4 ms·

Except they haven't, mostly internalized (sometimes stolen) and formalized achievements of free risk takers, who don't bother writing textbooks.

yters 6y ago
How did we get the atom bomb and the internet?
- juskrey 6y ago
  Internet story is mostly a fairytale, specifically modern stupidity of "fathers" shows this. They were just riding on the wave of something that everyone were experimenting with at that time. A-bomb was about pulling some people away from academia, not building it by academia. "Built by academia" result is something we can see with colliders.
  - UnFleshedOne 6y ago
    Next time we need a project the size of A-bomb, we might also pull some people from academia and industry. Then they will take some obscure area of research on Prevalence of Memetics in Mating Habits of Extinct Species of Dung Beetles done 50 years ago by an old fart with tenure (and his 20 underpaid grad students) and build a psychodelic control system that can quickly and efficiently enslave and zombiefy large human populations. TLDR: you never know what you'll need in the future. The only correct way is to research everything and we need a system for that.
- hogFeast 6y ago
  The perception of people in academia is that innovation is the product of knowledge. That may have been true in the US. It has been true pretty much nowhere else (not for anything else, the real world is rarely so kind as to present solutions on a plate). Korea, to name the best example, takes education extremely seriously...and they have had severe difficulty turning that into innovation (outside the chaebols, there is basically no R&D occurring). I would also look at the exam being tested here. This is India, a system that is notoriously reliant on rote memorisation and turning out employees who crumble under pressure and cannot operate without very specific instructions. Again, this is not a coincidence. The source of innovation isn't knowledge by the coincidence of knowledge, creativity, and opportunity. Knowing something is quite different from being able to understand and use it. Stuff like the atom bomb are entrepreneurial triumphs by people who happened to be academics. (The university I attended pioneered AI in the 60s, they had the DoD battering down their door...they refused every opportunity, and doubled down in the ivory tower. Result? No serious innovation since the 60s, and most PHd students going elsewhere to do "real work". This kind of thing just doesn't happen in the US but is the most common result outside of the US.)
  - yters 6y ago
    The problem in India may be more to do with the teaching style (i.e. rote memorization does not produce understanding) than the content being taught. And the right answer might be a combination of academics and real world application, instead of an either/or dichotomy.
  - bollu 6y ago
    For what it's worth, I currently have the top comment in the thread defending the point of computer science. I'm an undergrad studying in India. My exams in college have not been about rote memorization. I've written quite a bit of code, and taken down quite a bit of notes for them. It totally depends on where someone studies in India. I do concede that the vast majority of college in India outside the "top 20" or so do seem to rely heavily on rote memorization. - My notes taken for university: https://github.com/bollu/notes https://github.com/bollu/notes - Code I wrote for university: https://github.com/bollu/IIIT-H-Code https://github.com/bollu/IIIT-H-Code > Stuff like the atom bomb are entrepreneurial triumphs by people who happened to be academics. This seems like an odd position to defend. The mathematics that was necessary to even begin this line of investigation was worked out in academia by pure mathematicians and theoretical physicists. The "steelman" version of your argument I would phrase as thus: > Academia does not have the incentive and funding structure to pull of projects such as the Manhattan project, and thus had to occur as a government project with unlimited funding. I will gladly accept this. Unfortunately, it's not just academia that suffers from this. I don't think a lot of startups do useful research either. Most of the "original research" that I am aware of occurs at extremely well funded government labs, or lately the large tech companies that are pouring billions into AI.
  - ican1 6y ago
    >This is India, a system that is notoriously reliant on rote memorisation and turning out employees who crumble under pressure and cannot operate without very specific instructions. This is a pretty biased view, bordering on racist. If Indian employees can't work without detailed instructions then how come large percentage of FAANG (full time) employees are Indians? Let's not forget that both Google and Microsoft CEOs did their undergrads in India.
mattkrause 6y ago
The idea that academia is "risk-free" is frankly hilarious, given the state of the academic job market and the pay lines for most grants.

yters 6y ago

How did we get the atom bomb and the internet?

juskrey 6y ago
Internet story is mostly a fairytale, specifically modern stupidity of "fathers" shows this. They were just riding on the wave of something that everyone were experimenting with at that time. A-bomb was about pulling some people away from academia, not building it by academia. "Built by academia" result is something we can see with colliders.
- UnFleshedOne 6y ago
  Next time we need a project the size of A-bomb, we might also pull some people from academia and industry. Then they will take some obscure area of research on Prevalence of Memetics in Mating Habits of Extinct Species of Dung Beetles done 50 years ago by an old fart with tenure (and his 20 underpaid grad students) and build a psychodelic control system that can quickly and efficiently enslave and zombiefy large human populations. TLDR: you never know what you'll need in the future. The only correct way is to research everything and we need a system for that.
hogFeast 6y ago
The perception of people in academia is that innovation is the product of knowledge. That may have been true in the US. It has been true pretty much nowhere else (not for anything else, the real world is rarely so kind as to present solutions on a plate). Korea, to name the best example, takes education extremely seriously...and they have had severe difficulty turning that into innovation (outside the chaebols, there is basically no R&D occurring). I would also look at the exam being tested here. This is India, a system that is notoriously reliant on rote memorisation and turning out employees who crumble under pressure and cannot operate without very specific instructions. Again, this is not a coincidence. The source of innovation isn't knowledge by the coincidence of knowledge, creativity, and opportunity. Knowing something is quite different from being able to understand and use it. Stuff like the atom bomb are entrepreneurial triumphs by people who happened to be academics. (The university I attended pioneered AI in the 60s, they had the DoD battering down their door...they refused every opportunity, and doubled down in the ivory tower. Result? No serious innovation since the 60s, and most PHd students going elsewhere to do "real work". This kind of thing just doesn't happen in the US but is the most common result outside of the US.)
- yters 6y ago
  The problem in India may be more to do with the teaching style (i.e. rote memorization does not produce understanding) than the content being taught. And the right answer might be a combination of academics and real world application, instead of an either/or dichotomy.
- bollu 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I currently have the top comment in the thread defending the point of computer science. I'm an undergrad studying in India. My exams in college have not been about rote memorization. I've written quite a bit of code, and taken down quite a bit of notes for them. It totally depends on where someone studies in India. I do concede that the vast majority of college in India outside the "top 20" or so do seem to rely heavily on rote memorization. - My notes taken for university: https://github.com/bollu/notes https://github.com/bollu/notes - Code I wrote for university: https://github.com/bollu/IIIT-H-Code https://github.com/bollu/IIIT-H-Code > Stuff like the atom bomb are entrepreneurial triumphs by people who happened to be academics. This seems like an odd position to defend. The mathematics that was necessary to even begin this line of investigation was worked out in academia by pure mathematicians and theoretical physicists. The "steelman" version of your argument I would phrase as thus: > Academia does not have the incentive and funding structure to pull of projects such as the Manhattan project, and thus had to occur as a government project with unlimited funding. I will gladly accept this. Unfortunately, it's not just academia that suffers from this. I don't think a lot of startups do useful research either. Most of the "original research" that I am aware of occurs at extremely well funded government labs, or lately the large tech companies that are pouring billions into AI.
- ican1 6y ago
  >This is India, a system that is notoriously reliant on rote memorisation and turning out employees who crumble under pressure and cannot operate without very specific instructions. This is a pretty biased view, bordering on racist. If Indian employees can't work without detailed instructions then how come large percentage of FAANG (full time) employees are Indians? Let's not forget that both Google and Microsoft CEOs did their undergrads in India.

mattkrause 6y ago

The idea that academia is "risk-free" is frankly hilarious, given the state of the academic job market and the pay lines for most grants.