4 ms·

> Why not turn it around, spend most of the research money and brain time on things that benefit everyone (in the US, and worldwide) I think this is a quirk of

by m12k 8y ago

> Why not turn it around, spend most of the research money and brain time on things that benefit everyone (in the US, and worldwide) I think this is a quirk of the US political system where military spending is the only public spending that is acceptable to both parties in the duopoly. Hence the only stable source of public funding for research is probably in the military sector.

justaman 8y ago
Disagree. I think it is the incentive that drives this innovation. The consumer market does not face large scale death if it does not innovate.
- justin66 8y ago
  ARPA was more innovative than DARPA was, not less.
- black_puppydog 8y ago
  I'd argue opportunity cost from lack of innovation in medecine and e.g. car safety/car replacements kills more than US military involvements... Car deaths alone are >37K in 2016 in the US alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
  - hobls 8y ago
    Exactly. Military deaths are far exceeded by civilian ones, if only due to scale.
    - ryanx435 8y ago
      military deaths are historically low because of how much better the american military is than our opponents. the american military is better because of the technology we have. The technology we have is because of DARPA spending over the last 80 years. do you see the flaw in your logic?
      - hobls 8y ago
        There are lots of reasons to spend money on military technology, but absolute reduction in deaths by U.S. citizens is not a compelling one — there are just too many civilians who die in preventable ways as compared to military deaths. I think it’s kind of a silly comparison, tbh. I’d like to see us spend more money on both civilian and military research. I suspect that the military spends plenty of money on shit that is less impactful in the long term than research, and military research also often advances civilian technology. My point was meant to be quite narrow.
        ryanx435 8y ago
        Would you rather we have wars were America doesn't have a significant advantage? Maybe like the civil war, where both sides were equal and 750,000 Americans died? Or WW2, fighting against an arguably better Nazi and Japanese military killed 400,000 Americans? Or WW1, where the stalemate between both sides led to 120,000 american deaths? You must be right because all those american deaths are preferable to only 2,000 americans who died in the wars in Afghanistan. /s obviously
  - todd8 8y ago
    I believe the argument is that the research is supposed to lead to a lower chance of the US or allied citizen deaths by preventing advisaries from attacking. We hope that the expensive nuclear capabilities, for example, are never used. How do we measure the potential loss if we had no such capability?
  - Veelox 8y ago
    At least 50,000,000 were killed in WW2 alone. In WW1 around 16,000,000 were killed. That is over 65,000,000 people killed counting only the two biggest conflicts of the 20th century. If another global conflict broke out, the death count could easily be 100,000,000. If the money the US spends on military keeps a world war from happening in the 21st century it will be money well spent.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      It's really phenomenal to think about how many people died in WW2. It's literally difficult to even imagine. And your numbers there are a bit off. Estimates tend to start more around 70 million. And I think that's leading to you low ball the potential death toll in future wars. In 1945 the entire world's population was around 2.4 billion. Nearly 3% of the world was killed or died as a result of WW2. The world's population today is 7.6 billion. A war of the same effect would have an expected death toll of around 222 million people. And that's probably substantially lowballing it as we have far greater ways of killing each other now a days, even if we take nukes out of the picture. Even just back to those 70 million, let's say 73 million as that's where Wiki starts and it seems reasonable. Just imagine that. That's a 9/11 scale of death every single day for 24,366 days. Or a 9/11 scale event every single day for 67 years. That's again difficult to even imagine. And all of that death, with a population 1/3rd of ours today, was compressed into 6 years. Such lessons should never be forgotten, but in a way it's difficult to learn from such things when we really cannot even imagine death and destruction on this scale now a days.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  I think you're right but I'd phrase it as the military typically has very specific needs and constraints which helps design and sometimes those needs overlap with civilian life.
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's true. Military spending is the only kind of industrial strategy the US is willing to implement without one of the parties immediately blocking the effort. Pretty sad but it's the state of things.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Military research spending is also 'easy' to administer and simpler - have a bunch of siloed off portions investigating any remotely viable approach. Even investigating something that we later know is unfeasible like gyrorocket weapons or walking trucks it is known what it would get and that they have potential to be useful. Tore or less regular generations. Generally what makes it through is accurate, faster, or longer ranged but fundamentally very similar even if it is 'just' laser guided missiles from drones instead of blind dropped fletchettes from biplanes. Civilian research is 'harder' in that the advances are less qualitative and more abstract. Is researching amphibian biology going to somehow improve medicine? (Axotls may be anywhere from a dead-end to bringing regeneration). The 'boring' solutions are already there and being worked on. Furthermore there rationalizing secrecy becomes far harder and anything that sounds stupid can be attacked for political points regardless of the underlying reality. The 'treadmill for shrimp' for instance is attacked as an example of waste when it is the exact opposite - using an innovative way to cut expenses as part of examining the impact of water quality on the health and livelihood of species that are an economic lifeblood in many regions.

by m12k 8y ago

justaman 8y ago

Disagree. I think it is the incentive that drives this innovation. The consumer market does not face large scale death if it does not innovate.

justin66 8y ago
ARPA was more innovative than DARPA was, not less.
black_puppydog 8y ago
I'd argue opportunity cost from lack of innovation in medecine and e.g. car safety/car replacements kills more than US military involvements... Car deaths alone are >37K in 2016 in the US alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- hobls 8y ago
  Exactly. Military deaths are far exceeded by civilian ones, if only due to scale.
  - ryanx435 8y ago
    military deaths are historically low because of how much better the american military is than our opponents. the american military is better because of the technology we have. The technology we have is because of DARPA spending over the last 80 years. do you see the flaw in your logic?
    - hobls 8y ago
      There are lots of reasons to spend money on military technology, but absolute reduction in deaths by U.S. citizens is not a compelling one — there are just too many civilians who die in preventable ways as compared to military deaths. I think it’s kind of a silly comparison, tbh. I’d like to see us spend more money on both civilian and military research. I suspect that the military spends plenty of money on shit that is less impactful in the long term than research, and military research also often advances civilian technology. My point was meant to be quite narrow.
      - ryanx435 8y ago
        Would you rather we have wars were America doesn't have a significant advantage? Maybe like the civil war, where both sides were equal and 750,000 Americans died? Or WW2, fighting against an arguably better Nazi and Japanese military killed 400,000 Americans? Or WW1, where the stalemate between both sides led to 120,000 american deaths? You must be right because all those american deaths are preferable to only 2,000 americans who died in the wars in Afghanistan. /s obviously
- todd8 8y ago
  I believe the argument is that the research is supposed to lead to a lower chance of the US or allied citizen deaths by preventing advisaries from attacking. We hope that the expensive nuclear capabilities, for example, are never used. How do we measure the potential loss if we had no such capability?
- Veelox 8y ago
  At least 50,000,000 were killed in WW2 alone. In WW1 around 16,000,000 were killed. That is over 65,000,000 people killed counting only the two biggest conflicts of the 20th century. If another global conflict broke out, the death count could easily be 100,000,000. If the money the US spends on military keeps a world war from happening in the 21st century it will be money well spent.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    It's really phenomenal to think about how many people died in WW2. It's literally difficult to even imagine. And your numbers there are a bit off. Estimates tend to start more around 70 million. And I think that's leading to you low ball the potential death toll in future wars. In 1945 the entire world's population was around 2.4 billion. Nearly 3% of the world was killed or died as a result of WW2. The world's population today is 7.6 billion. A war of the same effect would have an expected death toll of around 222 million people. And that's probably substantially lowballing it as we have far greater ways of killing each other now a days, even if we take nukes out of the picture. Even just back to those 70 million, let's say 73 million as that's where Wiki starts and it seems reasonable. Just imagine that. That's a 9/11 scale of death every single day for 24,366 days. Or a 9/11 scale event every single day for 67 years. That's again difficult to even imagine. And all of that death, with a population 1/3rd of ours today, was compressed into 6 years. Such lessons should never be forgotten, but in a way it's difficult to learn from such things when we really cannot even imagine death and destruction on this scale now a days.
castlecrasher2 8y ago
I think you're right but I'd phrase it as the military typically has very specific needs and constraints which helps design and sometimes those needs overlap with civilian life.

maxxxxx 8y ago

That's true. Military spending is the only kind of industrial strategy the US is willing to implement without one of the parties immediately blocking the effort. Pretty sad but it's the state of things.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Military research spending is also 'easy' to administer and simpler - have a bunch of siloed off portions investigating any remotely viable approach. Even investigating something that we later know is unfeasible like gyrorocket weapons or walking trucks it is known what it would get and that they have potential to be useful. Tore or less regular generations. Generally what makes it through is accurate, faster, or longer ranged but fundamentally very similar even if it is 'just' laser guided missiles from drones instead of blind dropped fletchettes from biplanes. Civilian research is 'harder' in that the advances are less qualitative and more abstract. Is researching amphibian biology going to somehow improve medicine? (Axotls may be anywhere from a dead-end to bringing regeneration). The 'boring' solutions are already there and being worked on. Furthermore there rationalizing secrecy becomes far harder and anything that sounds stupid can be attacked for political points regardless of the underlying reality. The 'treadmill for shrimp' for instance is attacked as an example of waste when it is the exact opposite - using an innovative way to cut expenses as part of examining the impact of water quality on the health and livelihood of species that are an economic lifeblood in many regions.