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Where do you draw the line? I saw many funding proposals for extremely abstract category theory justified on the basis it helps number theorists solve problems
by ak_111 3y ago
Where do you draw the line? I saw many funding proposals for extremely abstract category theory justified on the basis it helps number theorists solve problems related to cryptography and protect e-commerce. Between friends everyone knows this is not true. Am not against abstract research: given how cheap it is, I don't understand why we can just allow it to be funded without having to provide justification that makes everyone feel a bit of a criminal while writing the proposal. It should be seen sort of how we public commissions art.
Another type of mini-fraud: you could say almost 80% of applied machine learning papers contain serious methodical mistakes that are almost equivalent to falsifying data, and what's worse the authors are well aware of and even the reviewers. I am talking about the kaggle-type ones where you apply some kind of PCA or neural network on some relatively small dataset.
- rdedev 3y agoIt's kind of sad that you need to jump through a lot of hoops for research funding but when talking about things like military funding everyone is ready to find it more than required and not ask too many questions
- golergka 3y agoBecause it actually is? I don’t understand how one can compare abstract research into category theory and investment into millions of people not getting killed and conquered and get sad that the latter comes up on top.
- whatshisface 3y agoWe're not talking about Saddam's military budget, we're talking about the one they used to kill and conquer him.
- nickff 3y agoSaddam Hussein started the Iran-Iraq war, in which Iraq achieved no significant gain, at the cost of between one and two million lives. This war took place in the middle of his 40-year tenure as a president who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people with the same military equipment.
- whatshisface 3y agoHow is that an argument in favor of military spending?
- hindsightbias 3y agoIt would almost sound like a noble motivation for all that shock-and-awe spending, except that wasn't the motivation. Nobody cared when he was actually killing Iranians or domestics. Back then, kids of exiled Shah-regimers were protesting US gov't support for Iraq (widely reported overseas, widely ignored in the US) at colleges in CA, Michigan and Texas and getting beat up for their trouble. Plus we were rolling in all that $15/b oil with the flooded oil market so domestic win-win. Except for all those oilmen in TX who went bust. Well, they voted for Ron, so I guess they got what they wanted.
- cycomanic 3y agoYes and who was supplying the weapons and other support during that time? Arguably defence spending in the US and western Europe directly contributed to the deaths.
- rurp 3y agoThere is a lot of defense spending that does nothing to support that mission, or does so in a terribly inefficient way. Given the scale of spending we're talking about, many billions of dollars get wasted every year, but folks who get worked up over a few million wasted on research are often unconcerned with 1000 times more wasteful projects as long as they have the military labeled slapped on them.
- golergka 3y agoFrom where I’m standing, American defense spending is inadequately low for the current situation. US is struggling to increase artillery shell production from 15 to 30k per year, when only Ukraine conflict should consume hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Same with many other items — American and NATO stockpiles are low, and production capabilities almost non-existent compared to adversaries.
- jampekka 3y agoYou mean getting killed and conquered?
- whatshisface 3y agoIf we had a social norm against pretending abstract research would "enable the creation of new materials, advance quantum computing, and enhance the security of your bank account" the agencies would learn to fund it anyway, because they would realize you run out of applied directions in the absence of basic research. Right now it's all laundered, so they think they can fund far more applied research than is available.
- jltsiren 3y agoWe used to have a social norm like that. It eroded, because populist politicians started ridiculing research proposals they found frivolous. Now most proposals are riddled with fake justifications, because people wanted more accountability in how tax money is spent.
- heyjamesknight 3y agoSome of that blame should be pointed at those that proliferated frivolous and ridiculous research proposals.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Some of that blame should be pointed at those that proliferated frivolous and ridiculous research proposals There are fewer of these than you'd think. Modeling wobbling plates is easier mocked than done, for example.
- heyjamesknight 3y agoThere aren't. There are entire fields of this stuff. Taxpayers shouldn't be funding studies into the weaving techniques used by pre-Columbian natives in the upper Mississippi basin.
- jacobolus 3y agoNo, the research was fine. For example, a friend of my family spent a large part of his career writing an extensive bilingual dictionary for an indigenous language in Southern Mexico. He won a "golden fleece" award from asshole Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin, who thought dictionaries for languages with only a few hundred thousand speakers was a waste of government research grant money.
- oldgradstudent 3y ago> Where do you draw the line? I saw many funding proposals for extremely abstract category theory justified on the basis it helps number theorists solve problems related to cryptography and protect e-commerce. That's not fraud. Not even the most gullible reviewer believes a word of it. Leave it to anthropologists of science to describe the ritualistic aspects of writing abstracts.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]