this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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It's obvious how to make it better: spend as much money on scientific progress as we do on figuring out how to blow brown people up.
I wouldn't be opposed to more funding but there would still have to be some way to decide who to fund and making a good case that one's research is worthwhile is always going to take a long time.
Maybe pay people who's only job it is is to talk to the researchers and write the proposal for them? Someone smart enough to get stuff explained to them, but with the communication skills to boil that down into something the money people can understand?
It's a pretty common position in software engineering because programmers and business people are pretty bad at communicating with each other.
No, it only takes a long time because there's so little to go around. Do you think defense funding takes months and years to award grants? No.
There are literally decades-long proposals, initial R&D and prototyping for big defense contracts.
No, they aren't taking years to award a new contract for the paper provider, but they are for new weapons and vehicles.
Yeah because they're so big. This guy is not asking for a grant for 2000ppl, multi-year project around nuclear fusion, it's just him and a couple students mucking around in a petri dish
I wonder what you'd might call that "figuring out" thing
I sure wouldn't call it scientific progress, if that's what you're implying.
Science isn't just about nice stuff
Why not?
It's just how the term is defined. Blame English language users, I guess
Ah yes. Nice science and evil science.
Yeah. Goes all under "science"
Problem solved then! Everyone just needs to do killing people science in order to make a living.
Are you really upset that the term "science" includes even things we might personally find upsetting?
Yes
Why though
Because our (US) current priorities fuel a worldwide arms race, while real investment in basic sciences would benefit humanity and keep postdocs from starving. The entire NIH budget for everything is $47 billion, while the Department of Defense budget is $825 billion, $145 billion of which for R&D. You think we should be spending $100 billion per year more on killing people than on making people's lives better?
I don't know what you imagine I was saying, I was just trying to say that a lot of that is science.
All I'm saying is that postdocs shouldn't be living below the poverty line with a side of stop killing people.