4 ms·

Government investment in science is...the only way basic science happens, really. I'd recommend reading The Entrepreneurial State [1] here: in essence, basic s

by 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...
- MattPalmer1086 1y ago
  Just a note you may find helpful. I feel your post is too long to be digested and responded to in a forum like this. Maybe I'm wrong, and if so I apologise! But as soon as I saw the essay like format, I knew I wasn't going to spend time on it. I think shorter points that provoke discussion may work better here.
  - csa 1y ago
    Just a note you may find helpful. > I feel your post is too long It’s about 700 words. It’s thought through, well-written, neatly organized, and it’s a fine set up for further discussion. If that’s too long for you on this forum, then I’d probably take a look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.
    - godelski 1y ago
      Thanks for the support. I know I can be wordy but I also come to HN to have more nuanced conversations than somewhere like Twitter or Reddit. Honestly, I think a lot of political fighting is caused by removal of nuance and the tendency to be rushing for rushing's sake.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - mlyle 1y ago
      The tricky thing is, long posts like this tend to provoke responses selectively nitpicking about one thing, and then either going way down into the definitional weeds or galloping to the next nitpick without acknowledging any error. I think the long content is fine as it stands, but it isn't necessarily a good seed for discussion in a comment thread (as opposed to an underlying article).
      - godelski 1y ago
        > provoke responses selectively nitpicking about one thing I'd say that's where the community is made. Either the community supports this type of behavior or not. I'll at least say I sometimes downvote opinions I agree with and upvote opinions I disagree with. That's because I don't see the upvote and downvote as a signal of my personal feeling about the comment but rather about how I feel the comment should be placed in ordering. Sometimes I downvote a comment I agree with because it is a bad argument and I want to discourage that behavior. Or because it is just signaling or ignores the parent. Sometimes I upvote bad comments because there's a conversation I want highlighted. Sometimes because despite it being bad I think they bring up good points others are ignoring. But I think we can have more in depth conversations on HN. That comment was much longer than I usually write (and I'm wordy) but I think it is a matter of what we want as a community. For example, I always downvote oneliners, memes, or when someone is just trying to dunk on the other person. What does the community want?

by candu 1y ago

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...

MattPalmer1086 1y ago
Just a note you may find helpful. I feel your post is too long to be digested and responded to in a forum like this. Maybe I'm wrong, and if so I apologise! But as soon as I saw the essay like format, I knew I wasn't going to spend time on it. I think shorter points that provoke discussion may work better here.
- csa 1y ago
  Just a note you may find helpful. > I feel your post is too long It’s about 700 words. It’s thought through, well-written, neatly organized, and it’s a fine set up for further discussion. If that’s too long for you on this forum, then I’d probably take a look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.
  - godelski 1y ago
    Thanks for the support. I know I can be wordy but I also come to HN to have more nuanced conversations than somewhere like Twitter or Reddit. Honestly, I think a lot of political fighting is caused by removal of nuance and the tendency to be rushing for rushing's sake.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - mlyle 1y ago
    The tricky thing is, long posts like this tend to provoke responses selectively nitpicking about one thing, and then either going way down into the definitional weeds or galloping to the next nitpick without acknowledging any error. I think the long content is fine as it stands, but it isn't necessarily a good seed for discussion in a comment thread (as opposed to an underlying article).
    - godelski 1y ago
      > provoke responses selectively nitpicking about one thing I'd say that's where the community is made. Either the community supports this type of behavior or not. I'll at least say I sometimes downvote opinions I agree with and upvote opinions I disagree with. That's because I don't see the upvote and downvote as a signal of my personal feeling about the comment but rather about how I feel the comment should be placed in ordering. Sometimes I downvote a comment I agree with because it is a bad argument and I want to discourage that behavior. Or because it is just signaling or ignores the parent. Sometimes I upvote bad comments because there's a conversation I want highlighted. Sometimes because despite it being bad I think they bring up good points others are ignoring. But I think we can have more in depth conversations on HN. That comment was much longer than I usually write (and I'm wordy) but I think it is a matter of what we want as a community. For example, I always downvote oneliners, memes, or when someone is just trying to dunk on the other person. What does the community want?