Got to have some publically funded science since a lot of research has no obvious return on investment.
1) Companies (eg Bell Labs) have done basic science too. & now companies are researching aging.
2) *some* publicly funded science. this article hypes up a minority of researchers impacted to make a gov shutdown a bigger deal than it needs to be. Like gov closing nature (nat parks)
Oh true. Hype is all they have left to sell it seems.
if it's useful they'll pay for it. like anything else.
there is more private funding of R&D than public. & if you make a discovery & can’t bring it to market (which includes marketing) is the discovery worth anything? No.
“Cannot be monetized” but also “is not worthless”?
1) People already do things that sound absurd to monetize yet have markets (eg reacting to memes, playing video games, running in circles around a track).
People already pay for things that have long shot odds (lottery, making a movie, being a musician). & they already pay for things that are ‘useless’ (fortnite skins).
2) Value of data is becoming more accepted. eg google collecting images of the earth, or user habits online, or images of all streets.
These are the data that could be used to perform fundamental science in way that counting pea plant offspring helped Gregor Mendel learn about inheritance.
Similarly, 23andMe collecting genomes from broad number of people. Here the business (telling people about themselves) and the fundamental science (knowing more about genetics) align.
3) & If gov spending wasn’t 40% of GDP people would have more money to spend on whatever they’d like.
True, *for most*. We have billionaires though that are throwing their money at living forever (lol what’s new? 😒). Of course it could be asked,
if it only affects a few people, why are the rest of us forced to pay? You can argue that there are too few people with scientific curiosity. Or the projects are too large/expensive.
but you keep repeating it’s “worthless” but I’ve given you examples that show 1) that attitude towards data is changing and 2) people do/pay for things
just because they bring joy: out of curiosity (eg data analysis), beauty (eg art), or some unexplainable need to measure and categorize.
again, people already pay for “worthless” things. People will pay for basic science out of pure curiosity. And certain people collect data just because. Not all basic science is CERN or ITER.
"What started as a combination of personal curiosity and a lifelong habit of record-keeping has evolved into an invaluable source of data for scientists of all stripes."
The general trends I see are data is getting cheaper to collect and store & more open to the public to use. & where data is not open (23andMe) it is being researched by the owners of the data.
Who share their insights.
The most important science is at CERN, and other particle colliders.
sure, but that's a minority of basic funding. & like ITER & most gov projects over budget. other topics (AI, medicine, biology, electronics) are either cheaper or closer to applications.
