General

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Autolykos — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:08:19 GMT

I found another methodological error in the paper. The authors restrict their investigation to only whether government R&D funding "crowds out" private R&D funding. I see no reason to make this restriction. There are all sorts of other economic activities that at least could be "crowded out" by government R&D funding. Indeed, the "crowding out" issue doesn't concern spending at all - it concerns taxing.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Autolykos — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:53:31 GMT

~~mustang19~~ Troll:
Yeah, by correlating what happens when the government increases/decreases spending, but we are talking about one percent of the economy responsible for rocketry, nuclear power, and transistors.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0905/0905.4272.pdf

As I said before, correlation does not imply causation. (Please note - if you haven't already - that I'm using "imply" to mean logical implication.) Statistical regression can determine the probability distributions of dependent variables as functions of independent variables, but that in no way establishes a causal link. All it can do is help one make more accurate forecasts. Otherwise, one must conclude that reducing the number of pirates over time has been a, if not the, cause of (alleged) global warming.

Note that the above doesn't take into account any flaws with the variables under consideration (such as GDP, in the context of econometrics).

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Autolykos — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:47:06 GMT

~~mustang19~~ Troll:
In terms of "opportunity cost", government science spending in the US takes up about 1% of GDP, less than private research spending, and the crowding out between the two is not large. Funding these scientific advances hardly requires a major cost to the rest of the economy.

First glaring flaw from the paper you linked to:

Two of the most often mentioned rationales for government support are both based on the market imperfections that lead to underinvestment in private R&D.

This implies that there's an objectively optimal level of investment in private R&D. You already admitted elsewhere that there's no such thing as objective optimality in investment. Hence this is a matter of you and your ilk wanting to impose your own, necessarily subjective, value judgements on the rest of us, as I already mentioned earlier in this thread.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

vive la insurrection — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:21:50 GMT

Both scientism and progress are bunk in the way they are being used.

"Scientific prgress" has no more imperative than "society acts" - or "we all need 15 green tomatoes in our home"

All "progress" can mean, if it is to have any worthwhile meaning at all, is that the past has no relevance as a "thing" and is just used as a "necessary fiction" to make useful some current task at hand with a specific context; but this is not the way most people think to use the word - they use it as a rather peculiar objective value.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

mustang19 — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:25:41 GMT

I think I know which OECD study he's talking about (The Driving Forces of Economic Growth), which provides a pretty isolated finding, that public R&D does not increase innovation. Another OECD study looking at R&D investment specifically and controlling for country-specific factors and endogenity (i.e., do countries spend differently in the first place depending on their growth rates?, etc.) finds that public R&D does increase per capita GDP levels.

Considering the particular instance of the United States, there does appear to be a pretty significant role for the government in R&D. Looking at agricultural R&D gives especially interesting results, as in this paper including a calculation of shadow prices (covering opportunity costs of any sectoral crowding out that occurs) and input/output indexes.

The model fits the data reasonably well, with a system R2 of 0.896 and adjusted R2 for each estimating equation greater than 0.8.

...

All in all, even if we provide estimates of the rate of return to public R&D in agriculture lower than previously suggested, an average return of 29% on public funds is still impressive compared to the 9% and 12% average returns of the S&P500 and NASDAQ composite indexes during the same period.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Caley McKibbin — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:34:40 GMT

I didn't see him cite the claim that the private sector spends more on pure science than the government does. He stated that it has a high return for businesses, implying that they should in theory.

Funding =/= results. He gave the example of the Wright brothers spending $1,000 compared to $67,000 for the state funded airplane (which never succeeded). Gubmint in general pays far more than the private sector for the same things. He says earlier that the OECD studies find a correlation only between private research and economic "growth". Neo-classical types love statistics.

He then goes on at 52:00 to say that "governments love funding science," and gives his explanation about why its a bad thing.

Politicians like to look "progressive" and "cutting edge" by throwing money at anything with the "science" in the name.

Speaking of the Wright Bros., he told the story of how the U.S. had no air force until 1917, when they passed a special act allowing free use of airplane patents, because the Wright Bros became full time patent trolls. lmao

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

excel — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:18:06 GMT

mustang19:

On top of everything else the Republicans do, you aren't even guaranteed a free abortion.

OH, how absolutely terrible. (had to snip an f-word there)
To think that you should pay for the medical intervention you require... I hear in some non-european countries you're not even guaranteed free shoes and food. You actually have to pay for stuff, rather than just bringing a bag into a store and grabbing what you want.

If it wasn't for republicans, abortions and apples and all manner of goods would simply appear as if by magic, completely free of charge.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

bloomj31 — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:55:46 GMT

What I'm saying is that some fights are worth skipping. We're arguing over peanuts. And for what?

You and I both know your libertarian paradise is unlikely to spring up tomorrow and if it does it probably won't be because people are just sick and tired of NASA.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Clayton — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:50:19 GMT

Boy, we're just going in circles - the government does do some things that need to be done. It even pays people to discover and invent new things, particularly things that it intends to use for war or increased domestic regimentation. Why did the government invest in silicon valley at that time? Who was the visionary in the government that had the insight that this was "the next big thing" and that money needed to be poured into it?

It is true that the government poured lots of money into Silicon Valley. Turns out that they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Steve Blank explains the secret history of Silicon Valley in this eye-opening talk:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

In this lecture, he basically all but comes out and says that he knows that Google has intelligence-agency connections.

Clayton -

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

mustang19 — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:49:14 GMT

subsidize childbirth among the poor

The US is one of the hardest countries in the civilized world to get an abortion in. On top of everything else the Republicans do, you aren't even guaranteed a free abortion. Putting funds into Medicaid abortion and contraceptive coverage would do a lot to address this.

But whatever, major tangent/derail.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Clayton — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:44:39 GMT

I don't give a crap about what an Establishment blowhard like Gingrich talks about. My posts are in response to these nebulous claims "but for the government, we wouldn't have ________" being floated by mustang. The government does do some things that need to be done. So what? I'm supposed to be filled with joy and thankfulness because the government doesn't just collect all our tax money into a big pile and burn it? Which, by the way, I would actually prefer as a matter of policy to what they actually do. What they actually do with the money - start wars and subsidize childbirth among the poor and bad financial decision-making by businesses and those saving for retirement... - is much worse.

Clayton -

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

mustang19 — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:42:11 GMT

Well, anything's certainly possible, and maybe, just maybe, the semiconductor industry was totally unaffected by NASA. But if you want some more information on just how much of a role government funding played in starting it up, I can talk about that instead.

http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/economics.html

Direct and indirect financial support for R&D by space and defense programs constituted an important factor in the development of the semiconductor and computer industries. Direct financial support for semiconductor R&D totaled $66 million between 1955 and 1961. These government grants encouraged semiconductor firms to greatly expand production capacity during this critical six-year period. In addition to direct R&D funding, semiconductor firms received indirect federal R&D support by serving as subcontractors for weapons systems prime contractors. The Department of Defense estimated that the R&D subcontracts awarded by such prime contractors more than equalled direct R&D expenditures. By the end of the 1950s, total direct and indirect government-financed R&D represented approximately one-quarter of total semiconductor industry R&D expenditures.

Federal agencies, particularly the military services, provided strong financial support for every major U.S. computer development between 1945 and 1955. The Army funded the development of ENIAC (the first electronic computer), for use in trajectory calculations. During the first ten years of electronic computers, major technical advances were achieved as part of the effort to create large computers which met the specifications set by military and other government agencies. Most of these advances subsequently were incorporated into the medium and small scale computers designed for the commercial market. The large U.S. government outlays for computer development during this period dwarf those of other countries, such as Great Britain, and help explain the early dominance of U.S. firms in the computer industry.

Second, federal space and defense programs influenced the computer and semiconductor industries by generating huge markets for such products. Space and defense demand constituted a major factor in the growth of the U.S. semiconductor industry, as learning economies proved essential. Learning economies resulted in dramatic decreases in semiconductor prices; the average price of an integrated circuit dropped from $50 in 1962 to $0.63 in 1973. During the early years of second and third generation component technology, the space and defense market accounted for a substantial part of the sales volume that made these learning economies possible. Space and defense demand represented at least 35 percent (and as much as 45 percent) of semiconductor sales each year between 1955 and 1961 and over 70 percent of annual sales during the first four years of integrated circuit production.

The market for military data processing systems reached the $200-million level before Remington Rand delivered the first Univac for business data processing in 1954. The space and defense market accounted for over 60 percent of all computer sales during the industry's first decade, and the sales of commercial computers did not overtake space and defense hardware sales until 1962.

Sorry if that's all tl;dr or irrelevant to your point, but I'd like to see some evidence that private firms were just waiting to jump on semiconductor tech if it wasn't for government computer projects taking up a fraction of a percent of GDP.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

Clayton — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:38:31 GMT

the manned space program starting in 1959 was important to why the semiconductor industry developed at the time that it did.

This kind of sweeping claim simply cannot be proven or disproven. How much did it speed things up? How much sooner did the space program make the development of the personal computer? What specific foresight did the gubbermint have that others missed? Is it simply that the public sector is filled with optimistic dreamers who see possibilities where the private sector is filled with apathetic, unimaginative Luddites? Please give us some kind of cause-and-effect reasoning to help us follow how A led to B?

Clayton -

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

bloomj31 — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:35:15 GMT

Well that is indeed quite interesting Clayton, but we're essentially arguing over what amounts to a drop in the bucket in today's dollars relative to the overall debt of the US government.

The real culprits are the safety net programs and the military expenditures overseas particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republicans can't trash talk a war we started and we can't go after social security and medicare because they're sacred cows so instead we've got Newt Gingrich talking about NASA.

The amount of time and energy that it would take me or any other unitiated noob to research NASA's history and various exploits would be significant and I probably wouldn't understand much of it anyways as I'm not exactly tech savvy.

So instead of talking about the real problems, we've got our politicians harping on programs that are publicly popular and ultimately irrelevant.

Makes me a sad panda.

Re: Please post your thoughts about Neil deGrasse Tyson's assertion that state funding is necessary for scientific progress

mustang19 — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:28:14 GMT

I wasn't saying that if it wasn't for Apollo, consumer electronics or something else would never have taken up the slack eventually and we'd all still be in the stone age. I'm just noting that the manned space program starting in 1959 was important to why the semiconductor industry developed at the time that it did. When you consider that the computer industry has been doubling about once every five years since then, with all its accompanying importance to science and the rest of the economy, even speeding things up by a few years makes quite a difference.