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<p>I heard Freeman Dyson speak at LANL in the mid-late 80s, I think
it was a rehash of his "Giffords Lecture" at Aberdeen, on the
topic of the risks/hazards/weaknesses of Big Science. I found it
profound at several levels, not least of which was the audience he
was delivering it to (Scientists almost exclusively in pursuit of
and funded by Big Science (tm) ). Part of his technique in
winning us over was to describe an out-of-scale Soviet project
that either failed or had harsh/weird unintended (expected?)
consequences, then handing us one of our own in contrast... often
equally absurd/painful. Plowshare and the Soviet version comes
to mind. <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nuclear fracking in the 4 corners comes to mind... right here in
our region.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Here is an interesting popular article on the topic of the
downside of Big Science, with a relevant Dyson quote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/27/us/big-science-it-worth-price-periodic-look-largest-new-research-projects-heavy.html">https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/27/us/big-science-it-worth-price-periodic-look-largest-new-research-projects-heavy.html</a><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem;
padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style:
normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian:
inherit; font-weight: 400; font-stretch: inherit; font-size:
1.25rem; line-height: 1.875rem; font-family: nyt-imperial,
georgia, "times new roman", times, serif;
vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px; max-width: 100%; color:
rgb(51, 51, 51); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align:
start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Dr. Freeman Dyson, a
physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said
in his book, ''Infinite in All Directions,'' that some of the
big projects take so long to build that they are virtually
obsolete when completed.</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem;
padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style:
normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian:
inherit; font-weight: 400; font-stretch: inherit; font-size:
1.25rem; line-height: 1.875rem; font-family: nyt-imperial,
georgia, "times new roman", times, serif;
vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px; max-width: 100%; color:
rgb(51, 51, 51); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align:
start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">''The cutting edge of
science moves rapidly,'' he said. ''The bigger and more
ambitious the missions become, the more difficult it is to
reconcile the time scale of the missions with the time scale of
science.''</p>
<p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem;
padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style:
normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian:
inherit; font-weight: 400; font-stretch: inherit; font-size:
1.25rem; line-height: 1.875rem; font-family: nyt-imperial,
georgia, "times new roman", times, serif;
vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px; max-width: 100%; color:
rgb(51, 51, 51); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align:
start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width:
0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_in_All_Directions">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_in_All_Directions</a><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have not read Dyson's "Infiinite in all Directions" but I
appreciate the gist of it as reviewed:</p>
<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family:
sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255,
255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">The lectures were given in two series,
and this book is accordingly divided into two parts. <br>
</span><span style="color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family:
sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255,
255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">Part 1 is about life as a scientific
phenomenon, about our efforts to understand the nature of life
and its place in the universe. <br>
</span><span style="color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family:
sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255,
255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;">Part 2 is about ethics and politics,
about the local problems introduced by our species into the
existence of life on this planet.</span><sup
id="cite_ref-Dyson2004_1-0" class="reference"
style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space:
nowrap; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-size: 11.2px;
color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family: sans-serif;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing:
0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255,
255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial;
text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_in_All_Directions#cite_note-Dyson2004-1"
style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(6, 69, 173);
background: none;">[1]</a></sup></blockquote>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/1/21 10:43 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:b38f4187-95c3-4d1d-5931-194bc0138151@gmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying">https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying</a>
Is the following claim made by the author of the book (Hall - seemingly accepted by the author of the review) largely accurate? I ask because it's a common liberal talking point that publicly funded R&D has resulted in the majority of the tech we rely on in *modern* life. I'm terrible at history.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Hall blames public funding for science. Not just for nanotech, but for actually hurting progress in general. (I’ve never heard anyone before say government-funded science was bad for science!) “[The] great innovations that made the major quality-of-life improvements came largely before 1960: refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, gas and electric stoves, and washing machines; indoor plumbing, detergent, and deodorants; electric lights; cars, trucks, and buses; tractors and combines; fertilizer; air travel, containerized freight, the vacuum tube and the transistor; the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, movies, radio, and television—and they were all developed privately.” “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD in 2005 found, to their surprise, that while private R&D had a positive 0.26 correlation with economic growth, government funded R&D had a negative 0.37 correlation!” “Centralized funding of an intellectual elite makes it easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of a field, and they by their nature are resistant to new, outside, non-Ptolemaic ideas.” This is what happened to nanotech; there was a huge amount of buzz, culminating in $500 million dollars of funding under Clinton in 1990. This huge prize kicked off an academic civil war, and the fledgling field of nanotech lost hard to the more established field of material science. Material science rebranded as “nanotech”, trashed the reputation of actual nanotech (to make sure they won the competition for the grant money), and took all the funding for themselves. Nanotech never recovered.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
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