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Trading anecdotes isn't going to produce a statistical analysis of approaches to innovation in an HN thread. Meanwhile, this is mainstream macro/IPE shit: gover

Trading anecdotes isn't going to produce a statistical analysis of approaches to innovation in an HN thread. Meanwhile, this is mainstream macro/IPE shit: government-driven technological innovation has a pretty damn solid track record, and I pointed to several specific and oft-cited cases to demonstrate this, out of a large field. This does not mean it always works out well, but the benchmark for "damn solid" in this space is very very far from "perfect", in much the same way that an excellent batter in professional baseball still fails to get on base more than half the time—your line of attack here is just as baffling as someone countering "Joe's a solid clean-up hitter" with "yeah but look at this list of times he struck out!" It's omitting the context of what constitutes good in the space—meanwhile, he's near the top of the league in RBI. Continuing to trade anecdotes about times Joe hit a home run or times he hit an easy pop-fly to center field is just pointless noise, entirely beside the point. That's why I keep pushing back that what you're trying to do here isn't even relevant to the point I was making, which point is quite far from being controversial, incidentally. I don't think both of us posting Amazon links to books covering the successes and failures of government-lead tech initiatives when I am not denying that plenty of failures exist in that space in the first place, is productive. If that's the way you want this to go, just pretend I've posted a series of links to mainstream macro, IPE, and tech and econ history textbooks in response to each of your (probably mostly valid!) "counter-points", because that's what I'd do, but it doesn't seem like a valuable exercise when I'm not even denying that examples of failures of these kinds of initiatives exist.

AlbertCory 4y ago
Cover it in a blizzard of words: that's a good tactic. Let's go over them: > your line of attack here is just as baffling as someone countering "Joe's a solid clean-up hitter" with "yeah but look at this list of times he struck out!" Yes, but "Joe" has OPS numbers (which are more meaningful than the outdated RBI number, incidentally). What are your big Planning home runs? Your "specific and oft-cited cases" are vague and not specific, on the level of "hey, Japan and Germany!" While mine are actually specific disasters. "which point is quite far from being controversial," -- I think you mean in Ivy League faculties and scholarly journals, not in actual business publications.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  It's simply not the case that it's appropriate to sarcastically dismiss the notion of government-directed technological innovation as necessarily a bad idea. That's all. I did assume some familiarity with e.g. the Japanese Economic Miracle & MITI such that they didn't need to be mentioned by name, nor the successes and contributions of NASA and DARPA specified, nor links to reporting on German renewable initiatives decades ago provided... but I think that points to a gap in familiarity with the topic that is precisely the source of disagreement here, and addressing that would be the best way to reach a point of being able to have any kind of useful exchange.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    So it's the sarcasm you object to? I guess that's all you've got. "the Japanese Economic Miracle & MITI" -- yes, in fact I'm quite familiar with those. After the country was destroyed and a new society was being built, it was hardly possible not to hit a home run. Opportunity was everywhere you looked. How's it done since 1990? You haven't addressed that. As for DARPA & NASA: you're half right. DARPA did help guide the Internet towards TCP and away from OSI. Note that the "industrial planners" in the US and in Europe were on the wrong side of that one, all the way. The French had Minitel, which was actually a pretty good idea, and then frittered it away. As for NASA: the shuttle was a master class in how to waste money, so I don't think you want to point at that. And both NASA and DARPA were consistently opposed by nearly everyone on the left end of the ideological spectrum, It's only after you see how they turned out that you can manage to hold them up as shining examples. At the time I'm sure you'd have been opposed. So drop the snobbery. I know the history better than you do.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      > So drop the snobbery. I know the history better than you do. Then stop pretending to be confused when I allude to cases that ought to be extremely familiar to anyone who's read up on this topic? And stop making plainly-crap lines of argument like "it's hardly possible not to hit a home run" when a country is rebuilt after being destroyed when that's just... extremely not true, and the Miracle is such a big deal precisely because it's remarkable (though not unique—I'll go ahead and pre-empt the attack against a thing I didn't claim, given the tone of this exchange), and it's interesting and comes up all the time because it points to limitations of various simplistic models of what should work and what should not (like, say, the notion of government direction of technological development being categorically a bad idea). How has Japan done since 1990? What, is your argument that government-driven technological direction in the 60s and 70s is a key factor in the later malaise, rather than its being mostly irrelevant to that phase? Even if it was, my point was never that "this approach cannot possibly go wrong"! This is a narrow piece of the puzzle. You're not engaging with the substance, you're just casting about for gotchas. So what? > So it's the sarcasm you object to? I guess that's all you've got. Look, I'm done. You're not reading or posting in good faith, if that's what you've taken away from this.

AlbertCory 4y ago

Cover it in a blizzard of words: that's a good tactic. Let's go over them: > your line of attack here is just as baffling as someone countering "Joe's a solid clean-up hitter" with "yeah but look at this list of times he struck out!" Yes, but "Joe" has OPS numbers (which are more meaningful than the outdated RBI number, incidentally). What are your big Planning home runs? Your "specific and oft-cited cases" are vague and not specific, on the level of "hey, Japan and Germany!" While mine are actually specific disasters. "which point is quite far from being controversial," -- I think you mean in Ivy League faculties and scholarly journals, not in actual business publications.

yamtaddle 4y ago
It's simply not the case that it's appropriate to sarcastically dismiss the notion of government-directed technological innovation as necessarily a bad idea. That's all. I did assume some familiarity with e.g. the Japanese Economic Miracle & MITI such that they didn't need to be mentioned by name, nor the successes and contributions of NASA and DARPA specified, nor links to reporting on German renewable initiatives decades ago provided... but I think that points to a gap in familiarity with the topic that is precisely the source of disagreement here, and addressing that would be the best way to reach a point of being able to have any kind of useful exchange.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  So it's the sarcasm you object to? I guess that's all you've got. "the Japanese Economic Miracle & MITI" -- yes, in fact I'm quite familiar with those. After the country was destroyed and a new society was being built, it was hardly possible not to hit a home run. Opportunity was everywhere you looked. How's it done since 1990? You haven't addressed that. As for DARPA & NASA: you're half right. DARPA did help guide the Internet towards TCP and away from OSI. Note that the "industrial planners" in the US and in Europe were on the wrong side of that one, all the way. The French had Minitel, which was actually a pretty good idea, and then frittered it away. As for NASA: the shuttle was a master class in how to waste money, so I don't think you want to point at that. And both NASA and DARPA were consistently opposed by nearly everyone on the left end of the ideological spectrum, It's only after you see how they turned out that you can manage to hold them up as shining examples. At the time I'm sure you'd have been opposed. So drop the snobbery. I know the history better than you do.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > So drop the snobbery. I know the history better than you do. Then stop pretending to be confused when I allude to cases that ought to be extremely familiar to anyone who's read up on this topic? And stop making plainly-crap lines of argument like "it's hardly possible not to hit a home run" when a country is rebuilt after being destroyed when that's just... extremely not true, and the Miracle is such a big deal precisely because it's remarkable (though not unique—I'll go ahead and pre-empt the attack against a thing I didn't claim, given the tone of this exchange), and it's interesting and comes up all the time because it points to limitations of various simplistic models of what should work and what should not (like, say, the notion of government direction of technological development being categorically a bad idea). How has Japan done since 1990? What, is your argument that government-driven technological direction in the 60s and 70s is a key factor in the later malaise, rather than its being mostly irrelevant to that phase? Even if it was, my point was never that "this approach cannot possibly go wrong"! This is a narrow piece of the puzzle. You're not engaging with the substance, you're just casting about for gotchas. So what? > So it's the sarcasm you object to? I guess that's all you've got. Look, I'm done. You're not reading or posting in good faith, if that's what you've taken away from this.