very long.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#94

Post by mattkrause »

stx wrote: post #85
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 b…

That hasn't been my experience at all!

DARPA contracts are structured with a lot of milestones and go/no-go decisions. We had teleconferences with the program manager and staff every two weeks and it was very clear that the money could abruptly stop if they ever felt that we were not going to deliver. This wasn't an idle threat, either: The program-wide PI meetings definitely got smaller and smaller as time passed. As a result, there was a lot of...reprioritization to make sure that the PM stayed happy.

This is very much unlike most other funding agencies. Once an NIH or NSF grant starts, you can be confident that the money will be there for the duration.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#95

Post by mattkrause »

lazyjeff wrote: post #35
riazrizvi wrote: post #17

IMO this analysis gets caught up looking for answers in process when the real problem that DARPA solves is a political-economic one. ATT didn't invent the internet not for lack of process, they were extremely innovative. They held back on innovations because they were making huge sums of money overcharging long distance mainframe-mainframe data link rates in the 50's-70's. DARPA succeeded as a trust buster. They have…

That's a good point. University labs are more nimble than a military contractor. The PI at a university directly does the work with their students (in some big labs, it's arguable that the PI manages the students that directly do the work). Whereas the contact at a military contractor is an accounts person, with lawyers and managers between them and the people doing the work. Cost-wise, universities usually charge an…

On the other hand, is one "unit" of student effort equivalent to one unit of staff scientist work?

I would say no: early-PhD students in particular are still learning and have other responsibilities (coursework, quals, etc) to boot. You can also interpret your numbers as suggesting that an experienced person is 2-3x more productive than a trainee, which seems....quite reasonable, actually.

I think that's the other "secret": the combination of large budgets and tight timelines encourage the use of more experienced staff and smarter division of labor: hire a programmer for this, contract out to a machinist for that. This is very different from the model used on most NIH grants, where grad students are used as jack-of-all-trades.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#96

Post by peterwoerner »

m-ee wrote: post #77
peterwoerner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work for a company doing SBIR work. We finished a contract underbudget returned the surplus money and got audited because of it. I don't know all of the accounting details, but SBIR has some leeway (because its supposed to be research) but it's not perfect. However, you are allowed to use surplus money to fund development of things which are related to what you actually put in the proposal/contract. So if y…

I worked at company in SBIR phase 2 and one quirk I found strange was that the money could be used for R&D not things deemed “production”. Endless 3D prints were ok, random software features were ok, tooling for injection molding was not. It wasn’t a particularly onerous requirement, but I think reinforced the tendencies of our former academic founders to spend a lot of time on research and none on development.

Part of it is figuring out how to classify "production" as R&D. Well we need to test a prototype and in order to that we need it made as the same was as production due to structure property process relationships.

Or manufacturing defects is going to be a huge source of bad thing so we need to do some research into the manufacturing process.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#97

Post by davidhowlett »

killjoywashere wrote: post #81

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 hav…

What does the power curve mean in this context?

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#98

Post by N1H1L »

dnautics wrote: post #39
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…

this aligns with my experience. NIH has a better track record than DARPA, which has a better track record than NSF and the worst is the DOE. The DOE knows this and is trying to cargo-cult DARPA through stuff like ARPA-E. Predictable results have ensued.

Ummm.. The DOE run National labs have pioneered fundamental science. A lot of modern materials science technique development originally happened at some DOE National Lab.

Judging basic science by productivity is the absolute worst metric to choose. DOE Labs are going down that path, and are becoming glorified university research groups all in the name of productivity.

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