3 ms·
You can't "guess" any better than flipping a coin when it comes to funding research. They laughed at Bill Gates when he said he wanted control of the software.
by mangodrunk 19y ago
You can't "guess" any better than flipping a coin when it comes to funding research. They laughed at Bill Gates when he said he wanted control of the software. I think there is room for improvement (which there is for everything) in the funding of research but to call it worthless just because there isn't a direct need or use for something is itself worthless. Any kind of knowledge is useful, no matter what.
- mencius 19y agoTry submitting this paragraph as your next grant application! It is actually possible to make educated guesses as to what's interesting and what isn't. It is just very hard. The management of the old Xerox PARC, for example, was very good at it. So were the people at DARPA - about 40 years ago. So, once, was Bell Labs. And so on. Needless to say, the actual process of guesswork has nothing in common with the modern scientific budget process.
- mangodrunk 19y agoThe only thing that made the management at Xeroc PARC, Bell Labs, etc. good, was that they let smart people do what they wanted and stayed out of the way.
- mencius 19y agoRead Michael Hiltzik's "Dealers of Lightning." It's a little more complicated than that.
- jfoutz 19y agohttp://www.parc.com/research/ http://www.parc.com/research/ I'm willing to accept that you are more than capable than predicting what's interesting. Let's try a zero knowledge proof. You point out the interesting ones, and we'll check back in a few years to see your accuracy.