Let's funnel more money into a system that's suffering from Eroom's Law?
I didn't say more money, I said more science. Wouldn't it be great if all patients taking a particular drug would have direct access to a scientifically-trained researcher/assistant that could interpret the effect on that patient, and publish their results as a single data point on that drug? For many conditions, there are patient support groups. I would want these groups to participate in the evaluation of drug effectiveness, but most lack scientific rigour and have little means to corroborate with other groups or manufacturers.
We'll keep 1% - 10% of them and give them an order of magnitude more funding.
I think this will not prevent agenda-driven research (AKA corruption of science). At the most, you will get higher inflation of the cost of buying specific results with money. And since you've reduced the total scientific capacity, there is even less capacity for verification of results.
Also we'll close down some branches of science entirely because they're a waste of effort.
I'm afraid the first that would be closed down are the purely theoretical sciences, such as advanced math and string theory. After all, they don't have a practical use, don't they? And wouldn't it be useful if you could classify the entire field of climate research as "waste of effort", because you happen to be in power and don't like its results?
The problem is that we don't have a universal, uncontested definition of "waste of effort". Serendipitous discoveries are a real thing, and have spawned entirely new areas of research or tools. Some of the major accidental breakthroughs: penicillin, microwave ovens, teflon, vulcanization of rubber, viagra.
We will never know what breakthrough we missed out on by not pursuing some research. I think narrowing the scope of research is a bad idea.
Maybe science has a scaling problem [..] maybe nobody is reading the journals [..] because it's like drinking from a fire hose
Science has an accessibility problem. When researchers have to pay thousands of dollars before they can even read other studies, that automatically sets a minimum bar for their own scientific research to break even. Since replication studies can not lead to new patent applications, they're only money sinks.
And you are correct that there are too many publications adding next to nothing to the overall knowledge. But that too, in my eyes, is a problem of accessibility. Not money-wise, but content-wise. We really need better search and classification systems. But as long as the content is locked up, the content holders have no incentive to improve our access.
Not being able to integrate existing knowledge is a failure mode
Fully agreed.
You've seen 2001, so you've seen what my parents generation expected to happen by the early 21st century.
Not sure what you mean here. If you mean "2001: A Space Odyssey", then no, I haven't seen it. I have seen "Airplane 2" though...
If our advancements are actually impressive we don't need the journalists to prompt us into thinking so.
But that was exactly my point. The lunar landing wasn't actually that impressive, yet we had thousands of journalists prompting us to think so. The space race was overhyped because it was used as propaganda on the cold war front. Yes, it was a major milestone in human engineering, but as a scientific achievement it was just incremental.
To me, it is exactly because of journalist hype that we think that the lunar landing was a greater accomplishment than the Mars exploration missions, or than the permanently-inhabited International Space Station.
that probe that landed on that asteroid recently went dark for most of it's life because they used solar power instead of the nuclear battery that powers the Voyagers.
Yes, the aversion against nuclear energy is a great tragedy for modern life, especially for space exploration. But that is a political problem brought on by the weaponization of nuclear power, it's not a scientific or engineering problem.
This is a world wide stagnation in science/engineering/technology ex-computation
> I didn't say more money, I said more science. Wouldn't it be great if all patients taking a particular drug would have direct access to a scientifically-trained researcher/assistant that could interpret the effect on that patient, and publish their results as a single data point on that drug? For many conditions, there are patient support groups. I would want these groups to participate in the evaluation of drug effectiveness, but most lack scientific rigour and have little means to corroborate with other groups or manufacturers.
I think much of this really does come back to economics. If people's wage were higher thanks to innovation I imagine they certainly would pay for an assistant of the sort you're describing around the 70k - 100k mark. Or if these assistants were able to supply their service for about the cost of buying a newspaper per week. Frankly though, drug companies and I imagine the FDA are less than enthused, for good reasons and bad, with the possibility of patient groups returning feedback that might generate expensive recalls or call regulations into question. This might be the kind of problem Silicon Valley could solve for x with some quasi-computional-insurance startup.
> I think this will not prevent agenda-driven research (AKA corruption of science). At the most, you will get higher inflation of the cost of buying specific results with money. And since you've reduced the total scientific capacity, there is even less capacity for verification of results.
Very likely those are the downsides, but I believe we're in triage, not cosmetic surgery. The pressing issue for the corporation or government is the total spend and the hammer-nail issue. Having more eyeballs on less publications will probably deter fraud or shoddy work.
> I'm afraid the first that would be closed down are the purely theoretical sciences, such as advanced math and string theory. After all, they don't have a practical use, don't they?
I'd be less afraid of that. The people doing string theory are very economic to accommodate with chalk and pencils and there I don't think there are that many of them around. I say this as somebody who thinks this is all probably bunk!
> And wouldn't it be useful if you could classify the entire field of climate research as "waste of effort", because you happen to be in power and don't like its results?
Immensely useful. Much consternation in Australia I hear. In practice this happens without a recession required. The weakness of most areas of science today is their over reliance on government funding. I believe the Catholic Church had the best trained astronomers in the business at one point, will Upton Sinclair's quote ever lose relevance! The solution I believe is to change the funding model with a sovereign fund, like Harvard's endowment. Difficult but it will work.
> Not sure what you mean here. If you mean "2001: A Space Odyssey", then no, I haven't seen it.
A homework assignment, should you choose to accept it!
It's one of the movies, like the Matrix, that never quite looks dated despite half a century.
> To me, it is exactly because of journalist hype that we think that the lunar landing was a greater accomplishment than the Mars exploration missions, or than the permanently-inhabited International Space Station.
You're technically correct. The best form of correct! It's the scale of things (present in 2001) that didn't happen that is my bugbear though. Propaganda aside it is hard not to watch the Saturn 5 taking off without chills running down your spine.
> Yes, the aversion against nuclear energy is a great tragedy for modern life, especially for space exploration. But that is a political problem brought on by the weaponization of nuclear power, it's not a scientific or engineering problem.
I will argue there is an invisible but certain connection between a stagnation in science and political deadlock in many areas. Innovators typically riff off technology that ultimately had it's foundation in basic science some decades or centuries back. All growth in GDP ultimately comes from making more stuff with less resources, which is a fine definition of technology. Lack of economic resource growth leads to less niches in society and to zero sum politics or deadlock because one party must lose for another to win. Therefore the lack of a nuclear battery in the robot is not a coincidence. That genetic modification and nuclear power are defacto illegal or actually illegal in many countries is not unconnected to what we've been talking about. When the Chinese forbade 3 mask sailing ships they stopped something more than ocean travel.
Ok, I think we've reached the limits of this conservation for today. Thank you for a pleasant and interesting conversation.
I didn't say more money, I said more science. Wouldn't it be great if all patients taking a particular drug would have direct access to a scientifically-trained researcher/assistant that could interpret the effect on that patient, and publish their results as a single data point on that drug? For many conditions, there are patient support groups. I would want these groups to participate in the evaluation of drug effectiveness, but most lack scientific rigour and have little means to corroborate with other groups or manufacturers.
We'll keep 1% - 10% of them and give them an order of magnitude more funding.
I think this will not prevent agenda-driven research (AKA corruption of science). At the most, you will get higher inflation of the cost of buying specific results with money. And since you've reduced the total scientific capacity, there is even less capacity for verification of results.
Also we'll close down some branches of science entirely because they're a waste of effort.
I'm afraid the first that would be closed down are the purely theoretical sciences, such as advanced math and string theory. After all, they don't have a practical use, don't they? And wouldn't it be useful if you could classify the entire field of climate research as "waste of effort", because you happen to be in power and don't like its results?
The problem is that we don't have a universal, uncontested definition of "waste of effort". Serendipitous discoveries are a real thing, and have spawned entirely new areas of research or tools. Some of the major accidental breakthroughs: penicillin, microwave ovens, teflon, vulcanization of rubber, viagra.
We will never know what breakthrough we missed out on by not pursuing some research. I think narrowing the scope of research is a bad idea.
Maybe science has a scaling problem [..] maybe nobody is reading the journals [..] because it's like drinking from a fire hose
Science has an accessibility problem. When researchers have to pay thousands of dollars before they can even read other studies, that automatically sets a minimum bar for their own scientific research to break even. Since replication studies can not lead to new patent applications, they're only money sinks.
And you are correct that there are too many publications adding next to nothing to the overall knowledge. But that too, in my eyes, is a problem of accessibility. Not money-wise, but content-wise. We really need better search and classification systems. But as long as the content is locked up, the content holders have no incentive to improve our access.
Not being able to integrate existing knowledge is a failure mode
Fully agreed.
You've seen 2001, so you've seen what my parents generation expected to happen by the early 21st century.
Not sure what you mean here. If you mean "2001: A Space Odyssey", then no, I haven't seen it. I have seen "Airplane 2" though...
If our advancements are actually impressive we don't need the journalists to prompt us into thinking so.
But that was exactly my point. The lunar landing wasn't actually that impressive, yet we had thousands of journalists prompting us to think so. The space race was overhyped because it was used as propaganda on the cold war front. Yes, it was a major milestone in human engineering, but as a scientific achievement it was just incremental.
To me, it is exactly because of journalist hype that we think that the lunar landing was a greater accomplishment than the Mars exploration missions, or than the permanently-inhabited International Space Station.
that probe that landed on that asteroid recently went dark for most of it's life because they used solar power instead of the nuclear battery that powers the Voyagers.
Yes, the aversion against nuclear energy is a great tragedy for modern life, especially for space exploration. But that is a political problem brought on by the weaponization of nuclear power, it's not a scientific or engineering problem.
This is a world wide stagnation in science/engineering/technology ex-computation
I think we'll just have to disagree on that.