Technocratic domination: when government funds science, it controls science
boriquagato.substack.com
boriquagato.substack.com
I don't think people appreciate quite how much good governments funding science has done historically. People generally know that the Internet and WWW come from projects that have been funded though taxation, but a lot of people are unaware that a lot of the other elements of the infrastructure - things like media formats (JPG, MPG etc), protocols (like wifi) also come from tax funded projects. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that these things have been a huge positive in the history of mankind, and wouldn't exist without government funded research.
I submit that both can hold true across time and people: government does good, and government does bad.
The reason, I submit with copious handwaving, is that people don't scale. The Agile ninja team kills it because it's a small group of ninjas.
Throw some zeros behind the team size, make those ninjas into division leads, and watch it crumble.
Many will contend that the number of communication edges in the graph of team members is the issue.
That may be a significant contributor, but consider: people function at scale in military situations, with curtailed individuality and authoritarian control structures.
Indeed, a subset of the population thrives like that. But it doesn't generalize.
Back on topic: the militarized external threat has historically driven much innovation. Was not the internet itself born in the Cold War?
Absent that external pressure, the government has drifted into subsidizing much questionable stuff.
Maybe not. But then again, is this particular example (as opposed to the army-research ones) really an argument? People could have gotten far more pragmatic scientific and technological bang for their tax-buck (as an opportunity cost alternative to the James Webb telescope).
(Of course if one starts with the premises that "our destiny is the stars", and that that's a realistic goal, and also that we don't need to fund on far more pressing earthly things in order to survice mid-term before we manage to even get somewhat close to that destiny, then not having the telescope seems like some huge regression. But those are a lot of premises).
Or maybe this kind of trash is the output of professional RIA trolls. This article is an anti-science, anti-government fever dream masquerading as a critique of federal funding of science, and I’m not sure why it gets upvotes. It has nothing to do with federal funding and everything to do with the author’s inability to imagine that his fellow citizens might be trying to act in good faith. Substitute any public good for the word “science”, and the article is the same. Should society really be burned down, because, uh, military-industrial complex?
Someday after people like the author have decimated all of modern civilization, historians will look back at the era of Big Science in the 20+21st century U.S. as one of humanity’s great achievements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy
Living in America we take for granted the internet, materials science, agriculture, meteorology, geography, as well as all the eye-catching astronomical telescopes etc. As a country we have been big believers in the value of uncovering the truth. And it has worked. Consider that the entire field of modern biology is a product of big government science. It was a freshly-minted postdoc who got a government job at the NIH who actually cracked the genetic code, (yes it was a lowly government employee who did it, years after fancy famous academics theorized about it without actually doing the gruntwork of setting up the decisive experiments to decode the actual code). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg . Maybe the problem is that government science is not promoted by big marketing machines. The nature of public science is that the work is left to speak for itself. So scientists like Nirenberg are not as celebrated as some startup founders or even university professors. But a huge amount of modern science and modern society rests on these everyday government-funded science efforts.
It is disgusting that the public servants who have long been doing good, hard, thankless work, are now being vilified.
Please don’t burn it all down.
The bureaucratization of science, the science institutions metrics and evaluation, the iron-triangle (written about 2-3 decades by academics) all are valid issues which now seep out to the public. If you want more "posh" articles see https://innovationfrontier.org/fix-science-dont-just-fund-it... or here (science is self-destructing...) https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science
In short, there is no need to "burn it all down", but denying or ignoring what appears nowadays even to an outsider(s) (for the article is clearly by a non-academic and it is not exactly just an outlier) obvious means that discussion and thinking about improvements is in place. Having a debate, well, on HN is not really impact-full... but regardless.
There's certainly a debate that can be had with regard to how government funds science. How are grants determined? Which departments are the primary funders of research? How "equitably" are grant dollars spread out (i.e., is it a few large grants, or many small ones)? It's important to see this as part of the discussion regarding the health of a democracy. But public funding is absolutely a major force for good when it comes to scientific research. The idea that it turns it into some weird scientific "priesthood" is completely LUDICROUS.
In theory.
In reality, find me a branch of government not captured and bent to the will of one or more industries.
Find me senators not bought and paid for. find me regulatory bodies not captured and full of revolving door positions staffed with industry insiders.
The state doesn't live in a bubble. It's not theory of "hey democracy works on paper". It's a real thing and much more complicated.
The people are often bent to the will of the state rather than the state bending to the will of people. I can cite endless popular positions that fail to get any meaningful traction for a decade or more.
What you get itls actors in capital with an agenda, media and silicon Valley propoganda, and flaccid politicians who walk a line between pretending to rep the people while reppibg their sponsors.
So who should do it then?
What is missing is, that the scientific process does not adhere to any ideal, in the long term. Think tobacco or sugar. Even the author almost mentions it but then decides for memes instead. So pathetic.
EDIT: And there is of course the part where unpromising ROI research is completely ditched and vanishes from the academic landscape, like pedagogic research. Or very risky foundational research where scientists barely scratch together funds, only to get bought up by hawking large corporations once the risks clears.
Firstly we need to consider whether the science establishment is fit for purpose. Is it ok for government/corporations/military to be the sole funders of science? Should we trust the provided results when they can be so easily gamed?
To me its clear that there are conflicts of interests. Science is held up as a triumph of humanity - a far better basis than religion on which to base society - but it is also clear that it is beholden to corporate interests.
If you want to re-gain some faith in science, there are things you could consider. I'm not saying these are solutions - just thoughts:
You could make scientific studies open - all of them. So, no need to publish in a journal. If a study provides results that are 'bad' they should still be made available! There should also be space to study things that do not have a corporate, governance or military interest - we get very few studies of health impacts of natural easily available foods, because there is no valid commercial interest. (We do get PR studies from the wine and chocolate companies - I'm not talking about those.)
I'm sure there are other ideas too. But, as a start we have to recognise that the scientific establishment works for those who fund it - its about governance and finance.
In truth, I don't expect things to change, I expect this to get worse. But no, I have no confidence in "science" as the last word.
Another problem here is that you can turn something that is true into a lie. And people in opposition suddenly have an excuse to reject any findings. Science gets a bad reputation too which can have severe consequences.
Any ideas how to go from here and in which direction, and who should make/implement that decision?
Down with science!!
I'm not a science hater at all - I love science and try to live the scientific method - its personal to me.
What I can't stand the hypocrisy in misappropriating something good by wrapping up propaganda/sales pitches as if it was science.
There is no such thing as 'the science', it is never settled - it always possible to uncover more. Using science as a cover to close down divergent opinions is perverse.
a) Are more interested in doing research for their monetary interests. Therapies for a rare genetic disease? Bad luck, not enough money in ~20 patients / year. Better encryption? Where's the money in that? Studies about economic imbalance? Who cares.
b) Are more interested in applied rather than basic research. This is a consequence of a) really, but research that doesn't produce tnagible benefits we can use to make shareholders happy next quarter are not that interesting. Ironically, without basic research, applied research is completely impossible.
c) Are under no obligation to share their findings. Public Research == Public Results. Private Research == Intellectual Property.
every facet of the state is already captured by the very entities youre complaining about.
It's just crazy people threatening our existence to satisfy their egoes.
Edit: My take on world ruled by tech: https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmeVYAP75GAvY8Q8iSfMoWMGgT...
Both the article and the author are coocoo. But that won't stop a bunch of commenters who haven't read it! Fear the ones who did read this drivel and agree with it.
I doubt anyone here wants to "take down science as a way to study nature".
[edit] Just in case anyone thinks I'm criticizing this, I'm not. I actually think it's the smartest thing an American President has done since Reagan said "tear down this wall". Also, I think it's the first time the US gov't has used the term "false flag" or even acknowledged that such a thing exists, outside the limited case of apportioning blame to the nazis for the Reichstag fire. So I'm proud of our Biden government at the moment; Putin appears spooked.
This is balls by technocracy, and I'm impressed. We're now actually acting as if we can jolt the average Russian's mind the way they've jolted ours. Likewise, Fauci and his "masks don't work" / "we don't have enough" / "you have to wear a mask" / "cloth masks don't work" ... all were perfectly rational. You have to understand, government is about you. It's just not about YOU.
I've been digging a bit into this and the conspiracy seems to be pretty clear (although completely unbelievable in scale and intent! like what the actual fuck!! and I don't believe half of it, I'm just saying the part about the virus being an intentional strategy to centralize power quickly and deal with climate change .. very crazy haha but nothing in comparison to Trudeau being the son of fidel castro or whatever bill gates something something..)
Anything new? :P