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The Moral Case for R&D.

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:55 / 14.03.05

Agencies spend millions sending satellites to Saturn or on finding the biggest prime number yet when more people than ever live in crippling poverty, unsanitary conditions, with no food or water... Can we justify any kind of research that isn't directly involved with helping the disadvantaged in society?

13:53 / 14.03.05

We touched on this a bit in the aftermath of the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

Two dfallacies at work, here:

(a) It's not a zero-sum game.

(b) Assume we decide to channel all research dollars and efforts towards fighting hunger, poverty, and disease. Of what possible use in this fight are all those people trained as rocket scientists and particle physicists and such? Assume they all recognize the nobility of the cause, and want tio do all they can to help: but what are they supposed to do? Plow fields? Swing hammers? Wash test tubes?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:15 / 14.03.05

Why are you assuming they'd then get involved? What about we spend the money that would go into space exploration into transforming the desert parts of Africa into habitats that can support farming, and then go back to space exploration? When people don't have to make hard choices in the name of survival, they can be astronauts, engineers, farmers or writers?

17:13 / 14.03.05

Well, they'd be involved anyhow, wouldn't they—whether they wanted to be or not. Because, if it is a zero-sum game (and your argument seems to assume that it is) and all the R&D money gets spent instead on fertilising the Sahara and whatnot, then all the rocket scientists and particle physicists lose their jobs in their chosen fields, because there's no demand for their skills.

And then first-world scientists end up making hard choices for survival. Which has a semi-satisfying poetic irony about it, but which is ulitmately unhelpful to the project of making a better world for everyone.

20:13 / 14.03.05

i'm sorry, but there is a far far far far far far far far far greater budget going into global defence spending - if we put just a tenth of that into space and other perhaps 'esoteric' scientific research, world hunger and poverty would disappear as a result of the results.

why can't we do that?

we must look at the stars...

oscar was right all along, of course.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:01 / 16.03.05

I find myself torn on this issue. On the one hand, yes, millions are starving and we could feed them. On the other, we HAVE to go into space. I don't know why I feel this, but I do.

Of course, the practical side of things is much clearer- we can afford to do both. We aren't feeding the starving millions as it is- if money wasn't spent on R&D, do you honestly believe it would go to the poor and hungry? Because I don't. As has been said before, chances are it would go on "defence", and newer and shinier ways of killing people, rather than feeding them. (Which, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum thingy, gives rise to the conclusion- "spend ALL our money on going into space. Then we won't be able to afford to kill".)

08:45 / 16.03.05

It's a sad fact that many useful technologies have originated in military research. I know that many terrible ones have too, but I think that any attempt to constrain research is a form of 'thought control'. There are many areas where we should be directing our energies; We need to restrict population growth, develop environmentally more friendly ways of energy production, find ways to deals with mounting piles of rubbish which appears not to degrade naturally, conserve energy, etc, etc. Beaming people and things around as in Startrek would help too.
It's no good spending millions on trying to relieve poverty and starvation when at the same time we are altering our climate at what seems to me an alarming rate, and increasing areas of the world are becoming only partially capable of sustaining our rapidly rising population.Nearly every problem we have could be considerably eased if our numbers decreased.
It is basic primate curiosity which has brought us to where we are. I don't think there is any way of denying this nature; at best we can try to direct it. As far as the stars are concerned, a lot more knowledge of how to live in areas inimical to our kind of life is needed- surely this will help on this world as well. Hope and inspiration are necessary for survival as well as food and water.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:46 / 17.03.05

So, a chorus of 'tough shit to the third world' then? So far it's only Jack's argument that has made me think, though I suspect the government doesn't spend all that money on defense and space research out of a feeling for the researchers bank balances ;-)

18:36 / 17.03.05

But Lady, what really isn't clear is that there is a choice involved here. We have the resources to feed everyone on the planet now, so arguing about what cuts we should make to afford it seems beside the point. (Jack's argument, on the other hand, I find pretty unconvncing.)

If you don't like that answer, why not broaden the question? How can you justify spending any money beyond what you need to survive when there are others living in poverty?

08:02 / 20.03.05

i agree with that. The third world wouldn't benefit if all R&D were to be stopped tomorrow. We in the western world are being buried in masses of material possessions, and it's more a question of how we can share, not what we should stop doing.

Tryphena Absent

09:06 / 23.03.05

Lightweight metal, medical research (don't forget back injuries), vaccuum packaging and other food technology, fire fighting, personal computers...

We have the resources to feed the third world and we could still go in to space. To assume that this is about money is to be naive. We had the resources before they introduced genetically modified crops. The first world governments are simply unwilling to give up some of our luxuries in order to help people. This is a problem with democracy and capitalism, not science.

09:53 / 23.03.05

Agreed. I think that the one thing that needs pointing out is the inequity in spending. I remember when plasma tv's came out. I just couldn't imagine spending thousands of dollars on a tv set. Thousands of dollars, just to have a larger, sharper picture. I really felt that people wouldn't go for that. Hey, now EVERYBODY has to have one. I resently went over to see my brother in law's set. I looked at the big damn thing and thought, "This cost 2,000 dollars, and it's a fucking TV SET!" BTW, my brother in law is up to his ass in debt. Getting rid of our species' hopes and dreams to me isn't the solution to this. The solution is to spend less money on outrageusly expensive luxury items, and spend more money on the world's ills.

I recently lived in a county who's school was so bad that if kids needed guidence counseling, they had to get it in the hallways. They were holding classes in storage rooms. Every couple of years, a referendum would come up to build a new school, at which point everyone would scream, "No higher taxes!", and it would get voted down. These were not dirt poor people. They had big shiny new SUV's. They had plasma tv's. Their cars and televisions, and the ton of other high priced shit they were into was more important than their OWN CHILDREN. Oh, btw, the new school did get built. After another vote down, the old one's roof caved in, thus forcing the issue... The problem isn't our aspirations. In my opinion, they speak to the higher parts of us. The problem is our damnable greed.

04:30 / 24.03.05

Why is research into something like agricultural science/economics any less valid than other emerging technologies, like particle physics?

If you fund it, they will come.

The existence of funding means there are particle physicists. That is, lots and lots of money. Particle physics isn't exactly something for the hobbyist.

If research were available on the subject, I could offer you a synopsis of the relative costs of particle accelerators to the eradication of hunger. But there's no money for research like that because there's no money to be made from it.

Eradication of hunger would probably fall in the domain of governmental policy, since there's not much money to be made.

Of course, the zero-sum game question is relevant, but I think the big, bad, nasty question is one of whether or not we're willing to acknowledge that there are market failures. We really shouldn't pretend they don't exist. The neo-classical monopoly on the discussion of economic issues is in some kind of profound denial of reality: the market is not always a substitute for governance. That neo-classical stuff is kinda...(pardon me, but) utopian.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:49 / 24.03.05

Why is research into something like agricultural science/economics any less valid than other emerging technologies, like particle physics?

What about the biotech industry? Huge amount of funding dealing into "improving" agriculture. Totally unneeded to combat world hunger, but it is there. And economics is also one of the best funded academic fields out there. The fact that they don't need flashy equipment doesn't detract from that. Economists conducting surveys and publishing theories for Universities, the World Bank the IMF and countless other organisations abound. Again, this has precious little to do with fighting poverty, but the funding is there.

At the end of the day, you don't need research to tell you that feedng people - with the food we already have - is a good way to offset hunger.

If research were available on the subject, I could offer you a synopsis of the relative costs of particle accelerators to the eradication of hunger. But there's no money for research like that because there's no money to be made from it.

I'm repeating myself, and others, here but this is a false dichotomy. Also, I'm not sure you need highly funded research to work this out - it is surely known roughly how much it would cost to feed the world's hungry and it is known how much particle accelerators cost. Why this is a meaningful comparison escapes me, but I'm pretty sure that if one were interested, the comparison could be made fairly easily.

08:51 / 24.03.05

Sorry, that was me wearing MC's clothes again.

10:16 / 24.03.05

I think the core point here is really clear - actually money isn't the reason that there are starving people in the world - or at least financial scarcity isn't the reason. More often than not there are starving people in the world because of corrupt regimes, war, occasional natural disasters etc. Lack of education is another reason for starving people in the world, and that could be cured with money, but then again the worst education is often in countries where the regimes are corrupt or there are religious, tribal or ethnic conflicts.

Fundamentally, we as a world are not doing enough to resolve these issues, but that shouldn't stop us aspiring towards new goals, new technologies and the like. The history of science has shown that r&d and pure scientific development have unexpected implications. You could argue that in order to improve the world you need more R&D - for direct or indirect improvements to the technologies of managing the world or curing illness or improving crop yeild. You could also argue that the best places for that R&D would be in impoverished countries, because it would be most focused towards their immediate needs and because it would bring finances and manufacturing and innovation into their countries.

[PS. I think this would be a wonderful thread for the Laboratory - the whole board is supposed to be a place for high level discussions, not just the Head Shop...]

19:37 / 24.03.05

Lowfat, if you're this passionate about it I'm sure you could sell everything you own and give it to charity, dedicate your life to feeding the poor and all that. You won't, for reasons of right of ownership and right to luxury, but that's what you're suggesting we do on a global scale.

10:19 / 25.03.05

Yeah, the particle accelerator thing is kind of a thing with me. I find them interesting, massive, abstracted things. I -um- like looking at aerial shots of them.

I have nothing against particle accelerators...I'm just kind of obsessed and they are pricey. The massive scale of them for the study of subatomic particles seemed to parallel the question of feeding the poor or studying the stars.

But I was kind of tired.

I took a course on development economics and I've written development-oriented proposals as well and it seems that the money that is being used in development economics is only occasionally relevant to the local population in the long-term. Massive projects like dam-building that favour development-dependent international contractors are often favoured instead of the less glamourous, locally-driven initiatives in agricultural development.

These are farmers on a small scale, with limited access to mechanical equipment and transport. The kind of agriculture that is completely divorced from the large-scale agriculture so common in more 'developed' nations. Sustained, supportive agricultural technology on a small scale would be really helpful for maintaining quality of life but would not necessarily generate the measureable outcomes so necessary to organizations like the IMF. They wouldn't double their income...they'd be less hungry or spend less time working the fields, for example.

Biotech seems to have potential, but reliable information about the relevance of biotech for the small-plot cash-strapped farmer is hard to come by. On the one hand, you see the rabidly pro-biotech gangsters, on the other the equally rabid down-with-biotech gang.

Accountability for development organizations so important, but that same accountability (the $ means of measuring success) can undermine development in any real sense.

I'm sure there are exceptions, though.

18:30 / 17.04.05

I REALLY agree with this.

According to my experience in international cooperation, ~90% of funds is wasted by huge and completely useless development projects, while the only long-lasting projects are those small, neglected ones, but actually asked for by local communities (never heard of durable development?

)

And I think we need to shift our point of view also dealing with research, from single, high-funded projects like space missions, involving incredible amounts of gold being flushed on private agencies, to many smaller, locally-tailored projects, aimed to improve lifestyle in developing communities.
It couldn't be as glamorous as sending people on Mars or finding a Great Unification Theory, but it is the same an epic task, and needs many educated people to do it!

18:36 / 17.04.05

BTW, I dealt with the very same question when I decided which career to take.
"How can I, a lucky human born in a rich country, put my intellectual talents in service to Humanity?"
I believed, and still believe, that research, properly sided by politics, can be an answer to Earth's problems.
I chose Physics, and I'm planning a Master in Environmental Science.

01:02 / 21.04.05

i also dealt with this problem. one reason i left astronomy (although not the most pressing one - which was that i wasn't that good as an astronomer) was that it seemed to be a big waste of money.

fact is that physics at standard energies and scales is pretty much known. even quantum mechanics works pretty much as expected. unifying physics is amazingly cool conceptually, but likely to make as little difference to everyday life as, say, general relativity (the only application of general relativity that i can think of is that the first GPS satellites would have failed - but that could have been fixed without understanding GR).

trouble is that gee whizz public appreciation doesn't correlate with "useful to society". astronomy is very good at selling itself. in fact, public funding would be more productive elsewhere. but then industrialists already know this - that's why there's huge industrial research in bio chemistry, while astronomy is largely funded by states or rich individuals.

(i have to say i'm now back working in astronomy, although not in research - but at least i'm taking americans' money rather than my own country's.... ;o)

00:03 / 23.04.05

The classic question here is "What standard of living would everyone on the planet need to be enjoying before we would be allowed to use resources for [fill in the blank]?"

You can fill in the blank with luxury cars, space research, whatever you'd like, but the question remains the same. You're basically dividing every human activity into two categories:

1) Things that relate directly to feeding, sheltering, and otherwise caring for the human body. Agriculture, medicine, home maintenance and construction, production of functional clothing, energy production (but only enough energy to support the other activities, I would imagine)

2) Everything else, presumably including theoretical science, religion, art, etc. Since these things don't relate directly to feeding and clothing people, they're basically luxuries.

Even if it were a zero-sum game like that (which, as everyone has pointed out, it's not), I'm not sure living in a world where everyone's fed and housed in a perfectly just manner, at the cost of transforming that world into a subsistence-level work camp, is much better than the present situation.

Obviously, more money could be allocated to development in the southern hemisphere, and the money that's already being allocated could be allocated better. Debt forgiveness is a big one, and R&D money into clean energy would be nice.

I'm also not terribly excited by manned space exploration and I think it's a big waste of money, but I would just put that money into unmanned space exploration, which gives you more scientific bang for your buck, I think.

However, I think the whole "everybody eats before anyone does anything fun" argument is wrong-headed on a number of levels, and I think there are a number of areas which are better suited to budget cuts if you're looking to free up funds. The military stands out as a particularly grotesque example of the latter.

11:43 / 25.04.05

I really think we need to shed this idea that it's lack of money or food that causes these problems. I'll state again that we already produce enough food to keep the planet comfortable, there's more than enough money to feed and clothe the vast majority of mankind, and it's not being spent on R&D. If it's going anywhere it's into huge military budgets and the reason for this is because of unstable governments and aggressive territorial / colonial or ethnic conflict. If you want to get money to the poor of the world, you have to deal with the social problems, not just shut down projects designed to explore technologies that could help everyone.

10:33 / 26.04.05

I don't think completely stopping intellectual progress (or luxury, as DIZ calls it) would be useful, or possible at all.
I'm just saying that, from all the deck of possible theoretical or applied fields -in physical sciences as in philosophy- I'd choose the card with the most possible benefits for humanity. Or the one dealing with the strongest issues concerning people.
But I'm still playing the same card game.

13:51 / 16.05.05

i agree with tom that the problem is largely political. but why not fund a whole pile of political and philosophical research aimed at trying to understand that, rather than making new kinds of "stuff" for people to own?

Tryphena Absent

14:57 / 16.05.05

Because we already understand that, that's why people have been calling for the government to cancel third world debt for 20 years, it's the acting on it that doesn't take place.

17:54 / 17.05.05

I disagree with Andrew Cookes statement that General Relativity is just a mental exercise by scientists with very little application to the real world. It has had a very profound impact in the day-to-day lives we lead. Even if the theory hasn't had a direct effect on our lives (which I completely disagree with) it has opened up further avenues of scientific investigation.

I don't think it is fair to label Relativity in this way because you could say the same of Mechanics or Quantum Theory. While you're at it you may as well dismiss algebra and geometry.

All these things contribute to our civilisation and I think it is rather absurd to dismiss them.

I appreciate that a starving child would rather have food than the Theory of Relativity but as someone said earlier, if you're that bothered sell everything you have and devote your life to helping people more needy than you.

*Rant over*

21:36 / 17.05.05

I disagree with Andrew Cookes statement that General Relativity is just a mental exercise by scientists with very little application to the real world. It has had a very profound impact in the day-to-day lives we lead. Even if the theory hasn't had a direct effect on our lives (which I completely disagree with) it has opened up further avenues of scientific investigation.

well give some examples then. the only thing i can come up with is the timing drift in gps clocks. how else has general relativity altered anything?

do you even know what it is?

21:38 / 17.05.05

I appreciate that a starving child would rather have food than the Theory of Relativity but as someone said earlier, if you're that bothered sell everything you have and devote your life to helping people more needy than you.

i already stopped being an astronomer because of this (partly). i don't own a car. i buy locally where possible. i've changed my life in many ways to fit in with what i believe in. why do you think you have the right to tell me to change more? instead of attacking me, try explaining why general relativity is useful in everyday life.

09:12 / 18.05.05

I apologise if my post came across as an attack on you, Andrew, as opposed to a disagreement with your previous post.

I can give you examples of what Relativity has accomplished if you'd like (and yes, I do know what it is) for example nuclear power. Fusion and Fission.

Anyway, you seemed to miss my general point that it opens up new areas of scientific investigation like quantum theory. If you want me to give you examples of how that has a bearing on day-to-day life then I'd be willing to do that as well.

02:55 / 15.06.05

The answer is that “we” have no need to justify the expenditure of R&D at all. The government should not be involved in R&D, period. If private investors are willing to risk their capital on projects (in this case aerospace R&D) that do not satisfy the most urgent consumer demands (e.g. for food) then that is entirely their problem, and they will soon be parted from their capital by the rigors of the market system and the profit/loss feedback mechanism. The point is that the government has no such feedback mechanism—and therefore will always allocate resources sub-optimally from the point of consumers (e.g., starving people in third world countries)—NASA being a most egregious—but by no means isolated--example of this.

The other points made in the above posts (specifically that corrupt governments cause most of the problems distributing the already-ample food supply to needy individuals) is absolutely correct. Cut off funding for such dictators (shutting down the IMF/Worldbank aka “aid for dictators” would be a good start). Forgiving third-world loans–or rather loans to the governments of the world’s poorest countries is simply not an answer. The population in these countries individually had no say in taking on these debts. The third world governments are pretty much universally collectivist/tyrannical, with no respect for property or individual rights, and I’d be hard pressed to find a single one that used the proceeds from the debt offerings to benefit their population. Cut off funding to these dictatorial regimes.

“Aid to the third world most often amounts to a tax on productive people in wealthy countries for the benefit of militaristic, repressive dictators who live like Roman emperors in the middle of third world squalor. And let’s not forget the bureaucrats and financiers who take their cut along the way, a point Paul Musgrave once made to dramatic effect. As a general rule, this money doesn’t help the poor, and forgiving the debt is not a gesture of kindness to the neediest people in the world. It’s a gesture of kindness to the repressive regimes that made them needy to begin with.” (http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/06/13/more-on-african-debt-forgiveness/#comments)

11:00 / 16.06.05

On a long-term view, the continued research and development of space exploration is extremely important. We know the planet's been hit a number of times by asteroids big enough to cause extreme ecological damage. So it'd be handy to know when and where the next one's coming and have the technology to do something about it.

Eventually it may also be necessary for our species to move off of Earth and colonise the other planets in our solar system. So we will need as much information as possible in order to do that. It would be counter-productive, and plain stupid, to stop all space research because the money it would free up would make no difference unless economic and political changes had been achieved first.

As has already been pointed out. Plenty of practical technology has come out of the space program to make it worthwhile continuing.

Investment in R and D is essential to the continued growth and development of our species. The more we know the more we can do to help out those in need.

Stagnation of science helps no-one.

23:32 / 16.06.05

NASA is a pretty classic example of
Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy, aka an “opportunity cost” (why is this capital spent on NASA instead of satisfying more urgent needs, such as hunger?)

Whenever a government creates a public work, in this case NASA, everyone can see the obvious benefits. For example, everyone can appreciate that the US planted a flag on the moon, which was financed by tax dollars (or the inflationary printing of money). Everyone can appreciate the "practical technologies" that come about through NASA's research (as an aside, I'd challenge you to name 20 such technologies).

What people CANNOT see are the myriad other goods and services that now won’t be enjoyed, because the scarce resources necessary for their production were devoted to the government project. The government cannot evade economic law: If they send a man to the moon, consumers necessarily must curtail their enjoyments of other goods. In this case, food would be an example of such a good. Likewise, you don't see how much more efficiently such research would be done in the private sector, and how the time/cost savings would benefit the general population.

23:37 / 16.06.05

Posters on this thread are making two key fundamental errors.

1) Confusing Money and Capital
In our age of fiat currencies, money is never in scarce supply. It can always be printed. Capital, on the other hand is much more difficult to come by and cannot be printed out of thin air.

There are no means by which the general standard of living can be raised other than by accelerating the increase of capital as compared with population. All that good government can do to improve the material well being of the population is to establish and to preserve an institutional setting in which there are no obstacles to the progressive accumulation of new capital and its utilization for the improvement of technical methods of production. Printing money not only does not increase capital, it actually destroys the capital formation process.

23:41 / 16.06.05

Continuing my post from above...
The only way to increase a nation's welfare is to increase and to improve on the output of products. The only way to raise wages permamently for all workers is to raise the productivity of labor by increasing the per-head quota of capital invested and improving the methods of producing goods.

2) The other confusion I think people are running into is that they are confusing private R&D with public R&D. Private R&D is determined by consumer demand as such is kept in check by the profit/loss mechanism to ensure that R&D is allocated as efficiently as possible (efficiency here meaning: to satisfy present and future consumer demand as economically as possible). Public (government) R&D on the other hand has no such check and balance, and as such you can never tell for sure whether it is optimally allocating resources. Thus, we get in debates regarding how much "we" should allocate to space exploration v. transforming the desert parts of Africa into habitats that can support farming. On the free market, this allocation happens automatically by every individual pursuing his own self-interest. (this is basically what Adam Smith's Invisible Hand was referring to). Govenment has no such mechanism--it is one bureaucrat (or group of bureaucrats) deciding for EVERYONE how much of a given commodity they should consume (in this case space exploration v. food) instead of letting each individual figure it out on his/her own.

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