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Concretely, us spent 150B/ 70B non-defense. Google ~14B, Amazon ~14B MS ~10B Apple ~10B and FB ~6B for about 50B all together. So, concretely, we should expec

by jfoutz 9y ago

Concretely, us spent 150B/ 70B non-defense. Google ~14B, Amazon ~14B MS ~10B Apple ~10B and FB ~6B for about 50B all together. So, concretely, we should expect just the big five to produce roughly 1/3 as much as publicly funded science, assuming they're of equal quality. More like 2/3's if we exclude military research. Although you don't come out and say it, you're implying private is more efficient. I dunno. I think the feds get a big discount by using grad student labor. Fundamentally, the perform different roles. Doctoral research is foundational stuff that corporations take and refine. Sure, i can quibble over each one of your examples. But that's not really the point. I don't think any corporation was going to go looking for gravity waves, or Proxima B. So many problems are a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. Broadly, public funding tends to fill the role of exploration. Private funding tends to fill the role of exploitation. There's no crisp line. Corporations surely explore, and universities surely exploit. But again, broadly, i think the public exploration/private exploitation split is a good one, and i think it's how the 20th century worked pretty much worked.

skookumchuck 9y ago
My argument is with the notion that if government didn't fund X, X never would have happened. The existence of the internet is the epitome of this kind of thinking. It's like saying if someone paid by the government had an idea to connect two towns with a road, therefore nobody would have ever had such an idea otherwise. This fallacious reason is obviously false, as FidoNET proves, but that doesn't deter the notion. The cherry-picked examples are classic confirmation bias, and are non-falsifiable because nobody can go back in time and defund a government project. There's plenty of non-government money being plowed into basic research - just look at the endowments of top universities like MIT. There would likely be much more if the government did not fund it, just like I'd not be willing to fund a road between A and B if there's a way I can get the government to do it for me.
- acdha 9y ago
  It's not a claim that things would never happen but that it'd take much longer. Yes, private investment exists but it's so much smaller — MIT is legendary, one of the top schools in the world, has a full-time development office getting donations, etc. but the bulk of their research is federal by a large margin. I note that you dismiss the foundational technologies of the last century as cherry-picking but fail to present any data to support claims which are well outside the mainstream. Do you have any sources to back those assertions up?
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    > but it's so much smaller Right, because there's much less point to private investment if you can get the government to foot the bill instead. > Do you have any sources The technologies I mentioned are well documented. Are you not aware of FidoNET?

by jfoutz 9y ago

skookumchuck 9y ago

My argument is with the notion that if government didn't fund X, X never would have happened. The existence of the internet is the epitome of this kind of thinking. It's like saying if someone paid by the government had an idea to connect two towns with a road, therefore nobody would have ever had such an idea otherwise. This fallacious reason is obviously false, as FidoNET proves, but that doesn't deter the notion. The cherry-picked examples are classic confirmation bias, and are non-falsifiable because nobody can go back in time and defund a government project. There's plenty of non-government money being plowed into basic research - just look at the endowments of top universities like MIT. There would likely be much more if the government did not fund it, just like I'd not be willing to fund a road between A and B if there's a way I can get the government to do it for me.

acdha 9y ago
It's not a claim that things would never happen but that it'd take much longer. Yes, private investment exists but it's so much smaller — MIT is legendary, one of the top schools in the world, has a full-time development office getting donations, etc. but the bulk of their research is federal by a large margin. I note that you dismiss the foundational technologies of the last century as cherry-picking but fail to present any data to support claims which are well outside the mainstream. Do you have any sources to back those assertions up?
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  > but it's so much smaller Right, because there's much less point to private investment if you can get the government to foot the bill instead. > Do you have any sources The technologies I mentioned are well documented. Are you not aware of FidoNET?