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The US government does this a lot, maybe not blank checks, but certainly very large checks. The military in particular hands out astonishing volumes of money i

The US government does this a lot, maybe not blank checks, but certainly very large checks. The military in particular hands out astonishing volumes of money in the pursuit of pie-in-the-sky dreams. Outside of blowing stuff up, the NSF distributes roughly $10 billion a year to research. And while a lot of that funding gets redirected back to universities, a healthy amount of it goes directly towards research that all of us benefit from tremendously. Think about how much open source software was developed at universities, funded directly, or indirectly via NSF or similar grants. One of the problems with indiscriminate spending on science is people who oppose to the spending will attack it. We often see news articles like, "government gives professor $4 million to study of shrimp". Of course, the article is biased, so it ignores that half that that money goes back to the university to pay for "research facilities" or that the research may have direct military application. So people get the impression that there's these scientists out there playing around with aquariums and getting paid millions to do it.

thrashh 3y ago
I think a lot of people don't understand that R&D is like flushing money down the drain until one day you happen to invent interplanetary teleportation. It's hard to really grasp, kind of like insurance which I swear a lot of people also don't really get but in reverse (where you throw a lot of money seemingly down the drain until possibly the day where it completely makes up for it). How do you tackle budgeting for something with zero guarantees? Not very easily.
- mywittyname 3y ago
  > I think a lot of people don't understand that R&D is like flushing money down the drain until one day you happen to invent interplanetary teleportation. I wouldn't say that at all. There are lots of small, tangible positive outcomes that occur along the way. Inventing interplanetary travel is great. But even a failed project gives smart people experience, generates research that might have application elsewhere, funds general economic development. Lots of indirect development comes from R&D. Think a chemical engineering PhD student designs some software to solve a problem specific to their research, then finds out that there's a broader market for that kind of software and leaves his research to pursue that as a business. I think that a lot of people think R&D is only about achieving a specific goal. When, in reality, it's about researching and developing a lot of smaller things in the general direction of a particular goal.
  - thrashh 3y ago
    I definitely was over-simplifying but R&D can feel that way sometimes.
ke88y 3y ago
> while a lot of that funding gets redirected back to universities, a healthy amount of it goes directly towards research that all of us benefit from tremendously. It's a crime that all of that money isn't accessible to people outside of universities... > So people get the impression that there's these scientists out there playing around with aquariums and getting paid millions to do it. I mean... that's the optimistic case. At least in your imaginary scenario there's actual work happening from 9am to 10:30am and from 3:00pm to 5:00pm...

thrashh 3y ago

I think a lot of people don't understand that R&D is like flushing money down the drain until one day you happen to invent interplanetary teleportation. It's hard to really grasp, kind of like insurance which I swear a lot of people also don't really get but in reverse (where you throw a lot of money seemingly down the drain until possibly the day where it completely makes up for it). How do you tackle budgeting for something with zero guarantees? Not very easily.

mywittyname 3y ago
> I think a lot of people don't understand that R&D is like flushing money down the drain until one day you happen to invent interplanetary teleportation. I wouldn't say that at all. There are lots of small, tangible positive outcomes that occur along the way. Inventing interplanetary travel is great. But even a failed project gives smart people experience, generates research that might have application elsewhere, funds general economic development. Lots of indirect development comes from R&D. Think a chemical engineering PhD student designs some software to solve a problem specific to their research, then finds out that there's a broader market for that kind of software and leaves his research to pursue that as a business. I think that a lot of people think R&D is only about achieving a specific goal. When, in reality, it's about researching and developing a lot of smaller things in the general direction of a particular goal.
- thrashh 3y ago
  I definitely was over-simplifying but R&D can feel that way sometimes.

ke88y 3y ago

> while a lot of that funding gets redirected back to universities, a healthy amount of it goes directly towards research that all of us benefit from tremendously. It's a crime that all of that money isn't accessible to people outside of universities... > So people get the impression that there's these scientists out there playing around with aquariums and getting paid millions to do it. I mean... that's the optimistic case. At least in your imaginary scenario there's actual work happening from 9am to 10:30am and from 3:00pm to 5:00pm...