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> The truth is that science builds the foundation for that other stuff. It is the very ground you stand on. Engineering without science is like trying to run wi

by eru 1y ago

> The truth is that science builds the foundation for that other stuff. It is the very ground you stand on. Engineering without science is like trying to run without ground. That doesn't mean that government investment in science is necessarily a good idea. > I'd be willing to wager that the economic impact of Newton and Leibniz's invention of Calculus[0] is larger than the economic impact of any engineering product, ever. Where they financed by the government? Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets and say that their return-on-investment was awesome, but that doesn't mean buying lottery tickets is a good idea.

godelski 1y ago
> That doesn't mean that government investment in science is necessarily a good idea. Sure, only a Sith deals in absolutes. What's your point? If you inferred from my comment that I think we should just fund everything all willy nilly I'm curious how you think I would resolve this with the lack of infinite money. I'd have to assume we have infinite money if I was suggesting to fund everything, right? And I'd have to be incredibly dumb to think there's infinite money (and resources). Right? I mean I'm dumb, but do you really think I'm that dumb? > Where they financed by the government? Yes > Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets Do you have anything to comment that isn't reductio ad absurdum? You're not making an argument, you're just intentionally misunderstanding. Sorry, I'm not going to respond if all you want to do is troll
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
KirinDave 1y ago
In the interest of historical accuracy, Newton's work was directly and indirectly subsidized by his government as was the university he attended (that later gave him partial scholarship). He invented Calculus while isolated due to the plague, but had already graduated by then with those scholarship bucks from a university chartered by the British government. A lot of his work occurred while he was what we'd now call a tenured professor of mathematics, again at a universe with an impressive amount of money being donated directly by the British government. In general, the history of higher learning is the history of governments (or the wealthy people who constitute them) funding research and facilities. You may not like it, but you shouldn't misrepresent history just to make your preferences sound more normal.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  There's also that the Royal Society [0] sponsored some of Newton's work (and Newton was even President of it for a time). That was a group also chartered by the British government (and some centuries financed by it more than other centuries). (Leibniz had a more complex web of patrons over the course of the decades, including parts of German and French governments and even briefly being a Royal Society fellow. Some of Leibniz's patrons did include private [rich] donors, but it is said that Leibniz was the last scientist/mathematician to find patronage in that way/the last time in history that private donors had shown much interest in direct science/math patronage.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society
candu 1y ago
Government investment in science is...the only way basic science happens, really. I'd recommend reading The Entrepreneurial State [1] here: in essence, basic science pays off too slowly to interest even the most deeply-pocketed capital interests, but it pays off, so wise societies invest in it; Silicon Valley owes its existence to massive formative public investments in underlying technologies. Not to mention that smart people generally prefer to live in places that value and protect science, so it's _also_ an indirect form of geopolitical talent recruitment. (See brain drain + brain gain impacts of science policy, for instance. There's a strong argument to be made that US mid-20th-century dominance in science and engineering was largely driven by a lot of very smart people fleeing Nazi Germany.) Basic science isn't so much a lottery ticket as a bond with unknown maturity measured in decades, a _very_ high rate of return, a high minimum investment, and dividend-like payouts created by adding skilled scientists, engineers, etc. to your tax base. [1] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state/ https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state...
- godelski 1y ago
  > a high minimum investment This is the only part I actually disagree with. Science is incredibly cheap. It can have a long time to mature but interestingly that is dependent on the number of "bonds", with quicker returns when there's more "bonds" issued. I'd say there's 4 common classes of misinterpretation: Perception bias: ---------------- Most of science is performed by grad students and academics. Neither of which are known to make much money and the former is known to make poverty wages lol. I can say as a recent graduate that one summer internship at a big tech company gave me more money than my university's spend for the rest of the year. And as an intern I was still much cheaper than a full employer. My equivalent yearly salary was higher than most professors in my department too. I'd say 80+% of research is being done at this scale. A few hundred grand per year, if even that. Amortization (time bias): ------------------------- We often hear about the big science projects and this creates the notion that it's expensive but it's usually misleading. You might hear news like the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper mission, but that's spread out over many years. Work began in 2015, construction in late 2019, full assembly in early 2022, and launch in late 2024, where there's 6 years of flight and the budget is for a mission life until late 2034. Amortized that's $5.2bn over 19 years, so $274m/yr ($347m if we conservatively count from 2019). Distribution: ------------- Most mega projects have a cost that's distributed over many funders. Take CERN. It cost about $10b to build, took 10 years to construct, and costs $1bn/yr to operate. That's distributed through many countries, the largest contributor being Germany, which only accounts for ~20% (so $200m/yr), followed by the UK (15%), France (13%), and Italy (10%). There are also occasional contributions by the US. Scale: ------ All these numbers are large, but they're also the biggest projects and there's few projects that big. $100m seems like a lot of money to us because we're imagining it in our bank accounts. But that's not the same as money in a government's bank. The US budget is $6.8 Trillion! $100m is 0.0015% of that! In other words, if you had a million dollars to spend each year you're talking about $1.5k (or $1.47 of a $1000 budget). This is not a big ticket item. === I'm sure you agree with most of what I've said but I wanted these points "on the record" since we live in a time where we're frequently arguing about $1 from a $10000 budget instead while ignoring the $1000 items. We need to get our heads straight. It's like someone complaining about the cost of your bus ticket while they're buying the latest fully loaded Macbook Pro. I don't think their actual concerned is the budget...
guywithahat 1y ago
I wish more people understood this. An enormous amount of research work sits somewhere between a public jobs program and a waste of resources, and we're at a point where NASA has fallen behind in significant ways. Calling something research doesn't mean we should protect it, and most significant advancements aren't through government but rather private industry.
- autoexec 1y ago
  > most significant advancements aren't through government but rather private industry. Can you back that up? Be sure to only include examples of private industry that wasn't supported or backed by the government and didn't depend on prior government advancements to make their advancements
- KirinDave 1y ago
  I wish that more people understood that if they're very wrong/openly lying about the history of scientific achievement, they're probably in the wrong about their conclusions regarding the future of science as well. And that's Eru (and perhaps you) here. Pubic science continues to make fantastic moves forward, with one notable example being nearly ALL the meaningful research and engineering moving us towards nuclear fusion being based on public research. Historically, major contributors to research almost universally had significant government funding. It's true that we can gesture to AI research recently as a fruitful place for private research, but even orgs like Deepmind took government grants. Deepmind's publicly called for governments to fund AI research, as have many other (private) researchers. In any event, taking tax money and giving it back to the betterment of society as a whole is one of the most uniformly good things that could be done with tax dollars. Science consistently betters society as a whole, and it's almost impossible to identify in advance what theoretical or practical breakthroughs in any given field are about to become significant.
  - eru 1y ago
    Where have I lied about anything here? > In any event, taking tax money and giving it back to the betterment of society as a whole is one of the most uniformly good things that could be done with tax dollars. Have you considered taxing less in the first place? So that there's more money for eg private research? > Deepmind's publicly called for governments to fund AI research, as have many other (private) researchers. Company in sector X calling for more government spending on sector X seems hardly like news?

by eru 1y ago

godelski 1y ago

> That doesn't mean that government investment in science is necessarily a good idea. Sure, only a Sith deals in absolutes. What's your point? If you inferred from my comment that I think we should just fund everything all willy nilly I'm curious how you think I would resolve this with the lack of infinite money. I'd have to assume we have infinite money if I was suggesting to fund everything, right? And I'd have to be incredibly dumb to think there's infinite money (and resources). Right? I mean I'm dumb, but do you really think I'm that dumb? > Where they financed by the government? Yes > Btw, I can also look at winning lottery tickets Do you have anything to comment that isn't reductio ad absurdum? You're not making an argument, you're just intentionally misunderstanding. Sorry, I'm not going to respond if all you want to do is troll

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]

KirinDave 1y ago

In the interest of historical accuracy, Newton's work was directly and indirectly subsidized by his government as was the university he attended (that later gave him partial scholarship). He invented Calculus while isolated due to the plague, but had already graduated by then with those scholarship bucks from a university chartered by the British government. A lot of his work occurred while he was what we'd now call a tenured professor of mathematics, again at a universe with an impressive amount of money being donated directly by the British government. In general, the history of higher learning is the history of governments (or the wealthy people who constitute them) funding research and facilities. You may not like it, but you shouldn't misrepresent history just to make your preferences sound more normal.

WorldMaker 1y ago
There's also that the Royal Society [0] sponsored some of Newton's work (and Newton was even President of it for a time). That was a group also chartered by the British government (and some centuries financed by it more than other centuries). (Leibniz had a more complex web of patrons over the course of the decades, including parts of German and French governments and even briefly being a Royal Society fellow. Some of Leibniz's patrons did include private [rich] donors, but it is said that Leibniz was the last scientist/mathematician to find patronage in that way/the last time in history that private donors had shown much interest in direct science/math patronage.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society

candu 1y ago

Government investment in science is...the only way basic science happens, really. I'd recommend reading The Entrepreneurial State [1] here: in essence, basic science pays off too slowly to interest even the most deeply-pocketed capital interests, but it pays off, so wise societies invest in it; Silicon Valley owes its existence to massive formative public investments in underlying technologies. Not to mention that smart people generally prefer to live in places that value and protect science, so it's _also_ an indirect form of geopolitical talent recruitment. (See brain drain + brain gain impacts of science policy, for instance. There's a strong argument to be made that US mid-20th-century dominance in science and engineering was largely driven by a lot of very smart people fleeing Nazi Germany.) Basic science isn't so much a lottery ticket as a bond with unknown maturity measured in decades, a _very_ high rate of return, a high minimum investment, and dividend-like payouts created by adding skilled scientists, engineers, etc. to your tax base. [1] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state/ https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state...

godelski 1y ago
> a high minimum investment This is the only part I actually disagree with. Science is incredibly cheap. It can have a long time to mature but interestingly that is dependent on the number of "bonds", with quicker returns when there's more "bonds" issued. I'd say there's 4 common classes of misinterpretation: Perception bias: ---------------- Most of science is performed by grad students and academics. Neither of which are known to make much money and the former is known to make poverty wages lol. I can say as a recent graduate that one summer internship at a big tech company gave me more money than my university's spend for the rest of the year. And as an intern I was still much cheaper than a full employer. My equivalent yearly salary was higher than most professors in my department too. I'd say 80+% of research is being done at this scale. A few hundred grand per year, if even that. Amortization (time bias): ------------------------- We often hear about the big science projects and this creates the notion that it's expensive but it's usually misleading. You might hear news like the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper mission, but that's spread out over many years. Work began in 2015, construction in late 2019, full assembly in early 2022, and launch in late 2024, where there's 6 years of flight and the budget is for a mission life until late 2034. Amortized that's $5.2bn over 19 years, so $274m/yr ($347m if we conservatively count from 2019). Distribution: ------------- Most mega projects have a cost that's distributed over many funders. Take CERN. It cost about $10b to build, took 10 years to construct, and costs $1bn/yr to operate. That's distributed through many countries, the largest contributor being Germany, which only accounts for ~20% (so $200m/yr), followed by the UK (15%), France (13%), and Italy (10%). There are also occasional contributions by the US. Scale: ------ All these numbers are large, but they're also the biggest projects and there's few projects that big. $100m seems like a lot of money to us because we're imagining it in our bank accounts. But that's not the same as money in a government's bank. The US budget is $6.8 Trillion! $100m is 0.0015% of that! In other words, if you had a million dollars to spend each year you're talking about $1.5k (or $1.47 of a $1000 budget). This is not a big ticket item. === I'm sure you agree with most of what I've said but I wanted these points "on the record" since we live in a time where we're frequently arguing about $1 from a $10000 budget instead while ignoring the $1000 items. We need to get our heads straight. It's like someone complaining about the cost of your bus ticket while they're buying the latest fully loaded Macbook Pro. I don't think their actual concerned is the budget...

guywithahat 1y ago

I wish more people understood this. An enormous amount of research work sits somewhere between a public jobs program and a waste of resources, and we're at a point where NASA has fallen behind in significant ways. Calling something research doesn't mean we should protect it, and most significant advancements aren't through government but rather private industry.

autoexec 1y ago
> most significant advancements aren't through government but rather private industry. Can you back that up? Be sure to only include examples of private industry that wasn't supported or backed by the government and didn't depend on prior government advancements to make their advancements
KirinDave 1y ago
I wish that more people understood that if they're very wrong/openly lying about the history of scientific achievement, they're probably in the wrong about their conclusions regarding the future of science as well. And that's Eru (and perhaps you) here. Pubic science continues to make fantastic moves forward, with one notable example being nearly ALL the meaningful research and engineering moving us towards nuclear fusion being based on public research. Historically, major contributors to research almost universally had significant government funding. It's true that we can gesture to AI research recently as a fruitful place for private research, but even orgs like Deepmind took government grants. Deepmind's publicly called for governments to fund AI research, as have many other (private) researchers. In any event, taking tax money and giving it back to the betterment of society as a whole is one of the most uniformly good things that could be done with tax dollars. Science consistently betters society as a whole, and it's almost impossible to identify in advance what theoretical or practical breakthroughs in any given field are about to become significant.
- eru 1y ago
  Where have I lied about anything here? > In any event, taking tax money and giving it back to the betterment of society as a whole is one of the most uniformly good things that could be done with tax dollars. Have you considered taxing less in the first place? So that there's more money for eg private research? > Deepmind's publicly called for governments to fund AI research, as have many other (private) researchers. Company in sector X calling for more government spending on sector X seems hardly like news?