You missed the most important point:
3. Discussions
Try discussing anything on a random website.
Discussions, just like on HN, are usually better than the linked content.
3. Discussions
Try discussing anything on a random website.
Discussions, just like on HN, are usually better than the linked content.
Reddit is the best place to find those, IMO.
We can have the same discussions about the NIH and new drug development (since most drugs simply can't make money). The internet, chips, Google itself was started as a federally funded post-grad project.
Things move much faster when we devote shared resources into risk taking that cannot make money. It might sound like waste, but government spending, I surmise, is what creates great economies. This occurs because technological advancement, especially those that can't obviously be exploited for financial gain in the market, are the true drivers of our economy.
Either way, we will soon begin to see who is right. There are several countries now competing with the US who were far behind when we went to our current model of low taxation, high free market. It should be interesting to see if their centralized scientific/technological systems outdo us over time.
You need both and totalitarianism never pay.
In relative terms, it's superior to most of its alternatives (present site excluded, of course).
For all that it was a ghost town, if you could find some good conversation hosts / moderators on Google+, that site had some really good discussions. Probably mostly because it didn't try to scale.
(Yes, this was a hugely subjective experience, and depending on who you did or didn't follow, quality varied dramatically. The core G+ user group was probably ~100k or so English-literate participants, of whom a good 10-20k have ended up on the Pluspora Diaspora pod.)
I've both tried to start and gone looking for conversation on Reddit. The site conspires against this, in several ways.
If you're aware of specific subs that really shine and aren't afraid to name them, I'd appreciate it. (I can completely understand not wanting to out good discussion.)
Mind I'm contrasting discussion with merely good information, which Ask Historians, Ask Science, and a small set of other subs manage to achieve, with draconian (and much needed & welcomed) moderation.