this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Conservatives just have no idea how research is done and think they can tell people what to research. The absurdity is that no scientific be can tell someone to research something that hasnβt been discovered yet!
The far right are a bunch of crooks and Russian agents. It's not that they think we can progress as a society without spending money on research. It's that they're being paid to make sure western society collapses.
Wilders, Le Pen, Farage, whatever the knobheads in the AfD are called. They've all been found to receive funding from Russia. It's not that they're dumb enough to think this is a good idea, they're just evil enough to profit from it.
That's an important realisation. The people who fall for them and do their bidding might be dumb, but the people pulling the strings are anything but dumb. They are just plenty of evil and very skilled at manipulating dumb people. This is what makes the far right so dangerous.
They're not stupid, but they're not particularly clever either. They're just mediocre people pumped up by our adveseries to believe they can be something important and special.
Of course, Geert Wilders believes he's brilliant. Just like Trump. They are never going to accept to themselves that their reason for being there is that their grandiose thoughts about themselves are only matched by their mediocracy, which is the exact set of traits that makes them so easy to take advantage of.
I agree it's dangerous to dismiss them as stupid, but it would be a mistake to assume they're particularly clever. They're just dangerously mediocre.
The people behind those talking heads full of nonsense are the clever ones. Just look who is going to profit from one of those deranged fascists running amok. Follow the Money trail, who is bankrolling them? Big businesses don't give a shit about democracy, but they do love lack of regulation and government control, to maximally exploit their workforce.
That's not exactly how it works.
Most research is based around understanding the universe. Often called Blue Sky research (Why is the sky blue?).
Now that's a very broad category, so you break things down into something more manageable. Like the lifecycle of a specific insect, or the behavior of crowds in shopping centers during holidays.
The point being that you can absolutely tell someone what to research.
Now, you are correct in that you cannot dictate the results of research.
Except that you can, and it's the second type of research.
Goal oriented research, or maybe practical research? starts with a goal or a problem. Like a disease. The goal is a cure or prevention. How you get to that point doesn't matter as long as you do, but in practice the way to meeting that goal is going to be more research centered around understanding the goal or problem.
Now, all that said, pure Blue Sky research has a guaranteed return on investment. NASA estimates that their return is 3-1. 3 dollars back for every dollar of their budget.
All that said, there is no ethical reason to constrain research topics or even to reduce spending on science.
What you say is true though my point is that to many bean counters, research should only be done on something that addresses the current bottom line. Itβs this type of view that conservatives take to heart and itβs why they tend to try to stifle higher education and research institutions.
The reason conservatives don't like research is that to truly take advantage of it, you need a strong university system, and a lot of students.
And universities are breeding grounds for leftist ideals.
Education in general moves people to the left, but universities take that to 11. And that's why conservatives hate it.