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Science, technology and innovation isn’t addressing world’s most urgent problems

mrwnmonm 4y ago
Is there any money in that?
bell-cot 4y ago
Um. Yes. True. It was obvious to the authors of the Old Testament that "Doing Well" was quite different from (and far more tempting than) "Doing Good". Moralizing about that fact, for an audience which (mostly) has no historical perspective at all, is plausibly a good strategy for Doing Well in the modern social media sphere. If any of the people involved with the article are actually doing any bit of good in the real world, the article is careful to omit that detail.
- isitmadeofglass 4y ago
  Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it. We’ve tried sending thoughts and prayers at every single peoples we face, but it just doesn’t seem to work…
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    My "Old Testament" comment was more of a "No grown-ups are impressed by your finally noticing that cows have 4 legs, nor by your bragging about that brilliant discovery" mockery. But, in many ways, the field of theology is doing far better! At least Christianity, in the West. With the relative collapse of church membership, attendance, etc. over the past ~half-century, the number of self-serving hypocrite theologians enjoying good social status, pay, and benefits while preaching a moral code which they would never want to follow has been plummeting. The corresponding trends in science do not look so good.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it. As a comprehensive whole, even as somewhat of a supporter, the results seem unimpressive to me. But then this overlooks at least two things: - we do not have access to an accurate counterfactual reality machine, thus we ~~must~~ speculate (note: the ~~ ~~ is intended to cross out the enclosed word, as supported on Reddit) - there may be substantial unrealized value within subsets of theology (I'm a big proponent of Taoism, but then I'm surely biased (which is not necessarily synonymous with incorrect)) > We’ve tried sending thoughts and prayers at every single peoples we face, but it just doesn’t seem to work. See the "accurate counterfactual reality machine" comment above. Two questions: - is this intended as an accurate representation of theology? If not, what is it intended as? - it seems to me that: delusion is a substantial contributor to causality, most of human communication (some exceptions exist) is at least partially delusional (in a technical sense of the word, not pejorative), and arguably causality is the most important known phenomenon - from my frame of reference, science seems to have very little serious interest or knowledge about either (delusion and causality), yet despite this seems to have somehow ascended to the throne of the de facto superior metaphysical framework for discovery of reality. Is it just me, or does something seem "off" about this state of affairs? inb4: popular and persuasive thought terminating cliches/memes.
  - bjt2n3904 4y ago
    > We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends. Huxley
  - tsol 4y ago
    >Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it. Again, there are countless religions besides Christianity. I doubt you really polled muslims, jews, hindus, sikhs, taoists, etc on their experience with social media. I think you're just trying to make a sweeping generalization about one particular faith, and at the same time totally ignoring and invalidating faiths of 60% of the world.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      We can say with complete confidence that at least N-1 of the world's N religions are wrong.
jk_ra_el 4y ago
It’s addressing the global hate problem. Just in the contrary (?) direction to what we’d [hopefully] like.
DeathArrow 4y ago
I didn't know there is a comitee who describes what the world's most urgent problems are. I didn't even knew world is a thing. I believed we live in different countries and each and every one of us us is responsible for his or her well being.
melagonster 4y ago
if there are not some scientists, people even can't understand how many creatures lived in one region.
fxtentacle 4y ago
Of course not. Everyone is chasing those sweet ad dollars. There's no money to be made in helping the poor if you live in a truly capitalistic society.
- tkk23 4y ago
  I wanted to tell you about Adam Smith's invisible hand [1]: >the concept has been captured to mean that the pursuit of individual interest leads to the general good. However, to my surprise, it seems to have been thought up as an argument against a global adjustment of income: >Smith was worried that if the movement of capital and the movement of goods (imports) were both free, the British bourgeoisie would invest abroad, to the detriment of Britain. To this, Smith came up with an argument according to which the British bourgeois would be biased according to their place of residence and would therefore make investments in the home country guided by an "invisible hand". Against this, I would like to argue that there is no need to help the poor beyond allowing them to access the global market. If you look at Fiverr and such, with internet access, everybody can participate in the global economy and take some of those sweet ad dollars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
  - bannedbybros 4y ago
  - brnaftr361 4y ago
    A lot of Smith's conjectures have proven to be inaccurate, it seems. Additionally nobody seems to read the whole text, and instead they suck decontextualized quotes from the text in support of their argument and typically do so to justify the capitalist modal: "Many right-wingers-in-love-with-large-corporations keep citing Adam Smith, famous patron saint of “capitalism,” a word he never uttered, without reading him, using his ideas in a self-serving selective manner—ideas that he most certainly did not endorse in the form they are presented." -Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Antifragile David Graeber, in his book Debt, points to some interesting work by an Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali[1] and this is mentioned in the article you linked - though it's nowhere near as thorough. This is of interest because there is, to my knowledge, a considerable difference between Medieval Persia and Enlightenment Europe (to now) in both the domains of social landscape and moral paradigm. This is kind of an interesting parallel with the above point. Perhaps these 'components' aren't independent and require a great deal of structure and maintenance - pulling them out of their context and plugging them in to a given civilization, it seems, does not work. And perhaps that's evinced by the gross poverty suffered the world over. Taleb has an interesting point: "The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can." -Nicholas Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan Having pointed that out, I hypothesize that even if it were as outlined by Taleb, discovery would be random and that would lead to similar conditions mentioned in the article, but I would include in that hypothesis that the rate of discovery would drastically increase. Of course, "research" in the common sense is not conducted in the free market, it is highly regulated. Not only in the most common sense, by the government via financing selectivity, but also in more pernicious differential forms through institutions of higher learning. One, in that they vet people in many ways (financial, ideological, 'intellectual') and two, they withhold the tools and information generated which used public funding and is dependent on a long lineage of information. As a tertiary point, I imagine it would be much more difficult, if not virtually impossible for some "layperson" (read: expert without a degree) to propose some new theory, or perhaps to do something as simple as publish a paper. This lays the land in a way that is truly bleak for an independent informal scientist, even bleaker for someone who wishes to be one - though the domains vary on that. I think this is crucial to understanding the failures of the Western economic model as it relates to science. [1]: This is corroborated by Taleb.
moelf 4y ago
>This is all according to a major new report published on Thursday 20 October 2023 by an international collaboration led by the University of Sussex, future is here!
PeterisP 4y ago
It's not an issue of innovation but rather about priorities in resource allocation - obviously the society does not consider that those are the world's most urgent problems, because it has not chosen to assign large quantities of funding towards them. If words say one thing but actions show another, then obviously the actions show the truth and the words are just lies; we the people have voted with our wallets that these problems are relatively irrelevant. And that's kind of what the article says in more diplomatic terms - if you really believe that sustained development is important, then you have to put your money where your mouth is and fund it.
Frost1x 4y ago
No one said scientific research direction and progress didn't have bias. There's a large set of unknowns and it's dictated in part by the things people want to investigate, what people can get funded to investigate, how much progress already exists / how much promise seems to exist, and so on. If you look at health related research donations, you'll find a lot of money is poured into breast and prostate cancer. By most measures of overall impact, these diseases aren't all that critical but people care about their breasts and prostates. Funding agencies try to look at things a little more objectively but this is but one example of bias. https://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/6040435/als-ice-bucket-challenge-and-why-we-give-to-charity-donate https://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/6040435/als-ice-bucket-challen... Federal funding agencies themselves intentionally introduce bias by largely picking areas to fund that influence direction. Researchers work to spin whatever they really want to do in the context of where the money is but they need to eat and pay rent too.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
urthor 4y ago
I reference Alan Kay, who's spent 50+ years complaining Xerox Parc only happened when they wrote a GIGANTIC cheque. Then forgot about them. Good science basically requires atrocious amounts of money, to quite a small number of people. None of the scrabbling for $200,000 grants for a researcher, 4 grad students, and some beakers. Try 5 million 1970s dollars for a couple of dozen of the best and brightest. There's no doubt at all. The physical sciences have always been, and always will be, an enabler of income inequality.
- greenbit 4y ago
  So you're saying, for example, that after plowing how many billions into fusion research, when they finally crack it and can produce continents-worth of power from pennies worth of sea water, they won't actually start giving electricity away for free? Even though we've all collectively 'invested' in it through our taxes for decades?
  - urthor 4y ago
    Isaac Newton spent more time turning lead into gold than mathematics. Time & money doesn't make dumb ideas good ones. Bread needs water, flour, AND yeast to rise. Ain't gonna do much without all three.
    - greenbit 4y ago
      And of course Sir Isaac found time to fit alchemy and mathematics in between the daily activities of subsistence farming. Oh wait ..
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Was he funded by an external agency for the purpose of turning lead into gold, or was it only his own interest/initiative?
      - lioeters 4y ago
        Interestingly, Newton was "Master of the Mint" at the Royal Mint, which supplies all the nation's coinage. > Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Royal_Mint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Royal_Mint If he had been successful in turning lead into gold, he might have made his employer obsolete.
jl6 4y ago
> As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. Not saying those aren’t important goals, but the proposed remedy doesn’t exactly address them head on: In brief, the report calls for: Increasing funding for SDG-related research and innovation, particularly in lower income countries, on underlying social issues, social policy and grassroot innovations, and research relevant to a region or context. Promoting a rich diversity of science, technology and innovation pathways to address specific SDG challenges, including social and organisational innovation. Designing accountable initiatives that strengthen science, technology and innovation governance and support open and inclusive processes of deliberation and prioritisation. Empowering stakeholders to form different interpretations of what counts as SDG-related science, technology and innovation.
- nend 4y ago
  Your quoted text explains it very simply too. These are social/political problems, they need social/political solutions.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Yeah — but saying that plainly doesn’t give activists control of scientific funding to increase their fiefdoms.
auaurora 4y ago
auaurora 4y ago
[flagged]
cameronh90 4y ago
Smart phones have completely transformed access to information, finance and services in poor countries. Would a UN SDG focussed research agenda have prioritised technologies that enabled that, such as 4G, high density batteries, tiny low power SoCs, etc.? Often, the future use of scientific study isn't obvious until many years or decades later. Wouldn't this just result in prioritising scientists who are good at writing funding applications that make BS claims about how this area of research will reduce global poverty? We already see quite a lot of that. It seems to me that the most impactful technology rarely comes from SDG focussed research.
- gsatic 4y ago
  More like things are getting so complex no one has any clue what good science and tech policy is anymore.
  - User23 4y ago
    A big problem is that the kind of people inclined to become government bureaucrats are far from the best people to guide any sort of research effort.
    - liketochill 4y ago
      Because the rewards for being in government are less than in private sector. So we should identify high performers in government and pay them more.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Can you give me an example of how things are more complex today than they were 100 years ago? We have more complex widgets perhaps, but people seem to be the same.
    - tbrownaw 4y ago
      International trade is cheaper and more predictable, so there's a lot more of it now. The economy is just bigger than it used to be, which means it has more room for complexity to live in.
ouid 4y ago
well, sure it is, just from the opposite direction.
baryphonic 4y ago
> Global science research serves the needs of the Global North, and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new international study published today. As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. > Changing directions: Steering science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up to address and drive change across all areas of social justice and environmental issues. Is it really an improvement to have the unaccountable UN dictate research goals top-down rather than some private interests? IMO this sounds incredibly dystopian.
- bannedbybros 4y ago
- netfl0 4y ago
  It would sound less dystopian if you just assimilate.
  - baryphonic 4y ago
    I love Big Brother
    - netfl0 4y ago
      Now we're talkin!
narcraft 4y ago
For reference, our world in data tracks progress on the SDGs: https://sdg-tracker.org/ https://sdg-tracker.org/
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romusha 4y ago
aaron695 4y ago
breck 4y ago
csv files are
bjt2n3904 4y ago
> As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. Surprise surprise. Technical problems have technical solutions. Human problems have human solutions. Social problems (like racism) can't be solved with a calculator, and we need to stop trying to.
bkmeneguello 4y ago
SDG is a limiting factor in science development, not a boosting one. Science is funding oriented and companies are much more interested in funding research that could lead to revenue growth. It's funny to see how some people think their opinion is the "problem" other people's money should be used to resolve.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Scientific institutions in the United States have largely been captured by the investment-corporate sector. Basic R&D results produced with federal funds end up in the hands of corporate entities due to the exclusive licensing (Bayh-Dole) rules implemented in the 1980s, and this also means these corporate interests have reduced their own internal basic R&D budgets relative to past eras, instead relying on the federal funding system and the university research departments for this task. As a result, every tech department in the US university system is packed full of scheming federally-funded startup types, whose goal is to get a patent, transfer that patent to a small company which is then bought up by a corporate major, and then the professor gets a small percentage of the royalties. Federally-funded entrepreneurs of this kind and their facilitators are the people who run most university administrations these days. This merger of the academic and corporate worlds is the fundamental reason for the phenomena described in this report. The solution is pretty simple: eliminate exclusive licensing of university patents, such that anyone can use them for product development for a small flat fee. This would have the beneficient effect of encouraging corporations to move funds back into private research labs, as that's the only way they could ensure an exclusive patent period.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  > This would have the beneficient effect of encouraging corporations to move funds back into private research labs, as that's the only way they could ensure an exclusive patent period. With the second order effect of discouraging would be "schemers" from being entrepreneurial and innovative in the first place. It's not such a simple solution.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > entrepreneurial and innovative These are antonyms in this instance. Corrupt advisors and administrators trying to line their own pockets aren't how you foster creativity.
- dinvlad 4y ago
  It is difficult to de-couple these two things, because companies is where science translates to the real world. We need more direct funding from the rich governments for the kinds of research described in the article, which would address the associated problems “on paper”, while still allowing translation of it in startups etc and ultimately benefitting the general public. So the problem is not so much that companies sponsor some (!) research, but that the governments simply don’t invest nearly as much into public R&D as they need or could (while preferring to pour money into the military etc.). As a result, academics have no choice but follow other funding sources to survive in the already hyper-competitive scientific world. Hence, we should not put the blame on them, but rather on the public funding sources.
karaterobot 4y ago
> Changing directions: Steering science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up to address and drive change across all areas of social justice and environmental issues. After reading the UN SDG document, I wonder: How did things like mitigating climate change, stopping overfishing, gender equality, and access to education all end up falling under the heading of sustainability at the UN? It feels really broad and mixed up to me. Usually not having a tight focus or a single goal is a bad sign for initiatives. It reads like: "our vision for this initiative is to solve all major problems", which is admirable, but feels ... out of scope to me.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  Well, what exactly does "sustainable" mean? If you take climate change as the impending complete disaster that some people see it as, it would kind of make it hard to sustain any ongoing development when it finally hits. Overfishing should be clear enough; run out of fish, and civilization hits a major setback that makes it hard to sustain whatever we've been up to. Gender equality and education access might be a bit more indirect, but at least so far our civilizational development has required a general upskilling of the population as a whole. And if you think that people are being excluded from that, then well a lack of additional people to upskill will turn into a blocker sooner rather than later and again make it hard to sustain that development.
powera 4y ago
This is "woke" clap-trap. The thesis appears to be that it is bad that some countries are wealthy enough to pursue any research on non-subsistence topics.
tbrownaw 4y ago
> As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. Should it be? Are those actually things that would benefit from additional expensive research? - we already know how to do fission power, and how to get rid of any waste (if the politicians wouldn't forbid it); there's a lot of research money already going to fusion power; both direct solar (photovoltaic) and indirect (wind) power are getting cheaper very rapidly as they're done more; hydro and geothermal are already things in places where they're a thing - social research isn't hampered by lack of funds, but by ideological uniformity of researchers and "I want to believe" (seriously, it's amazing how much lasting real-world harm communism and more generally "the entire world is just a struggle between groups defined along such-and-such axis" cause ever time they escape from the ivory tower) - hunger is downstream of social issues - good health and wellbeing looks like it's mostly about infectious diseases? Aside from high-end research for new things (eg covid), that'd be either poverty (social issues) or trust in medical authorities (also social issues) or maybe outside medical folks being banned from places (social issues again)
kkfx 4y ago
Science is a thing, technology it's implementation, but actual driver is economy, short-term economy in general. With such a driver no vehicle can go much further. Let's start from a popular topic, ridden with propaganda of various sides, the Green New Deal. In theory we know we can't have more than very little p.v. or wind power because being very quick in output change no other classic power plant can keep the network at the right frequency: the Sun the sun rises, p.v. quickly grow to the peak, loads on classic power plants goes down too fast to adapt, frequency skyrocket causing a chain of blackouts, the sun sets and the load on classic power plant skyrocket, frequency plummet and large chunk of the network get cut out to reduce the load. The solution was and is named "Smart Grid" with storage, where the storage (batteries + inverters) are actually quick enough to compensate. The Sun rise, all connected cars start charging and so loads on classic P.P. remain almost unchanged. They slow down charging slow enough that classic PP crank down their production at a sustainable peace. Similarly in the evening all connected cars start discharging quickly compensate the very quick p.v. production loss, and stop discharging slowly allowing nuclear/gas/... PP to crank up at a sustainable peace. Or, so to speak, the extremely high costs of storage is offset to private individuals instead of being on energy operators shoulders. Such model does not happen because p.v. start to get economically sound, but until gasoline/diesel reach 3€/l (~11USD/gal) and/or the national grid became unstable most would not buy BEVs. Another example is IT history: Xerox PARC invented and implemented the modern Desktop and desktop computing, the classic Paul Otlet/Henry La Fontaine Mundaneum idea in practice, than for business purposes such concept was crashed and developed few parts at a time by modern GAFAM in a way to ensure end users have next to no power and are locked in in their service. Another example is the classic rent vs buy model where at first rent pay well, faster and cheaper, then the big cucumber arrives up the a* with rental prices to the stars and almost no more options to nor resources left to buy instead of rent. Long story short: Science and technology works well ONLY if Science is PUBLIC, witch means NO research is done for private interests but for whole society one, and technology is UNDER Science, witch means the private sector select and pick new Science innovations and implement them on scale. So the model must be: - a State, on top, witch means Democracy, witch means ALL PEOPLE on top; - the State MASSIVELY found general interesting research maintaining universities, schools, labs, factories etc for the general interests; - such PUBLIC apparatus produce innovations for the society; - private sector grab ideas and hire some talents who do want to implement them instead of keep researching, try to sell resulting implementations, some will profit, some will fail. All critical sectors are public only, so weapons are public only, health is public only (pharma for first), energy is public because we all need it, food due to it's nature is a mix BUT with a State/public regulation to ensure a minimum intake for all, basic transportation infra are public from TLCs to (rail)roads and harbors/airports. The rest is private. NOTHING impede private research but having this far less resources only real success for the society will survive, modern absurd anti-society stuff get criticized by the compartmentalized public research, religiously separated from the private, and fails quickly. For those who say "that's communism" or EQUALLY "that's fascism" do remember a thing: no market have proved to be or remain really free in a very short timeframe. No dictatorship have proven to last, they innovate quickly, expand quickly, than fall. The key is the old Roman's "est modus in rebus" or "there is a measure in anything" meaning, nothing can work taken to the extreme, there is no one-size-fit-all.
wonderwonder 4y ago
This article is essentially saying they want science to go woke. They want to study social issues and create a board that can decide what kind of science is appropriate and where private and governments are allowed to invest their money.
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stephc_int13 4y ago
I have a strong dislike of what I call the "charity mindset" as I believe that humans all over the globe are truly equals. Our lives, trajectories and opportunities are obviously different, but I see that as historical lag that tend to solve themselves over time, charity is only marginally helpful and I think it has many second-order negative effects, especially corruption.
- simonh 4y ago
  A view not shared by many diseased starving children in war torn, natural disaster stricken developing nations. Having said that the most powerful force we have available to rectify such conditions is economic development based on liberal economics and the rule of law. Charity is analgesic, economic development is the cure.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  I’m extremely skeptical of worldviews that also conveniently allow one to avoid personal sacrifice. It is worth a lot of money to convince oneself that actually being generous with your wealth is bad.
  - tbrownaw 4y ago
    Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Charge royalties for teaching a man to fish, you can profit off feeding him for a lifetime.
- tsol 4y ago
  People say that until they need charity to survive.
steve76 4y ago
[dead]
nortonham 4y ago
Science, technology, and innovation won't address the worlds most urgent problems because the dominant global capitalist system is driven by profit over everything else.
at_a_remove 4y ago
I'll ask the other question: who determines what the world's most urgent problems are? Because I'm gonna guess that varies wildly depending on whom you ask.
nathias 4y ago
science does not determine urgency or priority of the problemes, this falls under consumption or politics
fithisux 4y ago
That's not news.
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seydor 4y ago
Here is a pressing problem for the United Nations: end a major war that threatens the UN itself. The UN is primarily an institution about peace. If peace exists, individual states and collections of states can take care of their pressing problems. Quoting Branko Milanovic: > The second reason for the decline of the UN and international organisation is ideological. According to the ideologies of neoliberalism and ‘the end of history’ which so heavily dominated the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, dealing with world peace and security was no longer the most pressing task of the UN. Helped by the proliferation of non-governmental organisations (and false NGOs), the new ideologues broadened the mission of the UN to many subsidiary issues with which it should have never been involved but rather left to other governmental and non-governmental bodies.[] > > The third, related reason is financial. As the mandate of the UN, the World Bank and other international institutions was broadened to include practically everything imaginable, it became obvious that the resources provided by governments were insufficient. Here NGOs met billionaires and private-sector donors. In a series of actions unthinkable when the UN was created, private interests simply infiltrated themselves into organisations created by states and began to dictate the new agenda. > > This is how the entire UN system went into decline and we ended up in a position where the head of the only international institution ever created by humankind whose role is preservation of world peace has become a spectator—with as much influence on matters of war and peace as any other of the 7.7 billion denizens of our planet. https://socialeurope.eu/does-the-united-nations-still-exist https://socialeurope.eu/does-the-united-nations-still-exist
yawnxyz 4y ago
These "most urgent problems" aren't addressed because they're not urgent enough. I work with antimicrobial resistance and phage therapy, and everyone keeps complaining that regulatory frameworks aren't adapting to our needs fast enough, there's no funding, etc. That's all true, because there's no urgent need to move faster. COVID-19 came along and all those obstacles evaporated. If AMR actually killed 10M+ people a year, in Western / wealthy countries, you bet it would become an "urgent problem" real quick. I consider these "urgent" problems "aspirationally urgent" in the same way that "we should probably eat less red meat and drink less alcohol and go to the gym more" kind of urgent. It's in the pile of things we should be doing... but we put off. It's not "urgent" as in "step off of the train tracks or I'll get hit" kind of urgent.
- Loquebantur 4y ago
  The point of the article is exactly people in the west like yourself, comparatively rich and well-educated, applying an ill-informed subjective standard of urgency? You apply a model of reality formed in the western bubble essentially and assume, it applies to the whole planet equally, errors negligible. That is incorrect. Not "only" do multitudes suffer needlessly because of such an attitude being common where decisions are made, "mid- and long-term" consequences are obviously closing in and mounting to unmanageable levels. It is not enough to just imagine one's model of reality to be correct and feel confirmed by people in the same bubble, prone to the same errors of judgement.
  - yawnxyz 4y ago
    Right, my point being I'm working in this field and it's incredibly difficult to get any kind of grant funding for this kind of work. Gov't funding drives this kind of work, and we spend a lot of time writing grants and getting scant money in this field. I'm a research software engineer making less than I made at my first tech job out of school — is that really what it takes , for people like me to give up making a nice salary at a tech company, to solve these "urgent" problems?
    - walleeee 4y ago
westurner 4y ago
> Changing directions: Steering science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up to address and drive change across all areas of social justice and environmental issues. https://globalgoals.org/ https://globalgoals.org/ #GlobalGoals #SDGs #Goal17 Each country (UN Member State) prepares an annual country-level report - an annual SDG report - on their voluntary progress toward their self-defined Targets (which are based upon Indicators; stats). Businesses that voluntarily prepare a sustainability report necessarily review their SDG-aligned operations' successes and failures. The GRI Corporate Sustainability report is SDG aligned; so if you prepare an annual Sustainability report, it should be easy to review aligned and essential operations. GRI Global Reporting Initiative is also in NL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative > Critically, the report finds that research in high-income and middle-income countries contributes disproportionally to a disconnect with the SDGs. Most published research (60%-80%) and innovation activity (95%-98%) is not related to the SDGs. Strategic alignment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment https://USAspending.gov https://USAspending.gov resulted from tracking State-level grants in IL: the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006#Implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability... Unfortunately, https://performance.gov/ https://performance.gov/ and https://USAspending.gov/ https://USAspending.gov/ do not have any way to - before or after funding decisions - specify that a funded thing is SDG-aligned. IMHO, we can easily focus on domestic priorities and also determine where our spending is impactful in regards to the SDGs. > Illustrating the imbalance, the report found that 80 percent of SDG-related inventions in high-income countries were concentrated in just six of the 73 countries Lots of important problems worth money to folks: #Goal1 #NoPoverty #Goal2 #ZeroHunger #Goal3 #GoodHealth #Goal4 #QualityEducation #Goal5 #GenderEquality #Goal6 #CleanWater #Goal7 #CleanEnergy #Goal8 #DecentJobs #Goal9 #Infrastructure #Goal10 #ReduceInequality #Goal11 #Sustainable #Goal12 #ResponsibleConsumption #Goal13 #ClimateAction #Goal14 #LifeBelowWater #Goal15 #LifeOnLand #Goal16 #PEACE #Justice #Goal17 #Partnership #Teamwork If you label things with #GlobalGoal hashtags, others can find solutions to the very same problems.

Is there any money in that?

Um. Yes. True. It was obvious to the authors of the Old Testament that "Doing Well" was quite different from (and far more tempting than) "Doing Good". Moralizing about that fact, for an audience which (mostly) has no historical perspective at all, is plausibly a good strategy for Doing Well in the modern social media sphere. If any of the people involved with the article are actually doing any bit of good in the real world, the article is careful to omit that detail.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago
Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it. We’ve tried sending thoughts and prayers at every single peoples we face, but it just doesn’t seem to work…
- bell-cot 4y ago
  My "Old Testament" comment was more of a "No grown-ups are impressed by your finally noticing that cows have 4 legs, nor by your bragging about that brilliant discovery" mockery. But, in many ways, the field of theology is doing far better! At least Christianity, in the West. With the relative collapse of church membership, attendance, etc. over the past ~half-century, the number of self-serving hypocrite theologians enjoying good social status, pay, and benefits while preaching a moral code which they would never want to follow has been plummeting. The corresponding trends in science do not look so good.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it. As a comprehensive whole, even as somewhat of a supporter, the results seem unimpressive to me. But then this overlooks at least two things: - we do not have access to an accurate counterfactual reality machine, thus we ~~must~~ speculate (note: the ~~ ~~ is intended to cross out the enclosed word, as supported on Reddit) - there may be substantial unrealized value within subsets of theology (I'm a big proponent of Taoism, but then I'm surely biased (which is not necessarily synonymous with incorrect)) > We’ve tried sending thoughts and prayers at every single peoples we face, but it just doesn’t seem to work. See the "accurate counterfactual reality machine" comment above. Two questions: - is this intended as an accurate representation of theology? If not, what is it intended as? - it seems to me that: delusion is a substantial contributor to causality, most of human communication (some exceptions exist) is at least partially delusional (in a technical sense of the word, not pejorative), and arguably causality is the most important known phenomenon - from my frame of reference, science seems to have very little serious interest or knowledge about either (delusion and causality), yet despite this seems to have somehow ascended to the throne of the de facto superior metaphysical framework for discovery of reality. Is it just me, or does something seem "off" about this state of affairs? inb4: popular and persuasive thought terminating cliches/memes.
- bjt2n3904 4y ago
  > We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends. Huxley
- tsol 4y ago
  >Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it. Again, there are countless religions besides Christianity. I doubt you really polled muslims, jews, hindus, sikhs, taoists, etc on their experience with social media. I think you're just trying to make a sweeping generalization about one particular faith, and at the same time totally ignoring and invalidating faiths of 60% of the world.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    We can say with complete confidence that at least N-1 of the world's N religions are wrong.

jk_ra_el 4y ago

It’s addressing the global hate problem. Just in the contrary (?) direction to what we’d [hopefully] like.

DeathArrow 4y ago

I didn't know there is a comitee who describes what the world's most urgent problems are. I didn't even knew world is a thing. I believed we live in different countries and each and every one of us us is responsible for his or her well being.

melagonster 4y ago

if there are not some scientists, people even can't understand how many creatures lived in one region.

fxtentacle 4y ago

Of course not. Everyone is chasing those sweet ad dollars. There's no money to be made in helping the poor if you live in a truly capitalistic society.

tkk23 4y ago
I wanted to tell you about Adam Smith's invisible hand [1]: >the concept has been captured to mean that the pursuit of individual interest leads to the general good. However, to my surprise, it seems to have been thought up as an argument against a global adjustment of income: >Smith was worried that if the movement of capital and the movement of goods (imports) were both free, the British bourgeoisie would invest abroad, to the detriment of Britain. To this, Smith came up with an argument according to which the British bourgeois would be biased according to their place of residence and would therefore make investments in the home country guided by an "invisible hand". Against this, I would like to argue that there is no need to help the poor beyond allowing them to access the global market. If you look at Fiverr and such, with internet access, everybody can participate in the global economy and take some of those sweet ad dollars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
- bannedbybros 4y ago
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  A lot of Smith's conjectures have proven to be inaccurate, it seems. Additionally nobody seems to read the whole text, and instead they suck decontextualized quotes from the text in support of their argument and typically do so to justify the capitalist modal: "Many right-wingers-in-love-with-large-corporations keep citing Adam Smith, famous patron saint of “capitalism,” a word he never uttered, without reading him, using his ideas in a self-serving selective manner—ideas that he most certainly did not endorse in the form they are presented." -Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Antifragile David Graeber, in his book Debt, points to some interesting work by an Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali[1] and this is mentioned in the article you linked - though it's nowhere near as thorough. This is of interest because there is, to my knowledge, a considerable difference between Medieval Persia and Enlightenment Europe (to now) in both the domains of social landscape and moral paradigm. This is kind of an interesting parallel with the above point. Perhaps these 'components' aren't independent and require a great deal of structure and maintenance - pulling them out of their context and plugging them in to a given civilization, it seems, does not work. And perhaps that's evinced by the gross poverty suffered the world over. Taleb has an interesting point: "The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can." -Nicholas Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan Having pointed that out, I hypothesize that even if it were as outlined by Taleb, discovery would be random and that would lead to similar conditions mentioned in the article, but I would include in that hypothesis that the rate of discovery would drastically increase. Of course, "research" in the common sense is not conducted in the free market, it is highly regulated. Not only in the most common sense, by the government via financing selectivity, but also in more pernicious differential forms through institutions of higher learning. One, in that they vet people in many ways (financial, ideological, 'intellectual') and two, they withhold the tools and information generated which used public funding and is dependent on a long lineage of information. As a tertiary point, I imagine it would be much more difficult, if not virtually impossible for some "layperson" (read: expert without a degree) to propose some new theory, or perhaps to do something as simple as publish a paper. This lays the land in a way that is truly bleak for an independent informal scientist, even bleaker for someone who wishes to be one - though the domains vary on that. I think this is crucial to understanding the failures of the Western economic model as it relates to science. [1]: This is corroborated by Taleb.

moelf 4y ago

>This is all according to a major new report published on Thursday 20 October 2023 by an international collaboration led by the University of Sussex, future is here!

PeterisP 4y ago

It's not an issue of innovation but rather about priorities in resource allocation - obviously the society does not consider that those are the world's most urgent problems, because it has not chosen to assign large quantities of funding towards them. If words say one thing but actions show another, then obviously the actions show the truth and the words are just lies; we the people have voted with our wallets that these problems are relatively irrelevant. And that's kind of what the article says in more diplomatic terms - if you really believe that sustained development is important, then you have to put your money where your mouth is and fund it.

Frost1x 4y ago

No one said scientific research direction and progress didn't have bias. There's a large set of unknowns and it's dictated in part by the things people want to investigate, what people can get funded to investigate, how much progress already exists / how much promise seems to exist, and so on. If you look at health related research donations, you'll find a lot of money is poured into breast and prostate cancer. By most measures of overall impact, these diseases aren't all that critical but people care about their breasts and prostates. Funding agencies try to look at things a little more objectively but this is but one example of bias. https://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/6040435/als-ice-bucket-challenge-and-why-we-give-to-charity-donate https://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/6040435/als-ice-bucket-challen... Federal funding agencies themselves intentionally introduce bias by largely picking areas to fund that influence direction. Researchers work to spin whatever they really want to do in the context of where the money is but they need to eat and pay rent too.

deleted 4y ago
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urthor 4y ago

I reference Alan Kay, who's spent 50+ years complaining Xerox Parc only happened when they wrote a GIGANTIC cheque. Then forgot about them. Good science basically requires atrocious amounts of money, to quite a small number of people. None of the scrabbling for $200,000 grants for a researcher, 4 grad students, and some beakers. Try 5 million 1970s dollars for a couple of dozen of the best and brightest. There's no doubt at all. The physical sciences have always been, and always will be, an enabler of income inequality.

greenbit 4y ago
So you're saying, for example, that after plowing how many billions into fusion research, when they finally crack it and can produce continents-worth of power from pennies worth of sea water, they won't actually start giving electricity away for free? Even though we've all collectively 'invested' in it through our taxes for decades?
- urthor 4y ago
  Isaac Newton spent more time turning lead into gold than mathematics. Time & money doesn't make dumb ideas good ones. Bread needs water, flour, AND yeast to rise. Ain't gonna do much without all three.
  - greenbit 4y ago
    And of course Sir Isaac found time to fit alchemy and mathematics in between the daily activities of subsistence farming. Oh wait ..
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Was he funded by an external agency for the purpose of turning lead into gold, or was it only his own interest/initiative?
    - lioeters 4y ago
      Interestingly, Newton was "Master of the Mint" at the Royal Mint, which supplies all the nation's coinage. > Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Royal_Mint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Royal_Mint If he had been successful in turning lead into gold, he might have made his employer obsolete.

jl6 4y ago

> As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. Not saying those aren’t important goals, but the proposed remedy doesn’t exactly address them head on: In brief, the report calls for: Increasing funding for SDG-related research and innovation, particularly in lower income countries, on underlying social issues, social policy and grassroot innovations, and research relevant to a region or context. Promoting a rich diversity of science, technology and innovation pathways to address specific SDG challenges, including social and organisational innovation. Designing accountable initiatives that strengthen science, technology and innovation governance and support open and inclusive processes of deliberation and prioritisation. Empowering stakeholders to form different interpretations of what counts as SDG-related science, technology and innovation.

nend 4y ago
Your quoted text explains it very simply too. These are social/political problems, they need social/political solutions.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Yeah — but saying that plainly doesn’t give activists control of scientific funding to increase their fiefdoms.

auaurora 4y ago

[flagged]

cameronh90 4y ago

Smart phones have completely transformed access to information, finance and services in poor countries. Would a UN SDG focussed research agenda have prioritised technologies that enabled that, such as 4G, high density batteries, tiny low power SoCs, etc.? Often, the future use of scientific study isn't obvious until many years or decades later. Wouldn't this just result in prioritising scientists who are good at writing funding applications that make BS claims about how this area of research will reduce global poverty? We already see quite a lot of that. It seems to me that the most impactful technology rarely comes from SDG focussed research.

gsatic 4y ago
More like things are getting so complex no one has any clue what good science and tech policy is anymore.
- User23 4y ago
  A big problem is that the kind of people inclined to become government bureaucrats are far from the best people to guide any sort of research effort.
  - liketochill 4y ago
    Because the rewards for being in government are less than in private sector. So we should identify high performers in government and pay them more.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Can you give me an example of how things are more complex today than they were 100 years ago? We have more complex widgets perhaps, but people seem to be the same.
  - tbrownaw 4y ago
    International trade is cheaper and more predictable, so there's a lot more of it now. The economy is just bigger than it used to be, which means it has more room for complexity to live in.

ouid 4y ago

well, sure it is, just from the opposite direction.

baryphonic 4y ago

> Global science research serves the needs of the Global North, and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new international study published today. As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. > Changing directions: Steering science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up to address and drive change across all areas of social justice and environmental issues. Is it really an improvement to have the unaccountable UN dictate research goals top-down rather than some private interests? IMO this sounds incredibly dystopian.

bannedbybros 4y ago
netfl0 4y ago
It would sound less dystopian if you just assimilate.
- baryphonic 4y ago
  I love Big Brother
  - netfl0 4y ago
    Now we're talkin!

narcraft 4y ago

For reference, our world in data tracks progress on the SDGs: https://sdg-tracker.org/ https://sdg-tracker.org/

deleted 4y ago

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romusha 4y ago

aaron695 4y ago

breck 4y ago

csv files are

bjt2n3904 4y ago

bkmeneguello 4y ago

SDG is a limiting factor in science development, not a boosting one. Science is funding oriented and companies are much more interested in funding research that could lead to revenue growth. It's funny to see how some people think their opinion is the "problem" other people's money should be used to resolve.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Scientific institutions in the United States have largely been captured by the investment-corporate sector. Basic R&D results produced with federal funds end up in the hands of corporate entities due to the exclusive licensing (Bayh-Dole) rules implemented in the 1980s, and this also means these corporate interests have reduced their own internal basic R&D budgets relative to past eras, instead relying on the federal funding system and the university research departments for this task. As a result, every tech department in the US university system is packed full of scheming federally-funded startup types, whose goal is to get a patent, transfer that patent to a small company which is then bought up by a corporate major, and then the professor gets a small percentage of the royalties. Federally-funded entrepreneurs of this kind and their facilitators are the people who run most university administrations these days. This merger of the academic and corporate worlds is the fundamental reason for the phenomena described in this report. The solution is pretty simple: eliminate exclusive licensing of university patents, such that anyone can use them for product development for a small flat fee. This would have the beneficient effect of encouraging corporations to move funds back into private research labs, as that's the only way they could ensure an exclusive patent period.

ramesh31 4y ago
> This would have the beneficient effect of encouraging corporations to move funds back into private research labs, as that's the only way they could ensure an exclusive patent period. With the second order effect of discouraging would be "schemers" from being entrepreneurial and innovative in the first place. It's not such a simple solution.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > entrepreneurial and innovative These are antonyms in this instance. Corrupt advisors and administrators trying to line their own pockets aren't how you foster creativity.
dinvlad 4y ago
It is difficult to de-couple these two things, because companies is where science translates to the real world. We need more direct funding from the rich governments for the kinds of research described in the article, which would address the associated problems “on paper”, while still allowing translation of it in startups etc and ultimately benefitting the general public. So the problem is not so much that companies sponsor some (!) research, but that the governments simply don’t invest nearly as much into public R&D as they need or could (while preferring to pour money into the military etc.). As a result, academics have no choice but follow other funding sources to survive in the already hyper-competitive scientific world. Hence, we should not put the blame on them, but rather on the public funding sources.

karaterobot 4y ago

tbrownaw 4y ago
Well, what exactly does "sustainable" mean? If you take climate change as the impending complete disaster that some people see it as, it would kind of make it hard to sustain any ongoing development when it finally hits. Overfishing should be clear enough; run out of fish, and civilization hits a major setback that makes it hard to sustain whatever we've been up to. Gender equality and education access might be a bit more indirect, but at least so far our civilizational development has required a general upskilling of the population as a whole. And if you think that people are being excluded from that, then well a lack of additional people to upskill will turn into a blocker sooner rather than later and again make it hard to sustain that development.

powera 4y ago

This is "woke" clap-trap. The thesis appears to be that it is bad that some countries are wealthy enough to pursue any research on non-subsistence topics.

tbrownaw 4y ago

> As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the world’s most pressing problems including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and wellbeing. Should it be? Are those actually things that would benefit from additional expensive research? - we already know how to do fission power, and how to get rid of any waste (if the politicians wouldn't forbid it); there's a lot of research money already going to fusion power; both direct solar (photovoltaic) and indirect (wind) power are getting cheaper very rapidly as they're done more; hydro and geothermal are already things in places where they're a thing - social research isn't hampered by lack of funds, but by ideological uniformity of researchers and "I want to believe" (seriously, it's amazing how much lasting real-world harm communism and more generally "the entire world is just a struggle between groups defined along such-and-such axis" cause ever time they escape from the ivory tower) - hunger is downstream of social issues - good health and wellbeing looks like it's mostly about infectious diseases? Aside from high-end research for new things (eg covid), that'd be either poverty (social issues) or trust in medical authorities (also social issues) or maybe outside medical folks being banned from places (social issues again)

kkfx 4y ago

Science is a thing, technology it's implementation, but actual driver is economy, short-term economy in general. With such a driver no vehicle can go much further. Let's start from a popular topic, ridden with propaganda of various sides, the Green New Deal. In theory we know we can't have more than very little p.v. or wind power because being very quick in output change no other classic power plant can keep the network at the right frequency: the Sun the sun rises, p.v. quickly grow to the peak, loads on classic power plants goes down too fast to adapt, frequency skyrocket causing a chain of blackouts, the sun sets and the load on classic power plant skyrocket, frequency plummet and large chunk of the network get cut out to reduce the load. The solution was and is named "Smart Grid" with storage, where the storage (batteries + inverters) are actually quick enough to compensate. The Sun rise, all connected cars start charging and so loads on classic P.P. remain almost unchanged. They slow down charging slow enough that classic PP crank down their production at a sustainable peace. Similarly in the evening all connected cars start discharging quickly compensate the very quick p.v. production loss, and stop discharging slowly allowing nuclear/gas/... PP to crank up at a sustainable peace. Or, so to speak, the extremely high costs of storage is offset to private individuals instead of being on energy operators shoulders. Such model does not happen because p.v. start to get economically sound, but until gasoline/diesel reach 3€/l (~11USD/gal) and/or the national grid became unstable most would not buy BEVs. Another example is IT history: Xerox PARC invented and implemented the modern Desktop and desktop computing, the classic Paul Otlet/Henry La Fontaine Mundaneum idea in practice, than for business purposes such concept was crashed and developed few parts at a time by modern GAFAM in a way to ensure end users have next to no power and are locked in in their service. Another example is the classic rent vs buy model where at first rent pay well, faster and cheaper, then the big cucumber arrives up the a* with rental prices to the stars and almost no more options to nor resources left to buy instead of rent. Long story short: Science and technology works well ONLY if Science is PUBLIC, witch means NO research is done for private interests but for whole society one, and technology is UNDER Science, witch means the private sector select and pick new Science innovations and implement them on scale. So the model must be: - a State, on top, witch means Democracy, witch means ALL PEOPLE on top; - the State MASSIVELY found general interesting research maintaining universities, schools, labs, factories etc for the general interests; - such PUBLIC apparatus produce innovations for the society; - private sector grab ideas and hire some talents who do want to implement them instead of keep researching, try to sell resulting implementations, some will profit, some will fail. All critical sectors are public only, so weapons are public only, health is public only (pharma for first), energy is public because we all need it, food due to it's nature is a mix BUT with a State/public regulation to ensure a minimum intake for all, basic transportation infra are public from TLCs to (rail)roads and harbors/airports. The rest is private. NOTHING impede private research but having this far less resources only real success for the society will survive, modern absurd anti-society stuff get criticized by the compartmentalized public research, religiously separated from the private, and fails quickly. For those who say "that's communism" or EQUALLY "that's fascism" do remember a thing: no market have proved to be or remain really free in a very short timeframe. No dictatorship have proven to last, they innovate quickly, expand quickly, than fall. The key is the old Roman's "est modus in rebus" or "there is a measure in anything" meaning, nothing can work taken to the extreme, there is no one-size-fit-all.

wonderwonder 4y ago

This article is essentially saying they want science to go woke. They want to study social issues and create a board that can decide what kind of science is appropriate and where private and governments are allowed to invest their money.

deleted 4y ago

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stephc_int13 4y ago

I have a strong dislike of what I call the "charity mindset" as I believe that humans all over the globe are truly equals. Our lives, trajectories and opportunities are obviously different, but I see that as historical lag that tend to solve themselves over time, charity is only marginally helpful and I think it has many second-order negative effects, especially corruption.

simonh 4y ago
A view not shared by many diseased starving children in war torn, natural disaster stricken developing nations. Having said that the most powerful force we have available to rectify such conditions is economic development based on liberal economics and the rule of law. Charity is analgesic, economic development is the cure.
UncleMeat 4y ago
I’m extremely skeptical of worldviews that also conveniently allow one to avoid personal sacrifice. It is worth a lot of money to convince oneself that actually being generous with your wealth is bad.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Charge royalties for teaching a man to fish, you can profit off feeding him for a lifetime.
tsol 4y ago
People say that until they need charity to survive.

steve76 4y ago

[dead]

nortonham 4y ago

Science, technology, and innovation won't address the worlds most urgent problems because the dominant global capitalist system is driven by profit over everything else.

at_a_remove 4y ago

I'll ask the other question: who determines what the world's most urgent problems are? Because I'm gonna guess that varies wildly depending on whom you ask.

nathias 4y ago

science does not determine urgency or priority of the problemes, this falls under consumption or politics

fithisux 4y ago

That's not news.

deleted 4y ago

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seydor 4y ago

Here is a pressing problem for the United Nations: end a major war that threatens the UN itself. The UN is primarily an institution about peace. If peace exists, individual states and collections of states can take care of their pressing problems. Quoting Branko Milanovic: > The second reason for the decline of the UN and international organisation is ideological. According to the ideologies of neoliberalism and ‘the end of history’ which so heavily dominated the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, dealing with world peace and security was no longer the most pressing task of the UN. Helped by the proliferation of non-governmental organisations (and false NGOs), the new ideologues broadened the mission of the UN to many subsidiary issues with which it should have never been involved but rather left to other governmental and non-governmental bodies.[] > > The third, related reason is financial. As the mandate of the UN, the World Bank and other international institutions was broadened to include practically everything imaginable, it became obvious that the resources provided by governments were insufficient. Here NGOs met billionaires and private-sector donors. In a series of actions unthinkable when the UN was created, private interests simply infiltrated themselves into organisations created by states and began to dictate the new agenda. > > This is how the entire UN system went into decline and we ended up in a position where the head of the only international institution ever created by humankind whose role is preservation of world peace has become a spectator—with as much influence on matters of war and peace as any other of the 7.7 billion denizens of our planet. https://socialeurope.eu/does-the-united-nations-still-exist https://socialeurope.eu/does-the-united-nations-still-exist

yawnxyz 4y ago

These "most urgent problems" aren't addressed because they're not urgent enough. I work with antimicrobial resistance and phage therapy, and everyone keeps complaining that regulatory frameworks aren't adapting to our needs fast enough, there's no funding, etc. That's all true, because there's no urgent need to move faster. COVID-19 came along and all those obstacles evaporated. If AMR actually killed 10M+ people a year, in Western / wealthy countries, you bet it would become an "urgent problem" real quick. I consider these "urgent" problems "aspirationally urgent" in the same way that "we should probably eat less red meat and drink less alcohol and go to the gym more" kind of urgent. It's in the pile of things we should be doing... but we put off. It's not "urgent" as in "step off of the train tracks or I'll get hit" kind of urgent.

Loquebantur 4y ago
The point of the article is exactly people in the west like yourself, comparatively rich and well-educated, applying an ill-informed subjective standard of urgency? You apply a model of reality formed in the western bubble essentially and assume, it applies to the whole planet equally, errors negligible. That is incorrect. Not "only" do multitudes suffer needlessly because of such an attitude being common where decisions are made, "mid- and long-term" consequences are obviously closing in and mounting to unmanageable levels. It is not enough to just imagine one's model of reality to be correct and feel confirmed by people in the same bubble, prone to the same errors of judgement.
- yawnxyz 4y ago
  Right, my point being I'm working in this field and it's incredibly difficult to get any kind of grant funding for this kind of work. Gov't funding drives this kind of work, and we spend a lot of time writing grants and getting scant money in this field. I'm a research software engineer making less than I made at my first tech job out of school — is that really what it takes , for people like me to give up making a nice salary at a tech company, to solve these "urgent" problems?
  - walleeee 4y ago

westurner 4y ago

> Changing directions: Steering science, technology and innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up to address and drive change across all areas of social justice and environmental issues. https://globalgoals.org/ https://globalgoals.org/ #GlobalGoals #SDGs #Goal17 Each country (UN Member State) prepares an annual country-level report - an annual SDG report - on their voluntary progress toward their self-defined Targets (which are based upon Indicators; stats). Businesses that voluntarily prepare a sustainability report necessarily review their SDG-aligned operations' successes and failures. The GRI Corporate Sustainability report is SDG aligned; so if you prepare an annual Sustainability report, it should be easy to review aligned and essential operations. GRI Global Reporting Initiative is also in NL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative > Critically, the report finds that research in high-income and middle-income countries contributes disproportionally to a disconnect with the SDGs. Most published research (60%-80%) and innovation activity (95%-98%) is not related to the SDGs. Strategic alignment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment https://USAspending.gov https://USAspending.gov resulted from tracking State-level grants in IL: the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006#Implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability... Unfortunately, https://performance.gov/ https://performance.gov/ and https://USAspending.gov/ https://USAspending.gov/ do not have any way to - before or after funding decisions - specify that a funded thing is SDG-aligned. IMHO, we can easily focus on domestic priorities and also determine where our spending is impactful in regards to the SDGs. > Illustrating the imbalance, the report found that 80 percent of SDG-related inventions in high-income countries were concentrated in just six of the 73 countries Lots of important problems worth money to folks: #Goal1 #NoPoverty #Goal2 #ZeroHunger #Goal3 #GoodHealth #Goal4 #QualityEducation #Goal5 #GenderEquality #Goal6 #CleanWater #Goal7 #CleanEnergy #Goal8 #DecentJobs #Goal9 #Infrastructure #Goal10 #ReduceInequality #Goal11 #Sustainable #Goal12 #ResponsibleConsumption #Goal13 #ClimateAction #Goal14 #LifeBelowWater #Goal15 #LifeOnLand #Goal16 #PEACE #Justice #Goal17 #Partnership #Teamwork If you label things with #GlobalGoal hashtags, others can find solutions to the very same problems.