If history is a guide, and we want to build more in this time (and in the future), we should all want much more government funding for basic science. Government funding for basic science is in the foundation of almost everything we build.
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Replying to @roybahat
Skip to 42:00 to see why this isn’t exactly true. cc
@patrickc@Noahpinionhttps://youtu.be/Avqi1HeRlCQ2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes -
Unsure which part it challenges? The Progress Studies argument is a strong one. I don't think it suggests that it is good we are spending less, as a pct of GDP, on science than before? We can want both for science to be more effective at discovery and to fund more science.
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While spending as a pct of gdp might be going down, that’s not relevant to the direction of the returns on spending using absolute terms. It’s important to be careful throwing money at a problem that wasn’t caused by a lack of money, which is the case here.
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I have yet to hear "lack of money isn't the problem." Maybe I missed that part. One successful funding structure doesn't mean the whole rest of it is broken? I mean, correlation effects, only fits some types of research, etc. The system can be better AND is underfunded.
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I’m generally supportive of more funding for science in principle but I *would* say that lack of money is not the primary problem today and that the marginal returns to additional funding would be (have been!) slight.
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What would you say is the #1 action our society should take? (Or does that require more study before we know?)
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Break up NIH and NSF into 10+ bodies with fully independent approaches. Every 5-10 years, reassess their budgets. Hegemonic monoculture today very pernicious.
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Both NIH and NSF are bottom-up organizations. Scientists propose the research directions and panels of scientists decide which ones to fund. This is not a monoculture
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The structure itself is the monoculture.
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But if the structure does not determine research directions, does it matter? Isn't it like the CPU that any program can run on?
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Replying to @tdietterich @roybahat and
Yes, because it's nowhere close to being fully general (like a CPU). The mechanism of study sections is very different to hypothetical alternative mechanism where independent agents can of own volition give $5M to a lab.
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