Art fans often say art makes people more creative and peaceful, and sport fans often say sport makes people healthier and better at teamwork. Some claim that these idealistic reasons are not only why art and sport
From a Wired magazine interview/article on the great growth economist Paul Romer:
“At the same time, he [Romer] believes it's vital that government supports basic research, the birthplace of ideas.
Romer suggests concentrating funds on universities, both to stimulate basic research and to create cadres of highly educated people who will fan out into the economy and generate new technologies.”
"In fact, academic research contributes little to overall economic innovation and growth."
Do you mean for a specific country, as opposed to the world, given the difficulty of charging for its use?
Otherwise, it would be hard understand how we could have advanced so much and so fast in wealth and health without basic scientific research. Computers and DNA work crucially depend on basic work in physics and mathematics. And economics, although flawed and wasteful, has contributed nonetheless greatly to efficiency and advancement over the last two-hundred-fifty years, with the work of Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Solow,
"Patrons of research similarly pay lots more attention the prestige of a researcher and his institution than to how much his research could plausibly benefit the world or uncover important deep truths."
A big part of the problem is just (gigantic) asymmetric information. It's very hard for a layperson to know the expected value of a chunk of research.
But look let's keep in mind that as much as academics and students and donors are prestige and credential driven, academia has still come up with advances that have doubled lifespan, gigantically increased food supply, virtually eradicated smallpox and polio,...It is by no stretch of the imagination all show and no go.
1. Knowledge is the set of truths (can we let the explanation of what is truth for other day?).2. In every society the functions of the knowledge cycle are to generate knowledge (trought research), to mantain or memorize it (canonizing, i.e. writing handbooks and other academic genres), to transmit it (by teaching) and to transfer it (transforming knowledge in usefull actions). In our societies all these functions are developped (not exclusivelly) by academia. 3. Academics are the agents wich realize these important functions (truth generators, keepers, transmiters and...¿transferers?). 4. Generate, mantain, transmit and transfer are all dificult tasks, so society is interested that the best ones occupies academic positions. 5. In general the best way to select the best ones is trough fair competitions. Those who win the competitions occupies the positions. It is fair, ins´t it ? 6. The impression society in general and some of its agents in particular (college students, patrons of research, citizens, reporters and others) has that academics are intelectually impressive and prestigious is a byproduct of having won a competition, not the function of academia.7. Now, beeing an academic is also a responsability. Society want truth keepers to no let a lie inside the canon and no truth outside, no matter where the truth or lie comes from. This forces Academia to be both open and conservative at the same time and academics to be reluctant to the science-business model. New web mechanisms are appearing so that the conditions for the realisation of the second half of this mandate are fulfilled (i.e. Rejecta Mathematica, Virax)...but competition winners read its content ? On the other hand i see no mechanism yet so that academic hype is controlled and the first half remains unfulfilled.
IMHO, it's pretty hard to talk intelligently about the role of academia in general, and specifically almost impossible to talk about the role of academia, without a pretty good awareness of the material covered in ISA scholar Jonathan Israel's two-volume history of the Enlightenment, namely Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested.
In essence, the take-home message is that in return for stable financial support, modern scholars (by and large) have agreed to restrict their enterprises to what Israel calls the Moderate Enlightenment (of Newton and Locke) as contrasted with the Radical Enlightenment (having origins largely in Spinozism).
It is a paradox of our times that many (most?) individual academics regard themselves as Radicals, and yet modern academia as a whole is devoutly Moderate ... and this is why a quick reading of the Prof. Israel's Postscript to Enlightenment Contested (available on-line at Google Books) is highly recommended for those academics who still entertain Radical hopes and values.
Funny thing that, but back in Maxwell’s day, EM theory didn’t contribute much to ‘economic growth’ either.
Do you actually know that or are you just saying that? Your position seems to be that Maxwell's equations (a) contributed greatly to economic growth, but (b) this contribution did not begin until long after the discovery was made. That is a pretty specific claim. Can you back it up?
I think we can safely say, he says drily, that modern computing techniques and the modern computer simply would not exist without the theory.
If you mean computer science, Mencius Moldbug, who seems to have knowledge of the topic, claims that contemporary computer science has little impact on computing. See for example this essay.
For example:
anyone who's not involved in CS research treats the products of this endeavor as if they were smallpox-infected blankets. ...This is not just prejudice. It is rational mistrust. Academics, as we've seen, have no incentive to build software that's actually relevant, and every incentive to build software that appears to be relevant. ...The result is a world of Potemkin software which appears to be enormously useful, even revolutionary. In reality it is unusable. The researchers are some of the smartest people in the world, and surely some of what they're doing has some merit. But it is almost impossible to figure out what's wheat and what's chaff, and most sensible people just don't come near it.
...
I’d also say that you’ve got your “over and above” exactly backwards - it’s to what extent business research contributes over and above academic research, not vice versa.
That's just a word game and it doesn't make sense in context. The question is to what extent academia influences business, and in the context of this question, the appropriate specific question is to what extent academic research influences business outcomes over and above the influence of business research.
The LHC doesn’t obviously contribute to economic growth.
Funny thing that, but back in Maxwell's day, EM theory didn't contribute much to 'economic growth' either. Nor did Boltzmann's dogged insistence that atoms were real, physical things, and not merely artifacts of calculation. Ditto for the other relatively early stuff I initially mentioned.
Should the administrators back then have not funded their research and their careers on the grounds that there was 'no obvious economic benefit'? Further:
On firmer ground with research more closely tied to new tech, but before anything definite is said, it’s necessary to quantify how much research is academic and how much business, and to what extent academic research contributes over and above business research.
I think we can safely say, he says drily, that modern computing techniques and the modern computer simply would not exist without the theory. I'd also say that you've got your "over and above" exactly backwards - it's to what extent business research contributes over and above academic research, not vice versa.
Finally, I dispute the notion that it's all about the economic benefits. Just knowing that atoms exist, that there are four forces that mediate every known physical reaction, etc. is a good all it's own. I merely pointed out a few very obviously useful items that came out of 'useless' academia on the basis that while some people might argue the merits of various fields 'abstract' knowledge, very few will come out against the utility of lasers, gene therapy, computers, etc.
The LHC doesn't obviously contribute to economic growth. Granted, the LHC may be used to discover Very Important Things, but that's not what was at issue. Similarly, getting somebody on the moon, and exploring Mars, are Very Important and Wonderful Things, but they probably have not done all that much to increase GDP.
On firmer ground with research more closely tied to new tech, but before anything definite is said, it's necessary to quantify how much research is academic and how much business, and to what extent academic research contributes over and above business research.
Really? How recently? Is the LHC an enormous boondoggle? How about the theory of magnetoresistance and the concurrent rise of magnetoresistive RAM? How about quantum computing? This is off the very top of my head, and very much in-the-news sort of stuff, a fragment of a fragment of all the academic research going on today.
This posting almost qualifies as 'not even wrong'. Again, I'm guessing this is from the perspective of an academic employed in the softer parts, and where he's posting from I'd tend to agree. But that's not all of academia, far from it. It's not even the most significant part. That would be mathematics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, computer science, etc.
Times change. That Maxwell's equations were useful does not mean that, today, science is, on the whole, useful. Massive government funding of science may have ruined it, as it may have ruined education and art, all of them having become Kafkaesque bureaucracies doling out state patronage.
So, let me get this straight: Maxwell's insights into electromagnetism weren't really all that important - certainly less important than his teaching. Boltzmann and his notions of entropy, statistical mechanics - and even the physical existence of atoms! - well, that's nice, but it's not really important. Quantum mechanics in all it's manifold appearances, solid state theory, theory of computation, electron microscopes, the discovery of the structure of DNA, the internet, computer languages . . . all of this is less important than 'signaling', whatever that is, or teaching.
Gotcha. I myself think otherwise; but then again I'm into the hard sciences, and you are not.
Robin, what's the evidence for your assertion that "academic research contributes little to overall economic innovation and growth"? If I simply look around my house, a considerable fraction of the objects in it have benefited in some way from academic research.
An overlooked area in the "is research in academic institutions valuable is the notion that active researchers make for better informed teachers. It seems that professors that do research are imminently more informed teachers than those that do not research. Requiring professors to research also seems an effective way to keep them current on recent developments, and an efficient monitoring mechanism for administrators.
From a Wired magazine interview/article on the great growth economist Paul Romer:
“At the same time, he [Romer] believes it's vital that government supports basic research, the birthplace of ideas.
Romer suggests concentrating funds on universities, both to stimulate basic research and to create cadres of highly educated people who will fan out into the economy and generate new technologies.”
At: http://www.wired.com/wired/...
I also really like this quote from Romer, "There is a real world out there, and I want to get the right answers."
"In fact, academic research contributes little to overall economic innovation and growth."
Do you mean for a specific country, as opposed to the world, given the difficulty of charging for its use?
Otherwise, it would be hard understand how we could have advanced so much and so fast in wealth and health without basic scientific research. Computers and DNA work crucially depend on basic work in physics and mathematics. And economics, although flawed and wasteful, has contributed nonetheless greatly to efficiency and advancement over the last two-hundred-fifty years, with the work of Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Solow,
"In fact, academic research contributes little to overall economic innovation and growth."
Maybe in the short run, but in the long run?? Discovery of DNA, invention of the computer, discovery of penicillin,...
"Patrons of research similarly pay lots more attention the prestige of a researcher and his institution than to how much his research could plausibly benefit the world or uncover important deep truths."
A big part of the problem is just (gigantic) asymmetric information. It's very hard for a layperson to know the expected value of a chunk of research.
But look let's keep in mind that as much as academics and students and donors are prestige and credential driven, academia has still come up with advances that have doubled lifespan, gigantically increased food supply, virtually eradicated smallpox and polio,...It is by no stretch of the imagination all show and no go.
1. Knowledge is the set of truths (can we let the explanation of what is truth for other day?).2. In every society the functions of the knowledge cycle are to generate knowledge (trought research), to mantain or memorize it (canonizing, i.e. writing handbooks and other academic genres), to transmit it (by teaching) and to transfer it (transforming knowledge in usefull actions). In our societies all these functions are developped (not exclusivelly) by academia. 3. Academics are the agents wich realize these important functions (truth generators, keepers, transmiters and...¿transferers?). 4. Generate, mantain, transmit and transfer are all dificult tasks, so society is interested that the best ones occupies academic positions. 5. In general the best way to select the best ones is trough fair competitions. Those who win the competitions occupies the positions. It is fair, ins´t it ? 6. The impression society in general and some of its agents in particular (college students, patrons of research, citizens, reporters and others) has that academics are intelectually impressive and prestigious is a byproduct of having won a competition, not the function of academia.7. Now, beeing an academic is also a responsability. Society want truth keepers to no let a lie inside the canon and no truth outside, no matter where the truth or lie comes from. This forces Academia to be both open and conservative at the same time and academics to be reluctant to the science-business model. New web mechanisms are appearing so that the conditions for the realisation of the second half of this mandate are fulfilled (i.e. Rejecta Mathematica, Virax)...but competition winners read its content ? On the other hand i see no mechanism yet so that academic hype is controlled and the first half remains unfulfilled.
P.D: Hi John...trough Nielsen´s, right ?
IMHO, it's pretty hard to talk intelligently about the role of academia in general, and specifically almost impossible to talk about the role of academia, without a pretty good awareness of the material covered in ISA scholar Jonathan Israel's two-volume history of the Enlightenment, namely Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested.
In essence, the take-home message is that in return for stable financial support, modern scholars (by and large) have agreed to restrict their enterprises to what Israel calls the Moderate Enlightenment (of Newton and Locke) as contrasted with the Radical Enlightenment (having origins largely in Spinozism).
It is a paradox of our times that many (most?) individual academics regard themselves as Radicals, and yet modern academia as a whole is devoutly Moderate ... and this is why a quick reading of the Prof. Israel's Postscript to Enlightenment Contested (available on-line at Google Books) is highly recommended for those academics who still entertain Radical hopes and values.
Funny thing that, but back in Maxwell’s day, EM theory didn’t contribute much to ‘economic growth’ either.
Do you actually know that or are you just saying that? Your position seems to be that Maxwell's equations (a) contributed greatly to economic growth, but (b) this contribution did not begin until long after the discovery was made. That is a pretty specific claim. Can you back it up?
I think we can safely say, he says drily, that modern computing techniques and the modern computer simply would not exist without the theory.
If you mean computer science, Mencius Moldbug, who seems to have knowledge of the topic, claims that contemporary computer science has little impact on computing. See for example this essay.
For example:
anyone who's not involved in CS research treats the products of this endeavor as if they were smallpox-infected blankets. ...This is not just prejudice. It is rational mistrust. Academics, as we've seen, have no incentive to build software that's actually relevant, and every incentive to build software that appears to be relevant. ...The result is a world of Potemkin software which appears to be enormously useful, even revolutionary. In reality it is unusable. The researchers are some of the smartest people in the world, and surely some of what they're doing has some merit. But it is almost impossible to figure out what's wheat and what's chaff, and most sensible people just don't come near it.
...
I’d also say that you’ve got your “over and above” exactly backwards - it’s to what extent business research contributes over and above academic research, not vice versa.
That's just a word game and it doesn't make sense in context. The question is to what extent academia influences business, and in the context of this question, the appropriate specific question is to what extent academic research influences business outcomes over and above the influence of business research.
The LHC doesn’t obviously contribute to economic growth.
Funny thing that, but back in Maxwell's day, EM theory didn't contribute much to 'economic growth' either. Nor did Boltzmann's dogged insistence that atoms were real, physical things, and not merely artifacts of calculation. Ditto for the other relatively early stuff I initially mentioned.
Should the administrators back then have not funded their research and their careers on the grounds that there was 'no obvious economic benefit'? Further:
On firmer ground with research more closely tied to new tech, but before anything definite is said, it’s necessary to quantify how much research is academic and how much business, and to what extent academic research contributes over and above business research.
I think we can safely say, he says drily, that modern computing techniques and the modern computer simply would not exist without the theory. I'd also say that you've got your "over and above" exactly backwards - it's to what extent business research contributes over and above academic research, not vice versa.
Finally, I dispute the notion that it's all about the economic benefits. Just knowing that atoms exist, that there are four forces that mediate every known physical reaction, etc. is a good all it's own. I merely pointed out a few very obviously useful items that came out of 'useless' academia on the basis that while some people might argue the merits of various fields 'abstract' knowledge, very few will come out against the utility of lasers, gene therapy, computers, etc.
The LHC doesn't obviously contribute to economic growth. Granted, the LHC may be used to discover Very Important Things, but that's not what was at issue. Similarly, getting somebody on the moon, and exploring Mars, are Very Important and Wonderful Things, but they probably have not done all that much to increase GDP.
On firmer ground with research more closely tied to new tech, but before anything definite is said, it's necessary to quantify how much research is academic and how much business, and to what extent academic research contributes over and above business research.
Really? How recently? Is the LHC an enormous boondoggle? How about the theory of magnetoresistance and the concurrent rise of magnetoresistive RAM? How about quantum computing? This is off the very top of my head, and very much in-the-news sort of stuff, a fragment of a fragment of all the academic research going on today.
This posting almost qualifies as 'not even wrong'. Again, I'm guessing this is from the perspective of an academic employed in the softer parts, and where he's posting from I'd tend to agree. But that's not all of academia, far from it. It's not even the most significant part. That would be mathematics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, computer science, etc.
Times change. That Maxwell's equations were useful does not mean that, today, science is, on the whole, useful. Massive government funding of science may have ruined it, as it may have ruined education and art, all of them having become Kafkaesque bureaucracies doling out state patronage.
So, let me get this straight: Maxwell's insights into electromagnetism weren't really all that important - certainly less important than his teaching. Boltzmann and his notions of entropy, statistical mechanics - and even the physical existence of atoms! - well, that's nice, but it's not really important. Quantum mechanics in all it's manifold appearances, solid state theory, theory of computation, electron microscopes, the discovery of the structure of DNA, the internet, computer languages . . . all of this is less important than 'signaling', whatever that is, or teaching.
Gotcha. I myself think otherwise; but then again I'm into the hard sciences, and you are not.
I'm summarizing standard views in the fields of econ of growth and econ of research.
Robin, what's the evidence for your assertion that "academic research contributes little to overall economic innovation and growth"? If I simply look around my house, a considerable fraction of the objects in it have benefited in some way from academic research.
Generic ignorance is not a sufficient assumption here; one has to assume particular mistakes.
An overlooked area in the "is research in academic institutions valuable is the notion that active researchers make for better informed teachers. It seems that professors that do research are imminently more informed teachers than those that do not research. Requiring professors to research also seems an effective way to keep them current on recent developments, and an efficient monitoring mechanism for administrators.