China again boosts R&D spending by more than 10%
sciencemag.org
sciencemag.org
[1] Consider a lot of workers half their income goes to rent.
Rather than focusing on R&D (science & technology presumably), I'd like to see Western countries start approaching ~"the humanities" (culture, society, happiness, etc) the same way we treat technology and industry. To me it seems fairly clear that there are distinct differences at the human satisfaction level between different countries/cultures. I have the sense that Western countries are starting to fall behind in some categories, the consequences of which first began showing up in our political discourse/mood, which has now progressed to literally spilling out onto the streets. Rather than our current laissez faire approach to this aspect of life, could treating it as a serious first class intellectual problem yield positive results?
Going further there are a number of works meant to probe the exact limit of what we're willing to consider art. I recall a couple interesting ones:
1. An artist took a shit in a can and sealed it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit
2. I recall there was an artist who took an existing book and changed the author name to their own, I can't find a link right now though.
In literature, for example, this means that authorial intent is supplanted by perspectivalism. That is, each reader interprets a text based on his or her own perspective, and each interpretation is equally valid. This plays out in the political realm most prominently in the supreme court's interpretation of laws (does it matter what the author meant to say or just what we now interpret them to have said?).
So when I say it's impossible for the humanities to impose strict tests on veracity, what I mean is that a strict test would yield true results that are perspective-independent. This is what the scientific method attempts to accomplish, and the hard sciences use this methodology. The humanities, however, have long ceded that it is impossible to arrive at a perspective-independent conclusion and IMO would therefore reject a similarly rigorous approach.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2019_Wo...
It is metaphysical-type questions like this that seem to get very little formal attention and funding. I would like to see humanity devote more effort to this type of initiative, and less towards optimizing advertising, making phones thinner, games more addicting, developing technology to send the ultra-wealthy into space, etc.
Psychology and sociology are the fields that study the human happiness or social dynamics issues you referenced, and both funded by the NSF[0], so is it just that you wish they had more funding?
If we're being pedantic, I'd like to point out what I actually said:
>> ~"the humanities" (culture, society, happiness, etc)
It appears I've made an error in terminology, but I would have anticipated the additional words I included would have rectified my error. Apparently my heuristics failed in this case.
> Psychology and sociology are the fields that study the human happiness or social dynamics issues you referenced, and both funded by the NSF[0], so is it just that you wish they had more funding?
Generally, I would like us to fund anyone who has novel ideas that may offer useful insight into the state of affairs on the planet, which largely derives from human actions and interactions. The quirkiness of specific forum conversations (this one, for example) is one class of interactions where I believe we could learn something useful that may shed light on broader trends we see in society, if we put some serious effort into it.
I'd have to review the specifics of what the NSF is studying and the results, but from an armchair commentator perspective (observing the general state of the world and the quality of public discourse) I wouldn't expect they are producing useful insights - although, it's completely possible they produce excellent results, and are completely being ignored (which should be noticed in a proper review).
The way research in the humanities and social sciences are conducted are fundamentally different, which is why I think the lexical distinction is important in this case. Most social science research applies the scientific method (hypothesis testing etc.), most humanities research does not.
>The quirkiness of specific forum conversations (this one, for example) is one class of interactions where I believe we could learn something useful that may shed light on broader trends we see in society, if we put some serious effort into it.
I agree.
>although, it's completely possible they produce excellent results, and are completely being ignored (which should be noticed in a proper review)
If I had to bet on it I'd say this is the answer, though I'd add that in addition to being ignored the research is being used in ways you and I wouldn't like. I know for example that app/social media development 2005-today relied/rely heavily on psychological research pertaining to addiction, human computer interaction, etc. I'm positive some of that was NSF funded.
For example, plenty of people think climate change is a legitimate threat, and that prudent societal responses are hampered by imperfections in democracy, and that beliefs such as racism play a role in voting choices. Nothing very controversial (from an HN perspective) so far I don't think. But an invisible line that I sense cannot be crossed here is the underlying reasons why people "are" "racist", or the degree to which mass heuristic-based theory of mind estimations (~mind reading) like this are even true, or even happening. Introduce this style of thinking and one will surely be rewarded with downvotes, if not stern "culture war guidelines violations" warnings. But one thing you'll never get is any substantial justification or reasoning behind why there are peer-enforced guard rails on things like:
- what can be discussed
- how (from what perspectives) certain things can be discussed
- at what level of detail things can be discussed
I think there is something very interesting going on here, and that there seems to be this strong, almost universal/multi-dimensional aversion to discussing it (the phenomenon) makes me even more curious.
Yeah, I agree with you - those are important questions I wish we had better answers to.
I'm early into a research career though not in these fields and I'm starting to observe that knowing the problems that need solving/questions that need answering is often trivial when compared to actually solving the problems or answering the obvious question. That might be part of the issue here too, just my 2c.
Like any aristocracy, the ruling class is born and raised to care not the humanity, but their humanity's value to them.
Imperial exams amplify those value and ideology by enforcing a strict caste systems in the classic reading, etc. That's not emphasis on humanity, that's emphasis on human caste.
The explicit mechanics of how society makes optimized decisions on public policy and spending seems like an area that needs improvement. Specific areas of what I refer to are global climate change, rules on wearing masks during pandemics, taxation, etc - the manner in which we currently approach such questions seems extremely sub-optimal to me, to the degree that I sometimes wonder if some approaches may be in part designed to be confusing and dysfunctional.
When you take into account that China's GDP is 70% of the US but has a PPP factor of about 1.6 (i.e. the same amount of US dollars goes 60% further in China than it would notionally in America) they're actually spending what amounts 2.6% of the US GDP in PPP dollars.
(a) that changes nothing about what I said, and...
(b) do you really, truly, honestly, believe that if America were behind in tech the first thing they'd do wouldn't be to send in the spies? Of course they would. I know because that's what I would do. As a leader my obligation is to my people at the end of the day -- and this is true -- who's going to stop me?
In what world would you sit back and say, well, I think it'd be better if we just figured it out on our own, fair and square lol.
So, in addition to being factually incorrect, is very damaging to the national discourse to normalize CPC’s strategy of wholesale IP theft.
When you're top dog, your job is largely counter-intelligence.
> So, in addition to being factually incorrect, is very damaging to the national discourse to normalize CPC’s strategy of wholesale IP theft.
Hold on, at what point did I suggest it shouldn't be combatted - or that it was okay? I'm saying we should expect them to try and do so. I absolutely think the US should fight back. That's the game.
The US absolutely does it, has done it and will do it again. That doesn’t mean chinas not defending themselves against it.
Can you clarify why? China is a state actor. State actors generally can be expected to act in self serving ways. What would be the basis for preventing espionage? Is this a moral argument that spying is evil?
Of course countries should protect themselves from foreign espionage if they can, but I don’t see what blame accomplishes, unless you are willing to have a hot war to stop spying.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra...
If you have something other than speculation that backs up your claim, I am happy to consider it. But this is not it.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-a...
The sheer amount of tech made and shipped from China is astonishing. And the quality has massively improved, while prices stay low. Everything from amazing BGA reballing stations to high quality solar panels and power tools.
Cost isn't the only reason that manufacturing is moving out of China; companies are finally realizing that using Chinese factories is tantamount to giving the PRC access to all of your technical IP.
example: you want a photography drone? Like, the best commerical one available? It's a Chinese product. Most of the other stuff on the market doesn't come close. The closest we had domestically in the US was 3D systems, and then went under if I recall correctly.
Japan did this. Do not underestimate China.
It takes time though, Toyota was founded in 1937, they started by reverse engineering Chrystler cars (they were surprisingly open about this in the Toyota museum). Chinese companies got started maybe around the 1980s with market reforms.
China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products.
This cycle has already happened to over a dozen former clients. I went in-house years ago, but even before then my firm had begun discouraging companies from opening manufacturing facilities in China for any product with any sort of valuable technical IP.
> China's game plan has been to encourage companies to use Chinese factories based on artificially low prices (subsidized with massive PRC spending), and then to (usually openly) steal the IP and begin making competing products.
"working for" then "starting their own" yeah. See, you get it.
Your analogy gets even better, just not in ways you expected, in that people who go work at Michelin starred restaurants in the kitchen do so for low-to-zero wages because the real benefit is the experience they're gaining initially.
Another thing is that Japan is friendly towards us and our values. China seeks to bully and topple every nation that does not bow to it. Not to mention the ongoing genocide and the rise of the superior Han mentality.
There are plenty of countries like India that could do it, but China tops the list not only for stealing from US, but also from every other western country including my own: Canada. See Nortel and how Huawei was created off of stolen tech and research from Nortel and thereby bankrupting Nortel. For the latest trickery, see CanSino covid vaccine.
China and collaboration with China or chinese scientists at this point cannot be trusted at all.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-prop...
> According to some reports, Chinese IP theft has cost the United States $225 billion to $600 billion a year. No wonder, then, that getting China to better protect IP is a point of rare consensus among both the White House and the Democratic leadership.
This isn't a small chunk of change. In fact, this is comparable to the R&D budgets the main article is talking about.
It then says
> But history tells us to be cautious; Washington’s demands are unrealistic. Countries do not enact strong IP rights systems until their ability to innovate at home displaces reliance on outside knowledge. The United States’ own century long drift toward strong protections is a case in point.
Which the tldr is: don't expect it to work. So I'm not sure why this becomes less true over time, as this is very recent and doesn't seem to have changed anything. Sure, other countries did it too, but why does that matter? Doesn't make it right.
The country is making the transition from net importer of ideas to net innovator, and as it does, it is finding that good patent laws matter.
Regardless of whether or not they have to "adjust" their numbers for one specific year, the fact is that they've set their goalposts at double the R&D growth of the west (both US and EU are at around 5% R&D growth [1]).
Unless in reality they're not even halfway reaching their goals, they're going to overtake the US and EU in spending at some point, probably pretty soon. The graph in the link below (published by the US gov) is quite clear. One of those lines is obviously not like the others.
Of course a decent amount get lost due to corruption, but that's always the case.
I wouldn't say it's that clear cut. Even if the R&D is not directly for technology for repression, it increases that power and prestige of a state that has few qualms with using repression for political ends. Those increases could mean that other states will come under its influence or emulate its repressive example (when they would have otherwise emulated less-repressive or non-repressive examples).
Even the Athenians had slaves.
The EU didn't bomb Libya, France and Britain did.
It'll be interesting to see how it develops, they're clearly more of a governing body than the UN, but also seem to have steered clear of anything close to a security issue.
With time, as it entrenches and everyone believes in their hearts that the EU is going nowhere, then it will be less nice.
They do it, but they have a lot of qualms about it.
No, that's false. An easy example is waterboarding. One administration used it (on foreigners), but it was enormously controversial domestically.
"What about literally everyone else, in all of time" is what I said.
I think that rising D&I budgets are a recognition of this truth.
It seems like common sense to me, but I'd be interested to know if it has been studied/measured...
In the US, they're only doing this at hire time for D&I so far. We'll see where it goes from there.
What can be a drag on innovation is if there is nepotism. If the leader appoints his good-for-nothing nephew to science minister. Or if there is corruption, and well connected incumbents throw up endless barriers for innovative upcomers. Or if organized crime steal too much value from the productive people.
Unless you innovate in some field detrimental to the government, e.g. education, anonymity, freedom etc.
Even if the repressive societies have lower overall research effectiveness, it may be higher in some areas that really matter geopolitically (e.g. military R&D). IIRC, many talented Western scientists boycott military projects for moral reasons, because they live in societies that celebrate taking personal moral stands like that. The talented scientists in a repressive society have different social influences, any may be far less likely to have a problem with military research.
But in the real world, its never just in the right hands.. Sigh yet it will still be perfected.. :|
The most obvious value I'd see is getting rid of the scan in for the amazon stores, so it's a real walk, in walk out experience
A good proportion of Chinese research is still rampantly fraudulent and of the legitimate research only a small fraction ends up being truly innovative. This implies a low return on R&D investment.
The same applies to software projects. At least in the OSS world you rarely see quality projects coming from China nowadays. The ones that do are almost always from companies with a US presence. Perhaps collaboration is difficult?
Re: Face recognition— this is something that is so clearly going to be used as a tool for oppression yet when I speak to those currently in the mainland they sing its praises in dealing w/ COVID. We will see how the cards fall when COVID is over. My guess is you won’t see ethnic Uyghurs living in mainland China 15 years from now.
Of course, every time a post about China comes up someone goes “oh but the US is the same”. No, it’s really not. The US has its fair share of issues with domestic spying and definitely some degree of repression but we still have a free and open internet, open discourse is permitted, and tools like strong encryption are widely available and even assisted in development by the government (eg; Tor).
What does this matter ? Can't they stay in China ?
> This implies a low return on R&D investment.
Whatever about the ethics of it, the work has been done by others they are stealing it from, im not sure how that's a low return..
> from companies with a US presence. Perhaps collaboration is difficult?
Or easier to do business in the US with offices there..
Honestly your whole point just seems to look for stereotype-ish grievances to air.
The US has a lot of places with names like Sioux Falls, but where there's no Sioux living there anymore
Considering the Uyghur population doubled in the last 50 years, they're not doing a very good job at it.
A bank, could hold on to the title and use it to for example collect the owned money of the title from people who are involved in the ownership of the title - as ccp members or parts of a company owned by the ccp.
That way ip-theft, would be nothing, but debt taken from the international community.. and as the title collection would make it rather bad for those taking the debt..the accumulating debt would make the regime go bankrupt.