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Absurd Alhazred posted:That's not how it works, though. Technological advancement isn't like in Civilization or other 4X games. You don't just pour money into the right tech tree and get advancement after a known time. Most important discoveries are made whilst looking for something entirely different. You simply cannot plan for these things directly. I fully understand you just don't dump money into a field and expect it to pump out goodies. But that was part of my point, discoveries are often unplanned and based on a huge number of other factors coming together. I agree that it's important to create a good environment for things to be recognized and developed, but market processes are a big part of this. If you have public choice and political forces dictate where the resources are going, then you're far more likely to end up with the "put $10 million on cancer" because that cause is sexy and high profile, but the extra money might not necessarily able to be speed up the process of being brought to market. quote:As for your specific example of manned space flights, quite a bit of money has gone into it, and it turns out that space is much more dangerous and hard to deal with than we thought. "Let's develop a sustainable biosphere" is just not a problem you can throw money at. Maybe basic ecological research or somebody studying a remote region of the Andes will find a few silver bullets that will lead to that advance that can allow for sustainable human living in microgravity. Who knows? What will definitely not work is saying "okay, we want biosphere in 5 years, how much money do you need?" If it's easy to predict how long it will take or whether it is possible at all, it just isn't research. Again, this is totally my point. The reason I used space flight as an example is because it's much more "real" to people. It may not be the right example, but there are many others. Theoretically there is an "optimal" level basic research, where we are spending the right amount of resources on fields that are likely to produce usable results in the relative near future. On the other hand, if we're spending too much on basic research, or the research was directed to attractive but economically infeasible fields, this would lead to a society where we have a lot of neat advanced technologies and theory that is only affordable to a rich elite, because the rest of the capital structure hasn't caught up and is constantly lagging the "artificially" advanced edge of knowledge.
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Aug 30, 2014 02:29
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I just checked in before going to bed but I'll respond briefly to a couple points hereBuried alive posted:I felt the need to respond to a couple of things here. Firstly, lets differentiate two of the concepts I'm talking about. Number one is the present value of basic research, number two is the public perception of the value of that research. I don't doubt the long term value of the research itself, rather that heavy state investment shouldn't be open ended, and that huge capital projects like the LHC might need to be reevaluated. The electromagnatism example you present is actually a great example. Were there any large capital projects invested in studying electromagnetism until the means and needs of society were "caught up"? Please note that I understand there's not some linear progression of technology, but small incremental improvements in both practice and theory are needed to make anything happen. Basic research is crucially important, but the need to, for lack of a better phrase, race ahead needs to be weighed against the opportunity costs for the funds involved. Responding to the space flight example, once again, the only reason I mentioned that was it has a greater possibility of capturing the public mind. Not that it should certainly be the next big step. However, I would take issue with the claim that space operations are equivalent to the findings of the LHC when it comes to the "bleeding edge". Technology exists for many different attempts at space exploration/exploitation. If you really did dump a bunch of funds into it, I don't think we'd have a problem putting people on Mars or redirecting ore from an asteroid in 20-30 years. However, I'm not sure the same can be said for the wealth potentially generated by the knowledge of the Higgs Boson. It's been around in theory for half a century, and most "practical" applications I've read about involve pie-in-the-sky ideas about inertial dampeners and gravity drives. I mean, if we're all floating around in hover cars in 40 years I'll eat my hat. The point is that investing in large capital projects to investigate such particles is stepping WAY ahead of what we can practically use them for. This is not a few aristocrats fiddling around with magnets and wires in their study. It's billions of dollars that could be applied to any number of humanitarian or production goals. quote:Market processes are not a big part of theory. You yourself have said a number of times that you don't just pump money into stuff and expect it to pump out goodies, but that is exactly what the market wants. The market's criteria for evaluating anything new is, first and foremost, can it make money? If the answer is anything other than, "Yes", the market won't invest in it. This doesn't mean that government always knows best. Governments can go way wrong. The way to prevent that is to engage with the amount of scientific knowledge out there to see if we might go wrong, not to involve the market. You've got this wrong. "The Market" isn't some kind of automaton the perfectly follows the rules of profit. People (like you and I) aren't always 100% interested in profit, so there's no reason to assume freed markets would do so. We all have various values, goals, and means. My point isn't that we should direct all research by profitability. Instead, it's that running forward with state funding allocated via political means runs a large risk of miss-allocating resources for a diminishing rate of return. EDIT: Bonus response Jack of Hearts posted:Out of curiosity, how thoroughly hosed would pure mathematics guys be in your ideal society? Probably not at all because there's no reason to assume learning, universities, or basic research would be eliminated or even starved. And for the record, I'm not really sure what my idea society would certainly look like, but it probably won't involve huge corporations or concentrated political power. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 07:49
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Cemetry Gator posted:Look dude, I hear what you're saying, and I don't think you even understand what your point is supposed to be. If you go back and read my posts again, you'll see that I'm not "railing against theoretical physics", and neither am I saying we should only go after "sexy" goals. It's just the increasing calls for state funding and welding the scientific community onto the government. The LHC being a particularly egregious example of a huge capital project. Please note here that I am not at all questioning the importance or validity of basic research, and I fully understand the potential for unknown applications for the discoveries. I would also like to clarify that I don't think these projects are Enemy #1 when it comes to state largess. Realistically they're fairly minor, and the only reason it came up was because of the Molyneux video. But the fact that basic research sometimes yields great discoveries doesn't automatically justify state support, it's an is=!ought thing. quote:The basic point you're missing about research is often you don't know. Take penicillin. It was just a complete loving accident. Maybe we need the stuff that we can gain from the LHC to solve those spaceflight mysteries. We just don't know. But you know what history has shown me. That every time we break ground somewhere, some one has said "Yeah, but is it really that useful?" I would have hoped by now we would have learned that the people who said that have been pretty consistently wrong. Of course it's useful...in the long run. We're talking about opportunity costs here, invest now or later. If we delay the LHC by another 40-60 years by taking the funds and investing them in more immediate concerns, we may end up with a better society that can inherit the fruits of that research. quote:Except that's what the markets do - follow profit. There was a survey done where they asked business leaders would they rather take a hit the next quarter if it meant increased profitability for 20 years, and an overwhelming majority said "no." The market is short sighted. The market is all about the money you're making today. We've seen it time and time again that the people put short term profitability above long-term gains until some force makes them. Sure, individuals maybe won't. But people in general want to make gains on their money, and are going to follow the short gains. It's what we've seen time and time again. There's a lot to discuss in this quote, but it's not entirely useful to look at the way business is operated today and extrapolate that into how things would operate in freed markets. Monetary policy, tax policy, and corporate law have been pushing business to grow grow grow and focus on the next quarter. Part of the reason we have such a debt laden consumerist society in the US is because that's what policy has been pushing us towards for nearly the past century. The market today may be short sighted, but that doesn't mean that that is the only way the market, and society at large, will arrange themselves. I mean, even today you have industries that invest in long term projects. For example, mining, oil and gas have huge amounts of capital invested in long term prospects that play out over 50 years or more. CharlestheHammer posted:Well I mean its theoretically possible a business owner could just fund the research as a vanity project. Vanity projects aren't the only possibility. Universities, research trusts, and other not-for-profit institutions can exist without a strong state.
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Aug 30, 2014 15:24
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A couple of reading comprehension points here:QuarkJets posted:Furthermore, your example has nothing to do with basic research and is a counterexample of your point. Mining, Oil, and gas companies perform some directed research with their own funds, but none of it is basic research. Indeed the oil/gas/mining example did not have anything to do with basic research. I was using it to respond to the (false) claim that businesses can't take action long term and only worry about the profits over the next quarter or two. Absurd Alhazred posted:The bigger point is that LogisticEarth is using healthcare costs as evidence that there is too much investment in medical research vs. the practical in this country. You piped in with a message that agrees with that, while including procedures and manufacturing. Then your evidence itself showed that research was a drop in the bucket of healthcare spending, despite being twice what other countries invest in it, even if we assumed the rest were as you said. LogisticEarth is mistaken, so that's the end of that. I never said that research costs were a huge part of the cost of medical care. The discussion I had with my friend was about the questionable practicality of spending huge amounts of money on bringing new, marginally better products to market, when general service is becoming increasingly unaffordable. New goods and methods don't do humanity much good if only an elite can afford them. So setting up a set of incentives (patents) that promote new and constantly more costly products is probably a bad idea. My real broader point is that you will face diminishing returns when trying to push the edge of human knowledge ever beyond the ability of society's capital structure to implement that knowledge in affordable, practical applications. Also, non-reading comprehension related: QuarkJets posted:Yes, but it's very rare that industries use their own funds for basic research. Even when a private enterprise conducts basic research, it is usually done with government funds because of the unpredictability of basic research (IE it is difficult to find someone to fund something that has an unknowable ROI). If you're talking about the present, then yes, of course public money is dominant and necessary to maintaining the status-quo. If you go back and read my posts, I'm not claiming that we should make it a priority to gut public spending on research. In the "ideal world" it wouldn't be necessary, and given the number of people who are passionate about basic theory and experimentation in various fields, there's no reason to believe that there wouldn't be institutions created to support and fund these endeavors. The reason the LHC and similar projects are contentious is because they represent a huge chunk of money that, although a drop in the sea of total state expenditures, is still a tremendous amount of money for no real predicted practical benefit in the medium or potentially even the long term. If you split up the $10 billion cost of the LHC over 300 million people over 10 years, the cost comes out to $3/person/year. This is an extremely small amount of money. But at the same time, if you asked each individual if they would rather donate $3/year to a program for basic physics research, or a program to provide tools and capital to impoverished families in developing nations to lift them out of poverty, not everyone is going to give that cash to the physics program. When funding is allocated through the political process, it's easy for privileged groups to gain significant concentrated benefits while dispersing the costs. EDIT: Absurd Alhazred posted:Still waiting for evidence for that one. Hell, one country where too much was spent on basic research. Yes, I'll hold. Are you denying it's possible for a society to over-invest in certain areas? LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 02:00
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Many things are theoretically possible, but it's pointless to have an abstract discussion when we are talking about changing policies in existing countries, and there are and have been so many to choose from. I am asking you either for evidence that basic research is now over-invested, or of a country where there is over-investment in basic research. I personally think that there are always such high disincentives to invest in basic over applied research that you would be hard pressed to find a place where the balance is too much in the opposite direction, but I am open to adjusting my thinking. Realistically I don't see how either position (overinvestment/underinvestment) can be definitively proven, and in practice it's not just "basic research in aggregate", but specific projects and areas. Furthermore I'm not sure it's possible for a specific country or nation to be easily picked out here, since knowledge gleaned from basic research is generally dispersed across borders. That said, I feel that the cost and nebulous practical application of the findings LHC should be a red flag and cause for us to consider the issue. Projects like the one in question are fundamentally tied to other technologies, discoveries, capital, and economic and political conditions. Hypothetically, ancient Greeks could have built a radio if they had the theory in place, but it would have required massive economic commitment on their part, and in the end have no practical application for them in their time if they couldn't afford to build and power one. And forget mass producing them and seeing the communication revolution the radio actually brought about. The rest of the economic puzzle pieces just weren't there. Now, obviously this is a more severe case than the LHC, but the theme of the problem is the same. If we're spending billions of dollars to search for particles that we already theorize to exist, but have no practical application for the knowledge, we might have gotten ahead of ourselves. I recently watched Particle Fever on Netflix, and I remember one of the physicists saying that the construction of the LHC was a greater effort than the moon landing, and was more akin to the construction of the Pyramids. At the time that struck me as a potentially apt comparison, but not for the reasons he probably intended.
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Aug 31, 2014 04:51
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QuarkJets posted:It's hard to remain passionate about basic research when you don't have any funding, and the fact that there is almost no such thing as privately funded basic research indicates that there wouldn't be institutions to support and fund these endeavors in a society that didn't provide public funding specifically for these endeavors. This is a simple non-sequitur. You can't use the absence of non-state research in today's world of abundant state-sponsored work to conclude that it wouldn't exist without state intervention. quote:I already understand why the LHC and other basic research projects are seen as contentious by people who have no understanding of the importance of basic research. Again, if you go back and read my posts, I'm not arguing for the immediate cuts to basic research funding, and have repeatedly said that it's a minor overall issue in the economy. The concern is overinvestment in large capital projects and the like that absorb a significant amount of resources. The only time I've talked about a world without state funding for basic research is a hypothetical non-state society. As I have a positive view of a society with freed markets, I expect basic research to be a healthy part of that world. If you don't have the same view of said society, obviously a world without state-funded basic research will be a terrible dark age where everyone gorges themselves on free market Doritos while the monuments of man deteriorate. The disagreement here is in the effectiveness of markets to meet society's needs, not the value of basic research. You repeatedly frame my position as if I think it's all wasteful and unimportant, when I have repeatedly said otherwise. QuarkJets posted:So 3/4 of your post was about basic research with an emphasis on long term basic research projects, but right in the middle of it you decided to talk only about free market long term projects that are completely unrelated to basic research? It was used in a direct response to a quote about the shortsightedness of the market, I don't see how that could have been confusing at all. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 05:10
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Who What Now posted:This is what is most alien about this thinking to me; how they believe that any person's labor can be worth so very little. A person's time and effort is worth whatever a living wage is. regardless of how menial or easy it is. This is sort of an alien concept itself to me, that someone's labor is inherently worth a living wage. Now, you can say that in our world of relatively abundant food and goods, we should provide a basic living to all, and I would not immediately disagree. But having that income tied to and provided by a specific job is just...completely arbitrary and causes all sorts of issues. Dump minimum wage and institute a basic income. Consider it this way: Would you think it would be reasonable for you to be expected to pay me $40,000 a year to come over and clean your bathroom three times a week? You really shouldn't because that's kind of absurd at least at today's market prices, and I would probably bet that you wouldn't be able to personally sustain paying that wage for very long. There's no reason to lay the basic living expenses of the employee directly on the employer. It makes about as much sense as tying healthcare insurance to your specific place of employment. Mr Interweb posted:What is the libertarian explanation for how removing min wage laws will lead to higher wages? The short explanation is typically that the minimum wage, in combination with a fair number of other state interventions, keeps a huge amount of people out of the workforce and desperate, thus ensuring there's always the the classic reserve army of unskilled labor ready to fill in if low-wage workers attempt to improve their lot. If wages were allowed to "naturally" float, then you'd probably have far more people employed with a work history, skills (even if it's only basic skills), and personally earned income rather than state-derived income. Of course, this doesn't mean that any one job would be able to sustain an individual, but as above there is no reason why one should assume that the job itself has to be the source of one's own subsistence. That said, the "just remove minimum wage laws and workers will benefit" line is textbook vulgar libertarianism, as there are a number of both state-imposed and structural disadvantages and outright prohibitions that a low-skill worker has to deal with. It's entirely the case that, all else remaining status-quo, dropping the minimum wage may result in a lower standard of living for the poorer classes, or that raising it may extract a bit more from corporations.
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Sep 28, 2014 05:07
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asdf32 posted:Where did you get that from? Seriously? Well, you see he thinks libertarianism only values people economically so when you mentioned economic value, your point sailed right over his head.
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Oct 1, 2014 20:52
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