The case for overhauling American science
economist.com
economist.com
It's pretty thoughtful about diagnosing the problems of the current system, but I don't know about the solutions. Disbursing money to researchers directly (or via industry) seems captive to the same incentives as disbursing money via universities.
- Give money to quacks and less credible individuals
- Permit ideological discrimination of awards
- Eliminate oversight and increase corruption
- Funnel money into dubious things
"Bush joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919, and founded the company that became Raytheon in 1922. Bush became vice president of MIT and dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938"
"Kratsios graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in political science in 2008. After graduating from Princeton, he worked as an analyst at Barclays Capital and the Lyford Group International. Kratsios served as the chief financial officer of Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital. He later became a principal at Thiel Capital and served as Thiel's chief of staff. "
Okay, in all seriousness, what would a person with this background know about the natural sciences? He's had no professional or academic exposure to them. It's a bit weird that a complete non-scientist can loftily decree, with a perfectly straight face, precisely how science ought to be "overhauled". (By funneling money to AI companies and "competing with China," no less.)
I don’t think it has worked well, but this is continuing the trend rather than a deviation.
Not wrong, but even scientists can get out of their depth at times:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
* ~2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49166918
What does RFK Jr. know about medicine? Why do we have news anchors in cabinet positions? Same answer.
We need subject experts, not McKinsey consultants.
That said, it's a really safe bet that anybody serving in the current administration is the wrong person for the job and their only "qualifications" for that role are pledging personal loyalty to Trump (the man, not the office), and that they are a skilled grifter and manipulator.
Interesting question.
I think the intent when talking about “character” is to look for traits that unifiy observations of words and actions.
They argue that investments have surged while results have diminished. This is a given. Just like a gold mine, gold is easily extracted at first, but the deeper you dig, the more expensive extraction becomes.
The article dismisses things like "spending half their time on paperwork" as mere bureaucracy, but these are necessary procedures to ensure the transparent execution of public funds. Shifting power and capital from universities to private AI companies effectively dismantles this public oversight.
Transitioning to a "new initiative" is simply a move to siphon academic power and prestige toward their own agenda. In reality, the exodus of scientists to the private AI industry leaves immense room for scientific neutrality to be compromised. Of course, it is undeniable that inefficiencies and flawed practices do exist in certain areas of academia. Furthermore, once researchers enter the corporate world, they are bound by NDAs. The trajectory of science then becomes subordinated to the creation of short-term market value, rather than the pursuit of truth or long-term value generation.
History has clearly shown the consequences of eating your seed corn just because you are hungry. I do not understand why they are proceeding this way.
I'm sympathetic to PP's POV thus I'd really like to extract fallacies from it. Your q seems to suggest that setups like Bell Labs (but not to forget ARPA) were probably on the Pareto front of how to organize science. Not sure if the WH isn't just being reactionary or is indeed interested in moving back towards that Pareto frontier, but there's something else unemotional to ponder given that we don't know if China has their own BL/ARPA
Yes, it's the promising q of whether/how Bell Labs/ARPA were "eating their own seed corn" by using "market-based mechanisms" _internally_ to allocate their assets. Towards finding anomalously-low-hanging fruits (<-- this goal obsoletes PP's gold-digging metaphor btw--- economists hate those Andrew Jacksons just lying there on uh, the virtual pavement!)
It's probably a q that [a libertarian rag like] the Economist would be exploring too, if they felt the urge to work hard. At the very least they should try writing real hit-pieces on ARIA, which _was_ going to be led by Highnam from DARPA, after all. Sorry about the snark
>DARPA has succeeded over the decades in part because many of its gambles have NOT paid off. That is a sign that it is investigating truly radical ideas, rather than confining itself to the sorts of safe scientific bets best left to industry or more conventional research institutions.
(Ignore the logical error there?)
https://www.war.gov/About/Biographies/Biography/Article/4047...
Maybe I read it wrong but it seems the case being made is to overhaul the current NSF...with a different NSF? Like I'm failing to see what specifically the current government is doing to hamper AI progress that there should be a "focus on harnessing AI and out-competing China", and what harnessing AI actually means.
Say what you will about how to improve academics and scientific research, but the current administration's modus operandi is not the way.
See previous requirements for ideological statements to receive funding.
I've received some individual grants from private foundations in another country. Those grants were essentially unconditional gifts, as there were some tax benefits with such grants. I could have spent the funding period surfing in Bali instead of doing research, and nobody would have had the standing to complain.
Things change if the funder wants to maintain control over how the money is spent. Once there are regulations and compliance requirements, things become risky for the individual. If you end up in a situation, where a reasonable person would employ a lawyer or another professional, it's safer to have a legal entity between you and the funder.
I'd argue that this is one of the advantages of Anglo and Anglo-American culture that has become eroded over time. I've been reading about the British East India Company and how much discretion employees were afforded in carrying out their work: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-com.... They had like 35 employees in London and managed to take over Mughal India, which was a gunpowder empire with guns, cannons, 4-5x the state revenues and 25x the population of Britain. Pound for pound it's probably one of the most effective organizations in history.
I love watching the “making of Disneyland” movies they have on Disney+. Really captures the American spirit of just doing stuff.
I’m not sure what historians could debate here. The EIC ultimately failed as a business once it became a government—the costs of governing wiped out the profits from the trade monopoly. But the administrative achievements are undeniable.
This is evident from undisputed historical facts. In the mid-18th century, England’s per capita GDP was only about double that of the Mughal Empire’s. The Mughals themselves were an organized, sophisticated, Persianate Empire with a centralized. bureaucracy. The technological advantage was incremental: e.g. iron cannons versus bronze cannons, standardized ammunition, etc. But the Mughals had vastly more manpower and state revenues. In the Anglo Mughal War, the Mughals obliterated the EIC forces with a 500,000 man army. Less than 75 years later, the EIC took over the Mughal Empire with just a few thousand European soldiers. It never had more than 35,000 European soldiers in India. That’s a crazy achievement. It would be like Amazon putting together a private army and taking over the EU.
The EIC overthrew a gunpowder empire with vast resources and one of the largest militaries in the world with 1,000 European soldiers and a few dozen administrators in London. There's incredible lessons in there, orthogonal to whatever you're talking about.
That said, effectiveness actually is a frequent shortcut to goodness, in that effectiveness often leads to efficiency and efficiency is one of the best methods of indiscriminate uplifting of people in an otherwise unfair and imbalanced world.
Lol. Braindead take. First of all, who cares if we invent next-big-technology before china? We’ll get them to make it for us and then they’ll be better at it than us because they make it and we don’t.
> writes Michael Kratsios, the White House science chief
Ah, yes. That makes the braindeadness of the take make sense. This is just more anti-science bullshit from a gov that hates science. Once you get past the talk, it’ll boil down to “we should only give NSF funding to companies that kick back enough cash to the trump 2028 campaign fund”
Without building a foundation where we can both invent AND produce things at home, chasing invention is a loosing game.
I think we need to keep our conspiracy allegations accurate:
We’re not doing anything constructive to strawman one group was a way to insult another.