3 ms·

>these kinds of science fairs are fundamentally about access. Completely agree there, which kind of brings me to a related thought: One thing I do wonder is,

by carlmr 1y ago

>these kinds of science fairs are fundamentally about access. Completely agree there, which kind of brings me to a related thought: One thing I do wonder is, if you look at a few hundred years ago a lot of the inventors in math, physics, engineering, were a tiny group of people with access to resources and education. You're always reading the same names. It seems if we as a society could decide that science is more important to us, with 8 billion people on earth, if we gave more access, time and incentives to people we should be able to increase the amount of scientific results exponentially.

timr 1y ago
Meh. While I think the broad theme is fine (more access to education is generally good -- particularly when it comes to scientific literacy amongst the general public!), I think trying to encourage "research" in this way is largely pushing on a string. I can never figure out if this whole phenomenon of "science fairs" is just Kabuki theater for everyone involved, or if there's a core group of deeply deluded organizers who really believe that they're Making A Difference (tm) in scientific research, and are just completely blind to the career prospects of actual young scientists [1]. Time and experience has shown that "scientific innovation" cannot be made to happen faster by throwing more money at it, and a promising young person would be much better off by putting their talents to use doing something less random [2]. You can produce more good research in aggregate (maybe), but only in the same way that you can find more gold by crushing more rocks. Either way, you have to crush the rocks. For example, the US government dramatically increased grad school funding through the 80s-2000s, and the primary outcome was an employment crisis amongst PhDs in the sciences. In the 40s-70s it was fairly straightforward to establish a career in research, but these days it's Hunger Games. I sort of fundamentally believe that the reason most science came out of the European aristocracy was not due to inequity, but because only someone well-off could devote their lives to something so erratic. Science is an avocation, not a vocation. Science fairs and the like are a weird little subculture of college-application polishers, in part because nobody in their right mind actually wants to become a scientist. I think it's a safe bet that the young woman in this article ends up doing something more lucrative with her life (and good for her, if she does). [1] Or even more cynically: the organizers do know, and are doing it because it builds their own careers. [2] Or at least, with a higher alpha.
- mjevans 1y ago
  I suspect you're correct about basic / true research and discovery of 'the new'. Also probably about that US Gov funding. I've heard it's more about knowing how to write a grant than it is about being worthy of getting one. Better direction, better active identification of candidates (instead of the passive system that's biased towards large players), better stability. All of those would help. However, there's a _lot_ of stuff that would be within reach, were only enough mass manufacture involved to drive down the adoption cost and break through the catch 22. Many things only need for gathering the correct sort of people, giving them enough room to work on a clear goal, and seeing where things really are. The big business problems with that are figuring out if the return is plausibly worth the investment, and feeding the baby long enough that it can become a working adult.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  > not due to inequity, but because only someone well-off could devote their lives to something so erratic. Aren't those effectively the same thing? At least in the given context where society doesn't have the resources available for everyone to live like that.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - timr 1y ago
    Effectively the same in terms of distribution of outcome, perhaps, but it's a bit like saying that it's really unfortunate that poor people can't afford their own manicured gardens, peacock collection and garage full of antique race cars.
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      Only someone well off could devote the necessary resources to have a garage full of antique race cars. People who can afford a garage full of antique race cars only exist due to inequity. What's the difference between those statements? As far as I can tell the latter includes the former while adding an implicit assumption about total available resources versus total population. Apologies if it seems like I derailed things. Your comment was interesting but I didn't understand (still don't) the significance of the distinction you went out of your way to draw there. That said, I think the trailing remark that "only someone well-off could devote their lives to something so erratic" really hits the nail on the head. Even today you can see elements of that, for example on certain parts of youtube. People with excessive expendable income occasionally do some really impressive stuff.
fc417fc802 1y ago
> if we gave more access, time and incentives to people we should be able to increase the amount of scientific results exponentially. That's how ML research is - all you need is sufficient compute and some torrented training data. It gives rise to a new problem of drowning in the literature. I think we simply don't have the tooling and institutions to integrate simultaneous scientific advancements from any significant portion of the population.
mschuster91 1y ago
> It seems if we as a society could decide that science is more important to us, with 8 billion people on earth, if we gave more access, time and incentives to people we should be able to increase the amount of scientific results exponentially. Yep, but we collectively decided that it is more profitable to put the best minds that manage to survive the education trials to either shaving off 0.0000001 cents of each financial transaction and to still make billions of dollars off of that or to sell ads so people get convinced they need to buy something. And those that get dropped along the education pipeline, we either let them stay on the road side and let them rot in poverty or we just use them as yet another source of labor ready to be exploited.

by carlmr 1y ago

timr 1y ago

Meh. While I think the broad theme is fine (more access to education is generally good -- particularly when it comes to scientific literacy amongst the general public!), I think trying to encourage "research" in this way is largely pushing on a string. I can never figure out if this whole phenomenon of "science fairs" is just Kabuki theater for everyone involved, or if there's a core group of deeply deluded organizers who really believe that they're Making A Difference (tm) in scientific research, and are just completely blind to the career prospects of actual young scientists [1]. Time and experience has shown that "scientific innovation" cannot be made to happen faster by throwing more money at it, and a promising young person would be much better off by putting their talents to use doing something less random [2]. You can produce more good research in aggregate (maybe), but only in the same way that you can find more gold by crushing more rocks. Either way, you have to crush the rocks. For example, the US government dramatically increased grad school funding through the 80s-2000s, and the primary outcome was an employment crisis amongst PhDs in the sciences. In the 40s-70s it was fairly straightforward to establish a career in research, but these days it's Hunger Games. I sort of fundamentally believe that the reason most science came out of the European aristocracy was not due to inequity, but because only someone well-off could devote their lives to something so erratic. Science is an avocation, not a vocation. Science fairs and the like are a weird little subculture of college-application polishers, in part because nobody in their right mind actually wants to become a scientist. I think it's a safe bet that the young woman in this article ends up doing something more lucrative with her life (and good for her, if she does). [1] Or even more cynically: the organizers do know, and are doing it because it builds their own careers. [2] Or at least, with a higher alpha.

mjevans 1y ago
I suspect you're correct about basic / true research and discovery of 'the new'. Also probably about that US Gov funding. I've heard it's more about knowing how to write a grant than it is about being worthy of getting one. Better direction, better active identification of candidates (instead of the passive system that's biased towards large players), better stability. All of those would help. However, there's a _lot_ of stuff that would be within reach, were only enough mass manufacture involved to drive down the adoption cost and break through the catch 22. Many things only need for gathering the correct sort of people, giving them enough room to work on a clear goal, and seeing where things really are. The big business problems with that are figuring out if the return is plausibly worth the investment, and feeding the baby long enough that it can become a working adult.
fc417fc802 1y ago
> not due to inequity, but because only someone well-off could devote their lives to something so erratic. Aren't those effectively the same thing? At least in the given context where society doesn't have the resources available for everyone to live like that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- timr 1y ago
  Effectively the same in terms of distribution of outcome, perhaps, but it's a bit like saying that it's really unfortunate that poor people can't afford their own manicured gardens, peacock collection and garage full of antique race cars.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    Only someone well off could devote the necessary resources to have a garage full of antique race cars. People who can afford a garage full of antique race cars only exist due to inequity. What's the difference between those statements? As far as I can tell the latter includes the former while adding an implicit assumption about total available resources versus total population. Apologies if it seems like I derailed things. Your comment was interesting but I didn't understand (still don't) the significance of the distinction you went out of your way to draw there. That said, I think the trailing remark that "only someone well-off could devote their lives to something so erratic" really hits the nail on the head. Even today you can see elements of that, for example on certain parts of youtube. People with excessive expendable income occasionally do some really impressive stuff.

fc417fc802 1y ago

> if we gave more access, time and incentives to people we should be able to increase the amount of scientific results exponentially. That's how ML research is - all you need is sufficient compute and some torrented training data. It gives rise to a new problem of drowning in the literature. I think we simply don't have the tooling and institutions to integrate simultaneous scientific advancements from any significant portion of the population.

mschuster91 1y ago

> It seems if we as a society could decide that science is more important to us, with 8 billion people on earth, if we gave more access, time and incentives to people we should be able to increase the amount of scientific results exponentially. Yep, but we collectively decided that it is more profitable to put the best minds that manage to survive the education trials to either shaving off 0.0000001 cents of each financial transaction and to still make billions of dollars off of that or to sell ads so people get convinced they need to buy something. And those that get dropped along the education pipeline, we either let them stay on the road side and let them rot in poverty or we just use them as yet another source of labor ready to be exploited.