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My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our b

My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our biggest products. I’m in favor of pursuing basic research, but there is always a cost. When you take a group of your smartest people and focus them on non-economic activities, the economy loses something.

Godel_unicode 6y ago
That's incredibly short-sited. I'm glad for you that your startup was able to make money, but do you really think that the long-term economic value created is higher by making yet another piece of graphics software than from fundamental research? I would argue this entirely the other way; whenever the smartest people are sucked away from foundational work to make money "up the stack", it makes us all the poorer.
- worik 6y ago
  Pie in the sky when you die....
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    https://www.comparably.com/companies/cern/salaries https://www.comparably.com/companies/cern/salaries
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Says the man living in a world plagued by short termism, where companies forsake their future to improve their quarterly report, where we have condemned generations to suffer climate change just so that we could have 15% cheaper electricity and enjoy oversized cars. This going further down this path only lead to misery
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Given that interest rates in developed countries are generally lower than in all of history, and mind-boggling amounts of surplus capital are being deployed by companies like Amazon, Softbank, Tesla, etc., it seems to me that the world is less "plagued by short termism" than any time in the last 13 billion years. I'm not debating your assessment in an absolute sense, or the direction that resources are deployed, I'm just saying relatively speaking, the world has been approaching an asymptote, so how far does it have to go to be enough? At what point does some disaster that we weren't expecting happen that proves we went too far in being future oriented? Like, I dunno, an actual plague? Edit: I meant this to express something more than just another "well actually" comment - I think COVID-19 really raises existential questions about whether people in the wealthy countries have gone too far in a future orientation, as if everything was certain and we and our civilization were all immortal. It may not make a bit of difference for some, but I observe it's changing a lot of people's outlooks. Something that has stuck in my mind is how plastic bags were banned in my area just before the pandemic hit, and whether or not there was an actual repeal, everyone has brought them back. Is this something to lament, to cheer, or just to observe and contemplate? If everything is bad, is anything?
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        I am struggling to make any sence of your post. COVID demonstrates lack of being prepared and future orientated, we did not have PPE stockpiles and did not takw actions that would contain the virus to save the economy now. The more future oriented you are, the safer you are.
        perl4ever 6y ago
        You're talking about predicting the future correctly and making the right tradeoffs. Being future oriented means trading off short term goals for long term ones; preparing for the future says nothing about whether we are prepared in hindsight. You can use "future oriented" to mean being prescient or omniscient, but I think that's a useless way to define the word, because it's not a thing that exists. The US invasion of Iraq was a drastic pivot of the US towards a more future oriented foreign policy, and I assume we would agree it was a huge mistake, right? WeWork was a tremendously future oriented company, that wanted to be everything to everyone, but it wasn't, and won't be, the next Amazon. It would be bad for society for similar projects to suck up all the resources in preference to short term needs. "it is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future" - Mark Twain
- oraphalous 6y ago
  Cool your boots... The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... The comment you to which you are responding even asserted that basic research does have value - and does not assert that the trade offs go one way or another. The implication of the comment as I read it was that we should at least critically think about those trade offs rather than just writing a blank check to whatever basic science scientists are requesting to pursue. Your comment, in contrast, claims that the tradeoff always is worth it - that 'whenever' money is not diverted to basic research, then we are all poorer. You have no evidence for this claim. In fact - no one really understands much about how best to evaluate this tradeoff. A helpful contribution to the discourse would provide us with tools to think about how to evaluate it, rather than just the endless tribalistic drum beating for one side or the other.
  - wiz21c 6y ago
    Funny, the comment from the start-uper, to me, sounds like a implicit explanation that basic/fundamental research is OK as long as it has less priority than economy (in the sense of money making money).
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... It also happens to be wrong. If more projects that require nuclear physicists get funded, more people can become nuclear physicists. We're nowhere near the point that we're going to run out of potential nuclear physicists who could be trained if there was more demand for them. At some kind of abstract level there are a finite number of people in the world so anybody who does something can't be doing something else, but there are more than enough people for whom the "something else" is either unemployment or some net-annihilating occupation like divorce attorneys or advertising that we shouldn't have to worry about people spending their time doing something actually beneficial.
    - phkahler 6y ago
      >> The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... >> It also happens to be wrong. Wow. The startup guy gave an actual example of the tradeoff. Am I correct that you see that not as a tradeoff but as a loss?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Or, that particular person could have been sucked up in to a huge bureaucracy and produced nearly nothing their entire career. Hard to say.
godelski 6y ago
I think you're over simplifying things with the example. There's 2 major factors that I see. 1) It is unknown what economic impact that the SSC would have had. It could produced more value or less than that which you and similar industries contributed to from the benefit of these scientists. A search shows that without accounting for the impact of the fundamental science, CERN's revenues exceed the costs by ~3bn euros[0] (report seems to also ignore ambiguous contributions like spin-offs). So the companies that benefited from the closure would have to at have near this revenue. 2) Scientific projects are fundamentally long term economic investments. These scientific projects have returns on investment of larger than 20 years and sometimes upwards of 100. These are impossible ROIs for companies, but great for civilizations. These factors are huge and we're not even talking about the local economy boom because and influx of smart people which typically leads to higher quality schools in the area and tech startups that grow because subcontracting, consulting, and spin-offs. We're also ignoring the cultural impact as labs serve as a form of cultural exportation, which is important in the global game played between countries (the economic value of which is difficult to quantify), and this is what you are directly responding to. It is fairly difficult to answer these questions, so I think your answer is too simplified. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162516000731 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016251...
- galvin 6y ago
  Regarding CERN, it's probably too obvious but I can't help but mention Tim Berners-Lee's work.
knolax 6y ago
A nuclear physicist working on graphics software sounds like underemployment to me.
- valuearb 6y ago
  I agree.
Symbiote 6y ago
"The economy" seems to favour the current generation of Einsteins working on optimizing ad impressions for Google, spreading fake news for Facebook and sucking unimaginable amounts of money into Bezos' pocket, the consequences be damned. We could use a lot less of this, and a lot more Einsteins in research laboratories and universities.
- piva00 6y ago
  At least some of the products in tech are actual products, I'm more sad and frustrated by a generation of Einsteins working in finance...
  - mastazi 6y ago
    10-ish years ago I would have agreed with you. Right now, we are at a point where most tech giants are not making the world any better IMHO.
admax88q 6y ago
Do you think that a nuclear physicist writing graphics software rather than doing nuclear physics was a net win for society in the long term?
- valuearb 6y ago
  No
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Well, depends on the nuclear physicist and on the graphics software Maybe this person had better career successes in the SW field than in the Physics field
- VMG 6y ago
  yes
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Lets we free up all these physisics and engineers working on long-term projects that may or may not succed and send them to trade stocks on wallstreet. Who needs real progress
tyre 6y ago
> the economy loses something like…graphics software? I think the trade-off is more than worth it to better understand the nature of our universe. You seem to imply that basic research has no long-term economic benefit, or maybe that the long-term benefit does not outweigh the short term cost. That seems like a pretty difficult implication to defend.
- valuearb 6y ago
  No implication was given, just that things have costs.
throwaway2048 6y ago
Its pretty presumptuous to assume your startup has economic value, and the SSC didn't. Plenty of completely economically worthless tech startups.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Well, ours was profitable and sold for $95M, kind of a definition of economic value.
  - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
    Paintings of blue squares also sell for that amount.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    That startup was already sold?
  - wiz21c 6y ago
    Now you have economic value it's time to have other kind of values. And with that amount of money you definitely can. (of course, this is the comment of someone who painfully gathers 3000 bucks a month, that is who has 0 firepower except a few donations here and there, a few signature, etc. Not everybody is blessed with "the good idea").
rland 6y ago
I mean, that nuclear physicist also wasn't farming.

Godel_unicode 6y ago

That's incredibly short-sited. I'm glad for you that your startup was able to make money, but do you really think that the long-term economic value created is higher by making yet another piece of graphics software than from fundamental research? I would argue this entirely the other way; whenever the smartest people are sucked away from foundational work to make money "up the stack", it makes us all the poorer.

worik 6y ago
Pie in the sky when you die....
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  https://www.comparably.com/companies/cern/salaries https://www.comparably.com/companies/cern/salaries
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Says the man living in a world plagued by short termism, where companies forsake their future to improve their quarterly report, where we have condemned generations to suffer climate change just so that we could have 15% cheaper electricity and enjoy oversized cars. This going further down this path only lead to misery
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Given that interest rates in developed countries are generally lower than in all of history, and mind-boggling amounts of surplus capital are being deployed by companies like Amazon, Softbank, Tesla, etc., it seems to me that the world is less "plagued by short termism" than any time in the last 13 billion years. I'm not debating your assessment in an absolute sense, or the direction that resources are deployed, I'm just saying relatively speaking, the world has been approaching an asymptote, so how far does it have to go to be enough? At what point does some disaster that we weren't expecting happen that proves we went too far in being future oriented? Like, I dunno, an actual plague? Edit: I meant this to express something more than just another "well actually" comment - I think COVID-19 really raises existential questions about whether people in the wealthy countries have gone too far in a future orientation, as if everything was certain and we and our civilization were all immortal. It may not make a bit of difference for some, but I observe it's changing a lot of people's outlooks. Something that has stuck in my mind is how plastic bags were banned in my area just before the pandemic hit, and whether or not there was an actual repeal, everyone has brought them back. Is this something to lament, to cheer, or just to observe and contemplate? If everything is bad, is anything?
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      I am struggling to make any sence of your post. COVID demonstrates lack of being prepared and future orientated, we did not have PPE stockpiles and did not takw actions that would contain the virus to save the economy now. The more future oriented you are, the safer you are.
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        You're talking about predicting the future correctly and making the right tradeoffs. Being future oriented means trading off short term goals for long term ones; preparing for the future says nothing about whether we are prepared in hindsight. You can use "future oriented" to mean being prescient or omniscient, but I think that's a useless way to define the word, because it's not a thing that exists. The US invasion of Iraq was a drastic pivot of the US towards a more future oriented foreign policy, and I assume we would agree it was a huge mistake, right? WeWork was a tremendously future oriented company, that wanted to be everything to everyone, but it wasn't, and won't be, the next Amazon. It would be bad for society for similar projects to suck up all the resources in preference to short term needs. "it is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future" - Mark Twain
oraphalous 6y ago
Cool your boots... The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... The comment you to which you are responding even asserted that basic research does have value - and does not assert that the trade offs go one way or another. The implication of the comment as I read it was that we should at least critically think about those trade offs rather than just writing a blank check to whatever basic science scientists are requesting to pursue. Your comment, in contrast, claims that the tradeoff always is worth it - that 'whenever' money is not diverted to basic research, then we are all poorer. You have no evidence for this claim. In fact - no one really understands much about how best to evaluate this tradeoff. A helpful contribution to the discourse would provide us with tools to think about how to evaluate it, rather than just the endless tribalistic drum beating for one side or the other.
- wiz21c 6y ago
  Funny, the comment from the start-uper, to me, sounds like a implicit explanation that basic/fundamental research is OK as long as it has less priority than economy (in the sense of money making money).
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... It also happens to be wrong. If more projects that require nuclear physicists get funded, more people can become nuclear physicists. We're nowhere near the point that we're going to run out of potential nuclear physicists who could be trained if there was more demand for them. At some kind of abstract level there are a finite number of people in the world so anybody who does something can't be doing something else, but there are more than enough people for whom the "something else" is either unemployment or some net-annihilating occupation like divorce attorneys or advertising that we shouldn't have to worry about people spending their time doing something actually beneficial.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    >> The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... >> It also happens to be wrong. Wow. The startup guy gave an actual example of the tradeoff. Am I correct that you see that not as a tradeoff but as a loss?
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Or, that particular person could have been sucked up in to a huge bureaucracy and produced nearly nothing their entire career. Hard to say.

godelski 6y ago

I think you're over simplifying things with the example. There's 2 major factors that I see. 1) It is unknown what economic impact that the SSC would have had. It could produced more value or less than that which you and similar industries contributed to from the benefit of these scientists. A search shows that without accounting for the impact of the fundamental science, CERN's revenues exceed the costs by ~3bn euros[0] (report seems to also ignore ambiguous contributions like spin-offs). So the companies that benefited from the closure would have to at have near this revenue. 2) Scientific projects are fundamentally long term economic investments. These scientific projects have returns on investment of larger than 20 years and sometimes upwards of 100. These are impossible ROIs for companies, but great for civilizations. These factors are huge and we're not even talking about the local economy boom because and influx of smart people which typically leads to higher quality schools in the area and tech startups that grow because subcontracting, consulting, and spin-offs. We're also ignoring the cultural impact as labs serve as a form of cultural exportation, which is important in the global game played between countries (the economic value of which is difficult to quantify), and this is what you are directly responding to. It is fairly difficult to answer these questions, so I think your answer is too simplified. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162516000731 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016251...

galvin 6y ago
Regarding CERN, it's probably too obvious but I can't help but mention Tim Berners-Lee's work.

knolax 6y ago

A nuclear physicist working on graphics software sounds like underemployment to me.

valuearb 6y ago
I agree.

Symbiote 6y ago

"The economy" seems to favour the current generation of Einsteins working on optimizing ad impressions for Google, spreading fake news for Facebook and sucking unimaginable amounts of money into Bezos' pocket, the consequences be damned. We could use a lot less of this, and a lot more Einsteins in research laboratories and universities.

piva00 6y ago
At least some of the products in tech are actual products, I'm more sad and frustrated by a generation of Einsteins working in finance...
- mastazi 6y ago
  10-ish years ago I would have agreed with you. Right now, we are at a point where most tech giants are not making the world any better IMHO.

admax88q 6y ago

Do you think that a nuclear physicist writing graphics software rather than doing nuclear physics was a net win for society in the long term?

valuearb 6y ago
No
raverbashing 6y ago
Well, depends on the nuclear physicist and on the graphics software Maybe this person had better career successes in the SW field than in the Physics field
VMG 6y ago
yes

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

Lets we free up all these physisics and engineers working on long-term projects that may or may not succed and send them to trade stocks on wallstreet. Who needs real progress

tyre 6y ago

> the economy loses something like…graphics software? I think the trade-off is more than worth it to better understand the nature of our universe. You seem to imply that basic research has no long-term economic benefit, or maybe that the long-term benefit does not outweigh the short term cost. That seems like a pretty difficult implication to defend.

valuearb 6y ago
No implication was given, just that things have costs.

throwaway2048 6y ago

Its pretty presumptuous to assume your startup has economic value, and the SSC didn't. Plenty of completely economically worthless tech startups.

valuearb 6y ago
Well, ours was profitable and sold for $95M, kind of a definition of economic value.
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  Paintings of blue squares also sell for that amount.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  That startup was already sold?
- wiz21c 6y ago
  Now you have economic value it's time to have other kind of values. And with that amount of money you definitely can. (of course, this is the comment of someone who painfully gathers 3000 bucks a month, that is who has 0 firepower except a few donations here and there, a few signature, etc. Not everybody is blessed with "the good idea").

rland 6y ago

I mean, that nuclear physicist also wasn't farming.