[HN Gopher] Science, technology and innovation isn't addressing ...
___________________________________________________________________
Science, technology and innovation isn't addressing world's most
urgent problems
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-10-22 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.universiteitleiden.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.universiteitleiden.nl)
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Is there any money in that?
| bkmeneguello wrote:
| SDG is a limiting factor in science development, not a boosting
| one. Science is funding oriented and companies are much more
| interested in funding research that could lead to revenue growth.
| It's funny to see how some people think their opinion is the
| "problem" other people's money should be used to resolve.
| urthor wrote:
| I reference Alan Kay, who's spent 50+ years complaining Xerox
| Parc only happened when they wrote a GIGANTIC cheque. Then forgot
| about them.
|
| Good science basically _requires_ atrocious amounts of money, to
| quite a small number of people.
|
| None of the scrabbling for $200,000 grants for a researcher, 4
| grad students, and some beakers.
|
| Try 5 million 1970s dollars for a couple of dozen of the best and
| brightest.
|
| There's no doubt at all. The physical sciences have always been,
| and always will be, an enabler of income inequality.
| thaw13579 wrote:
| I think most of the low hanging fruit like that has been picked
| unfortunately. Most impactful science these days requires
| coordinated effort of large teams. I'm sure there are a few
| exceptions, but I doubt we will get anything like xerox parc
| again any time soon. But I agree that high performers should be
| given more resources!
| [deleted]
| greenbit wrote:
| So you're saying, for example, that after plowing how many
| billions into fusion research, when they finally crack it and
| can produce continents-worth of power from pennies worth of sea
| water, they won't actually start giving electricity away for
| free? Even though we've all collectively 'invested' in it
| through our taxes for decades?
| urthor wrote:
| Isaac Newton spent more time turning lead into gold than
| mathematics. Time & money doesn't make dumb ideas good ones.
|
| Bread needs water, flour, AND yeast to rise. Ain't gonna do
| much without all three.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Was he funded by an external agency for the purpose of
| turning lead into gold, or was it only his own
| interest/initiative?
| lioeters wrote:
| Interestingly, Newton was "Master of the Mint" at the
| Royal Mint, which supplies all the nation's coinage.
|
| > Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint
| upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton
| held for the last 30 years of his life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Royal_Mint
|
| If he had been successful in turning lead into gold, he
| might have made his employer obsolete.
| greenbit wrote:
| And of course Sir Isaac found time to fit alchemy and
| mathematics in between the daily activities of subsistence
| farming. Oh wait ..
| tomrod wrote:
| Flatbread is pretty tasty I hear.
| achn wrote:
| It's also the worst investment ever - if the same money was
| invested in solar farms and research, we could have actual
| world changing energy sources _right now_.
| Bakary wrote:
| It doesn't work like a game of Civilization. Allocating
| resources to a research problem means you increase the
| social and material rewards for a certain type of person to
| work on a certain type of project. There is no guarantee of
| success or one to one allocation of resources. It's also
| not a zero-sum game when the money to one source of energy
| took away from another.
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| Also unlike a video game, the tech-tree dependencies are
| not obvious. We don't know in advance whether a tech will
| be a productive avenue of R&D, or if it depends on other
| unrelated advances in theory, material science, or
| computer modeling, or was actually completely unfeasible
| in the first place. I find wind power [1] as a case study
| representative, and we see similar stories for e.g.
| fusion, cancer research, AI
|
| [1] https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-did-
| we-wait-s...
| jimbokun wrote:
| huffmsa wrote:
| More money doesn't make the wind blow more often. And
| there's only.so much capital that can be spent on material
| science before you hit a limit on the rate of improvement
| per unit time
| pfdietz wrote:
| An ironic comment, since fusion is the field depending on
| radical materials advances.
|
| https://cpb-
| us-w2.wpmucdn.com/research.seas.ucla.edu/dist/d/... slide
| 13
| mistermann wrote:
| I somewhat disagree. It's true that many or maybe even most
| science requires large sums of money, but might there be some
| forms that we've yet to discover that could produce useful
| output with much more economic efficiency?
|
| For example: what about a new form of think tank, one where
| people other than the usual suspects (ie: "the" "best" "and"
| "brightest") like people from "the general public" (perhaps
| even a few of the "uneducated", and maybe even a few picks from
| the "freaks and weirdos" category _to shake things up for a
| change_ ) are hired to simply think of new ideas?
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _There 's no doubt at all. The physical sciences have always
| been, and always will be, an enabler of income inequality._
|
| That claim is the opposite direction of the rest of your
| comment, which shows income inequality being an enabler of
| science research.
| [deleted]
| jl6 wrote:
| > As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation
| research is not focused on the world's most pressing problems
| including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying
| social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and
| wellbeing.
|
| Not saying those aren't important goals, but the proposed remedy
| doesn't exactly address them head on:
|
| _In brief, the report calls for:_
|
| _Increasing funding for SDG-related research and innovation,
| particularly in lower income countries, on underlying social
| issues, social policy and grassroot innovations, and research
| relevant to a region or context._
|
| _Promoting a rich diversity of science, technology and
| innovation pathways to address specific SDG challenges, including
| social and organisational innovation._
|
| _Designing accountable initiatives that strengthen science,
| technology and innovation governance and support open and
| inclusive processes of deliberation and prioritisation._
|
| _Empowering stakeholders to form different interpretations of
| what counts as SDG-related science, technology and innovation._
| nend wrote:
| Your quoted text explains it very simply too. These are
| social/political problems, they need social/political
| solutions.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Yeah -- but saying that plainly doesn't give activists
| control of scientific funding to increase their fiefdoms.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| Um. Yes. True.
|
| It was obvious to the authors of the Old Testament that "Doing
| Well" was quite different from (and far more tempting than)
| "Doing Good". Moralizing about that fact, for an audience which
| (mostly) has no historical perspective at all, is plausibly a
| good strategy for Doing Well in the modern social media sphere.
|
| If any of the people involved with the article are actually doing
| any bit of good in the real world, the article is careful to omit
| that detail.
| isitmadeofglass wrote:
| Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at it.
| We've tried sending thoughts and prayers at every single
| peoples we face, but it just doesn't seem to work...
| mistermann wrote:
| > Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at
| it.
|
| As a comprehensive whole, even as somewhat of a supporter,
| the results seem unimpressive to me.
|
| But then this overlooks at least two things:
|
| - we do not have access to an accurate counterfactual reality
| machine, thus we ~~must~~ speculate (note: the ~~ ~~ is
| intended to cross out the enclosed word, as supported on
| Reddit)
|
| - there may be substantial unrealized value within subsets of
| theology (I'm a big proponent of Taoism, but then I'm surely
| biased (which is not necessarily synonymous with incorrect))
|
| > We've tried sending thoughts and prayers at every single
| peoples we face, but it just doesn't seem to work.
|
| See the "accurate counterfactual reality machine" comment
| above.
|
| Two questions:
|
| - is this intended as an accurate representation of theology?
| If not, what is it intended as?
|
| - it seems to me that: delusion is a substantial contributor
| to causality, most of human communication (some exceptions
| exist) is at least partially delusional (in a technical sense
| of the word, not pejorative), and arguably causality is the
| most important known phenomenon - from my frame of reference,
| science seems to have very little serious interest or
| knowledge about either (delusion and causality), yet despite
| this seems to have somehow ascended to the throne of the de
| facto superior metaphysical framework for discovery of
| reality. Is it just me, or does something seem "off" about
| this state of affairs?
|
| inb4: popular _and persuasive_ thought terminating cliches
| /memes.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication
| induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather
| grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what
| triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means
| for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.
|
| Huxley
| bell-cot wrote:
| My "Old Testament" comment was more of a "No grown-ups are
| impressed by your finally noticing that cows have 4 legs, nor
| by your bragging about that brilliant discovery" mockery.
|
| But, in many ways, the field of theology is doing far better!
| At least Christianity, in the West. With the relative
| collapse of church membership, attendance, etc. over the past
| ~half-century, the number of self-serving hypocrite
| theologians enjoying good social status, pay, and benefits
| while preaching a moral code which they would never want to
| follow has been plummeting.
|
| The corresponding trends in science do not look so good.
| tsol wrote:
| >Its not like the field of theology is doing any better at
| it.
|
| Again, there are countless religions besides Christianity. I
| doubt you really polled muslims, jews, hindus, sikhs,
| taoists, etc on their experience with social media. I think
| you're just trying to make a sweeping generalization about
| one particular faith, and at the same time totally ignoring
| and invalidating faiths of 60% of the world.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We can say with complete confidence that at least N-1 of
| the world's N religions are wrong.
| kkfx wrote:
| Science is a thing, technology it's implementation, but actual
| driver is economy, short-term economy in general. With such a
| driver no vehicle can go much further.
|
| Let's start from a popular topic, ridden with propaganda of
| various sides, the Green New Deal. In theory we know we can't
| have more than very little p.v. or wind power because being very
| quick in output change no other classic power plant can keep the
| network at the right frequency: the Sun the sun rises, p.v.
| quickly grow to the peak, loads on classic power plants goes down
| too fast to adapt, frequency skyrocket causing a chain of
| blackouts, the sun sets and the load on classic power plant
| skyrocket, frequency plummet and large chunk of the network get
| cut out to reduce the load. The solution was and is named "Smart
| Grid" with storage, where the storage (batteries + inverters) are
| actually quick enough to compensate. The Sun rise, all connected
| cars start charging and so loads on classic P.P. remain almost
| unchanged. They slow down charging slow enough that classic PP
| crank down their production at a sustainable peace. Similarly in
| the evening all connected cars start discharging quickly
| compensate the very quick p.v. production loss, and stop
| discharging slowly allowing nuclear/gas/... PP to crank up at a
| sustainable peace. Or, so to speak, the extremely high costs of
| storage is offset to private individuals instead of being on
| energy operators shoulders. Such model does not happen because
| p.v. start to get economically sound, but until gasoline/diesel
| reach 3EUR/l (~11USD/gal) and/or the national grid became
| unstable most would not buy BEVs.
|
| Another example is IT history: Xerox PARC invented and
| implemented the modern Desktop and desktop computing, the classic
| Paul Otlet/Henry La Fontaine Mundaneum idea in practice, than for
| business purposes such concept was crashed and developed few
| parts at a time by modern GAFAM in a way to ensure end users have
| next to no power and are locked in in their service.
|
| Another example is the classic rent vs buy model where at first
| rent pay well, faster and cheaper, then the big cucumber arrives
| up the a* with rental prices to the stars and almost no more
| options to nor resources left to buy instead of rent.
|
| Long story short: Science and technology works well ONLY if
| Science is PUBLIC, witch means NO research is done for private
| interests but for whole society one, and technology is UNDER
| Science, witch means the private sector select and pick new
| Science innovations and implement them on scale. So the model
| must be:
|
| - a State, on top, witch means Democracy, witch means ALL PEOPLE
| on top;
|
| - the State MASSIVELY found general interesting research
| maintaining universities, schools, labs, factories etc for the
| general interests;
|
| - such PUBLIC apparatus produce innovations for the society;
|
| - private sector grab ideas and hire some talents who do want to
| implement them instead of keep researching, try to sell resulting
| implementations, some will profit, some will fail.
|
| All critical sectors are public only, so weapons are public only,
| health is public only (pharma for first), energy is public
| because we all need it, food due to it's nature is a mix BUT with
| a State/public regulation to ensure a minimum intake for all,
| basic transportation infra are public from TLCs to (rail)roads
| and harbors/airports. The rest is private.
|
| NOTHING impede private research but having this far less
| resources only real success for the society will survive, modern
| absurd anti-society stuff get criticized by the compartmentalized
| public research, religiously separated from the private, and
| fails quickly.
|
| For those who say "that's communism" or EQUALLY "that's fascism"
| do remember a thing: no market have proved to be or remain really
| free in a very short timeframe. No dictatorship have proven to
| last, they innovate quickly, expand quickly, than fall. The key
| is the old Roman's "est modus in rebus" or "there is a measure in
| anything" meaning, nothing can work taken to the extreme, there
| is no one-size-fit-all.
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Changing directions: Steering science, technology and
| innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research
| and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the
| UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up
| to address and drive change across all areas of social justice
| and environmental issues.
|
| After reading the UN SDG document, I wonder: How did things like
| mitigating climate change, stopping overfishing, gender equality,
| and access to education all end up falling under the heading of
| sustainability at the UN? It feels really broad and mixed up to
| me. Usually not having a tight focus or a single goal is a bad
| sign for initiatives. It reads like: "our vision for this
| initiative is to solve all major problems", which is admirable,
| but feels ... out of scope to me.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Well, what exactly does "sustainable" mean?
|
| If you take climate change as the impending _complete disaster_
| that some people see it as, it would kind of make it hard to
| _sustain_ any ongoing development when it finally hits.
|
| Overfishing should be clear enough; run out of fish, and
| civilization hits a major setback that makes it hard to
| _sustain_ whatever we 've been up to.
|
| Gender equality and education access might be a bit more
| indirect, but at least so far our civilizational development
| has required a general upskilling of the population as a whole.
| And if you think that people are being excluded from that, then
| well a lack of additional people to upskill will turn into a
| blocker sooner rather than later and again make it hard to
| _sustain_ that development.
| westurner wrote:
| > _Changing directions: Steering science, technology and
| innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research
| and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the
| UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up
| to address and drive change across all areas of social justice
| and environmental issues._
|
| https://globalgoals.org/ #GlobalGoals #SDGs #Goal17
|
| Each country (UN Member State) prepares an annual country-level
| report - an annual SDG report - on their voluntary progress
| toward their self-defined Targets (which are based upon
| Indicators; stats).
|
| Businesses that voluntarily prepare a sustainability report
| necessarily review their SDG-aligned operations' successes and
| failures. The GRI Corporate Sustainability report is SDG aligned;
| so if you prepare an annual Sustainability report, it should be
| easy to review aligned and essential operations.
|
| GRI Global Reporting Initiative is also in NL:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative
|
| > _Critically, the report finds that research in high-income and
| middle-income countries contributes disproportionally to a
| disconnect with the SDGs. Most published research (60%-80%) and
| innovation activity (95%-98%) is not related to the SDGs._
|
| Strategic alignment:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment
|
| https://USAspending.gov resulted from tracking State-level grants
| in IL: the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability...
|
| Unfortunately, https://performance.gov/ and
| https://USAspending.gov/ do not have any way to - before or after
| funding decisions - specify that a funded thing is SDG-aligned.
|
| IMHO, we can easily focus on domestic priorities and also
| determine where our spending is impactful in regards to the SDGs.
|
| > _Illustrating the imbalance, the report found that 80 percent
| of SDG-related inventions in high-income countries were
| concentrated in just six of the 73 countries_
|
| Lots of important problems worth money to folks:
|
| #Goal1 #NoPoverty
|
| #Goal2 #ZeroHunger
|
| #Goal3 #GoodHealth
|
| #Goal4 #QualityEducation
|
| #Goal5 #GenderEquality
|
| #Goal6 #CleanWater
|
| #Goal7 #CleanEnergy
|
| #Goal8 #DecentJobs
|
| #Goal9 #Infrastructure
|
| #Goal10 #ReduceInequality
|
| #Goal11 #Sustainable
|
| #Goal12 #ResponsibleConsumption
|
| #Goal13 #ClimateAction
|
| #Goal14 #LifeBelowWater
|
| #Goal15 #LifeOnLand
|
| #Goal16 #PEACE #Justice
|
| #Goal17 #Partnership #Teamwork
|
| If you label things with #GlobalGoal hashtags, others can find
| solutions to the very same problems.
| romusha wrote:
| wonderwonder wrote:
| This article is essentially saying they want science to go woke.
| They want to study social issues and create a board that can
| decide what kind of science is appropriate and where private and
| governments are allowed to invest their money.
| auaurora wrote:
| seydor wrote:
| Here is a pressing problem for the United Nations: end a major
| war that threatens the UN itself. The UN is primarily an
| institution about peace. If peace exists, individual states and
| collections of states can take care of their pressing problems.
| Quoting Branko Milanovic:
|
| > The second reason for the decline of the UN and international
| organisation is ideological. According to the ideologies of
| neoliberalism and 'the end of history' which so heavily dominated
| the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, dealing with
| world peace and security was no longer the most pressing task of
| the UN. Helped by the proliferation of non-governmental
| organisations (and false NGOs), the new ideologues broadened the
| mission of the UN to many subsidiary issues with which it should
| have never been involved but rather left to other governmental
| and non-governmental bodies.[]
|
| >
|
| > The third, related reason is financial. As the mandate of the
| UN, the World Bank and other international institutions was
| broadened to include practically everything imaginable, it became
| obvious that the resources provided by governments were
| insufficient. Here NGOs met billionaires and private-sector
| donors. In a series of actions unthinkable when the UN was
| created, private interests simply infiltrated themselves into
| organisations created by states and began to dictate the new
| agenda.
|
| >
|
| > This is how the entire UN system went into decline and we ended
| up in a position where the head of the only international
| institution ever created by humankind whose role is preservation
| of world peace has become a spectator--with as much influence on
| matters of war and peace as any other of the 7.7 billion denizens
| of our planet.
|
| https://socialeurope.eu/does-the-united-nations-still-exist
| aaron695 wrote:
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Scientific institutions in the United States have largely been
| captured by the investment-corporate sector. Basic R&D results
| produced with federal funds end up in the hands of corporate
| entities due to the exclusive licensing (Bayh-Dole) rules
| implemented in the 1980s, and this also means these corporate
| interests have reduced their own internal basic R&D budgets
| relative to past eras, instead relying on the federal funding
| system and the university research departments for this task.
|
| As a result, every tech department in the US university system is
| packed full of scheming federally-funded startup types, whose
| goal is to get a patent, transfer that patent to a small company
| which is then bought up by a corporate major, and then the
| professor gets a small percentage of the royalties. Federally-
| funded entrepreneurs of this kind and their facilitators are the
| people who run most university administrations these days. This
| merger of the academic and corporate worlds is the fundamental
| reason for the phenomena described in this report.
|
| The solution is pretty simple: eliminate exclusive licensing of
| university patents, such that anyone can use them for product
| development for a small flat fee. This would have the beneficient
| effect of encouraging corporations to move funds back into
| private research labs, as that's the only way they could ensure
| an exclusive patent period.
| dinvlad wrote:
| It is difficult to de-couple these two things, because
| companies is where science translates to the real world.
|
| We need more direct funding from the rich governments for the
| kinds of research described in the article, which would address
| the associated problems "on paper", while still allowing
| translation of it in startups etc and ultimately benefitting
| the general public.
|
| So the problem is not so much that companies sponsor some (!)
| research, but that the governments simply don't invest nearly
| as much into public R&D as they need or could (while preferring
| to pour money into the military etc.).
|
| As a result, academics have no choice but follow other funding
| sources to survive in the already hyper-competitive scientific
| world. Hence, we should not put the blame on them, but rather
| on the public funding sources.
| Balgair wrote:
| Having worked and studied in a few universities, man, this
| would be awesome if it were true to my experience.
|
| Trying to get the patent attorneys, the tech transfer office,
| or the budget office to do literally anything is like trying to
| walk on the ceiling. It would take _months_ just to get a
| consult with the tech transfer office to even see if they could
| be bothered to talk to the lawyers. For real, at one school the
| budget office for patents and the like for the whole university
| was staffed by one part-time woman very close to retirement who
| could barely rubber stamp anything with what little time she
| had in a day.
|
| As for grants, man, again, it's a dog fight out there to even
| get anything to begin with. Unless your PI has fair/good
| connections in the grant funding agencies, you're gonna have a
| rough time. I've been in a few labs that have tried the
| corporate funding route and it's never really worked out. They
| all want a result, not a real study that can fail, and they
| want it in 3 months, and they want it for a tenth of the cost
| it would actually take, eve with very poorly paid grad
| students. Industry grants do happen, but man, they almost never
| make anything 'real' happen, it's mostly just a headache.
| gumby wrote:
| For the top of the R1 list, GP's post is roughly true, though
| not as densely involved (only a few faculty or grad students
| manage it). The licensing offices of those institutions are
| very painful to deal with.
|
| However in my (not enormous) experience the licensing offices
| of the schools below that tier are even _more_ difficult to
| work with. I imagine it 's a combination of not doing a lot
| of deals and over-imagining the value of the IP.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > This would have the beneficient effect of encouraging
| corporations to move funds back into private research labs, as
| that's the only way they could ensure an exclusive patent
| period.
|
| With the second order effect of discouraging would be
| "schemers" from being entrepreneurial and innovative in the
| first place. It's not such a simple solution.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > entrepreneurial and innovative
|
| These are antonyms in this instance. Corrupt advisors and
| administrators trying to line their own pockets aren't how
| you foster creativity.
| otikik wrote:
| Remove patents from the equation altogether.
| powera wrote:
| This is "woke" clap-trap.
|
| The thesis appears to be that it is bad that some countries are
| wealthy enough to pursue any research on non-subsistence topics.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Smart phones have completely transformed access to information,
| finance and services in poor countries. Would a UN SDG focussed
| research agenda have prioritised technologies that enabled that,
| such as 4G, high density batteries, tiny low power SoCs, etc.?
|
| Often, the future use of scientific study isn't obvious until
| many years or decades later. Wouldn't this just result in
| prioritising scientists who are good at writing funding
| applications that make BS claims about how this area of research
| will reduce global poverty? We already see quite a lot of that.
|
| It seems to me that the most impactful technology rarely comes
| from SDG focussed research.
| basilgohar wrote:
| The items you've listed, as well as "impact", are not the goals
| of SDG-focused research. From the linked article, it identifies
| clearly this disconnect:
|
| _In both the Global North and Global South -- and across areas
| such as health, food or energy -- research and innovation funds
| tend to be spent on technologies that benefit private
| interests, rather than on those that more directly address
| social and environmental problems. The research shows that most
| high-income countries do not prioritise research on the major
| environmental challenges associated with unsustainable
| consumption and production patterns._
|
| In fact, your assertion that things like 4G, high density
| batteries, and tiny low power SoCs, etc. illustrate this well.
| Those do not specifically help with the issues of
| sustainability in low income areas. Think of things like
| sanitation, access to clean water, sustainable food production,
| etc. Not everything needed for improving quality of life and
| opportunities has a high-tech solution.
| paganel wrote:
| > unsustainable consumption
|
| This is a political claim made by privileged people that live
| in the "Global North". Reducing that "unsustainable"
| consumption will make some "Global South" countries even
| poorer, because the little manufacturing that they managed to
| have set up is now gone.
|
| Thankfully the coming economic global shake-up will drown out
| opinions like these, which do nothing to help the "Global
| South" catch up, and will give a bigger voice to people from
| said "Global South" who really have skin in the game.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Approximately zero innovation is needed to provide
| sanitation, clean water, or food production in the poorest
| areas of the world. They are not that way for lack of some
| rich country developing a new widget or publishing a paper.
|
| Global poverty like that is the result of lack of resources
| and poor society/government organization.
| concordDance wrote:
| Unfortunately reforming governments and cultures isn't
| something we know much about.
|
| Too hard to do experiments.
|
| Innovating cheaper infrastructure is at least somewhat
| actionable.
| mangecoeur wrote:
| That's exactly the whole point of this work: that too much
| effort is spent developing new widgets instead of figuring
| out why governance or society is not delivering peoples
| needs and what to do about it. This needs interdisciplinary
| approaches that are not tech focused.
| tomrod wrote:
| Sanitation: shovels, pipes, and pumps
|
| Clean water access: shovels, pipes, pumps, treatment
| processes
|
| Food: roads, shovels, pipes, pumps, transportation
|
| No interdisciplinary approaches needed. Resources, rule
| of law (so builders don't abscond with funds), a tidbit
| of path planning, and Bob's your Uncle. Lower the costs
| and mitigate the risks.
| jerojero wrote:
| If it was as simple as you're painting it then it
| wouldn't be a problem. The fact that it is a problem
| should indicate to you that there are factors you might
| not be considering.
|
| For example, the logistics to provide plumbing to
| developing nations are extremely difficult because of the
| instability of these regions as well as the lack of
| cooperation from developed nations to precisely help in
| these much needed regards. A lot of the help these places
| get come in the form of philanthropic pursuit or
| misguided help that end up either not helping or
| sometimes worsening the situation.
|
| Not only that, but there are many interests at play that
| also get in the way of these places developing. For many
| powerful actors in these countries the status quo is good
| enough and any form of development actually threatens
| their position. And yes, sadly, this applies to plumbing
| as well!
|
| It's very true that we know how to do plumbing, in the
| technical sense, but in reality we don't know how to do
| plumbing in these regions because our technical knowledge
| is not applicable given the socio-political situation. So
| this does require an interdisciplinary approach, one that
| involves sociology, psychology, economics, politics, etc.
| mistermann wrote:
| Sir: _surely_ you 're not suggesting that we (humanity)
| may not be interested in metaphysics (the fundamental
| nature of reality (both physically materialized as well
| as counterfactual), the first principles of being,
| identity and change, space and time, causality,
| necessity, consciousness, possibility, etc), but that
| metaphysics may be interested in us?
|
| Because if you are, I have some unfortunate news:
| metaphysics is woo woo. And if you do not believe me, try
| doing a survey and see what results you get. Or, if you
| do not trust the opinion of the general public, try also
| running surveys within scientific and Rationalist
| communities, or even here on HN, and see if your results
| are _substantially_ different.
| mistermann wrote:
| That this is attracting downvotes is not surprising, but
| it is very interesting.
|
| One of the many things I find interesting about
| metaphysics, and humans (but I repeat myself) is that
| "most" humans, particularly those who are more educated,
| tend to be certain that metaphysics is dumb/useless/etc,
| yet the fact that they are unable to articulate the
| reason why this is true (and defend the articulation in a
| sound manner) seems to have little to no effect on their
| opinion of the quality of their belief (a behavior that
| would not be a source of pride or tolerated here when it
| comes to topics like computing).
|
| But unfortunately, this idea itself is metaphysical, so
| it can be easily dismissed by the initial belief. It's
| like a bootstrap problem of sorts.
| tomrod wrote:
| > That this is attracting downvotes is not surprising
|
| Your parent comment and subsequent followup are difficult
| for me to parse. If others had similar difficulty, it
| could account for the downvotes. I did not downvote your
| comments.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Fascinating that political sociology invalidates known
| plumbing technology.
| tomrod wrote:
| You covered exactly what I said, with more words, until
| making the claim that an interdisciplinary approach is
| required. "Interdisciplinary approach" means we need to
| research the problem space. The research is already done.
| The solutions are ready and exist. Its the implementation
| that people get squeamish on for fear of offending
| portions of the coalition in power. Their squeamishness
| doesn't justify delaying action, which is what your
| approach advocates by casting solutioneering as requiring
| additional raw research versus applying what is known.
|
| Pipes, shovels, and pumps solve a lot of core problems
| for a community. Where and how they get laid down doesn't
| require sociology or political economy research. You
| might care about the people displaced by the
| infrastructure, which a compassionate person will, but
| don't forget that home construction and legal recompense
| for eminent domain are also known.
|
| The major difference between your and my approaches:
| while the interdisciplinarists are arguing about the
| impact of infrastructure development on endangered plants
| and relative value of indigenous pottery buried for
| several thousand years, the pragmatists are getting
| people out of the bondage of poverty and enabling them
| solve their problems themselves because they have risen
| above subsistence.
|
| Note there is value to ensuring the endangered plants are
| maintained and the indigenous pottery is studied -- as
| well as the knowledge gained from all fields that might
| come to an interdisciplinarists table -- but one must
| recognize the advancement of patron-funded knowledge is a
| bottleneck when it stands in the way of well-understood
| solutions.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Its the implementation that people get squeamish on
| for fear of offending portions of the coalition in power.
| Their squeamishness doesn 't justify delaying action,_
|
| And that action that's totally appropriate but people are
| just too squeamish for would be ... what, an armed
| invasion to impose "better" cultural values?
| tomrod wrote:
| Sure, in certain cases where the people ubiquitously want
| pipes, shovels, and pumps, but the power structures in
| place prevent it and the invader or external trader
| brings it without wanting to rule. I'll leave that for
| the dithering interdiscipinarists to dicker about as a
| hypothetical.
|
| However, more steelmaned and aligned to my original
| statement, as well as more common when facing decisions,
| being okay with the realistic tradeoffs that an
| endangered plant might have a reduction in habitat.
| runnig wrote:
| Shovels, pipes and pumps are the common denominator in
| these
| jotm wrote:
| No, we know why: the people. The governments, the
| culture/desires.
|
| And I don't mean only Africa or Asia, (before someone
| calls me racist). Any country has had this problem.
|
| The simplest solution is to instate mandatory community
| service, preferably in lieu of military service, but it
| could be a sort of "Subotnik" as seen in the USSR, which
| would be used for... You guessed it, doing
| community/public service work. Then you have all the
| manpower and just need food ( _some_ compensation /thanks
| is good) tools and organization/training (can double as
| job training).
|
| Not much to ask imo, but of course many people will cry
| about it. Mostly people from countries with a lot of
| homeless and unpaid internships, but it's not like most
| people want to do unpaid work much, either. On the bright
| side, _most_ people won 't raise much of a fuss about it,
| either.
|
| So that's not happening. Government officials stealing
| foreign aid is happening. Local production is not
| happening. Wars are happening. Toilets are not. Etc.
| concordDance wrote:
| How exactly does time limited slavery help with the
| culture?
|
| What stops this labour being used in corrupt or self
| serving fashions just as the money is?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is an interesting question.
|
| The ancient Incan Empire collected taxes in labor
| (basically part-time slavery, everyone had to do their 2
| months a year or so), and they managed to build enormous
| infrastructure across the Andes in just a few decades.
| And in high quality. Many of the roads can still be seen,
| 500 years after they were built.
|
| How did they prevent capture of this labor by corrupt
| local officials? I don't know.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Ivory tower musing about why poor countries are corrupt
| and disorganized is not the key missing activity blocking
| them from prosperity.
|
| The countries which are not poor and disorganized did not
| get there through the benevolent study by their betters.
| onos wrote:
| Perhaps we should funnel more resources to the problems they
| quote, but it seems to me we already are doing a lot: global
| poverty rates have dropped dramatically over the last one
| hundred years, much attention is given to social justice
| concerns and debating how to adjust society in response, and
| clean energy is also a large focus. Society has other
| concerns... the authors should argue why we need to further
| neglect those in favor of their preferred areas, but haven't
| done it.
| gsatic wrote:
| More like things are getting so complex no one has any clue
| what good science and tech policy is anymore.
| User23 wrote:
| A big problem is that the kind of people inclined to become
| government bureaucrats are far from the best people to guide
| any sort of research effort.
| liketochill wrote:
| Because the rewards for being in government are less than
| in private sector. So we should identify high performers in
| government and pay them more.
| tomrod wrote:
| Can you give me an example of how things are more complex
| today than they were 100 years ago?
|
| We have more complex widgets perhaps, but people seem to be
| the same.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| DDT is a decent example... A major chemical insecticide
| that was used /everywhere/ in huge quantities, and was
| shown eventually to be terrible for all kinds of non-insect
| populations (like birds) with a tendency to linger in the
| environment for decades.
|
| These days we have a great many more choices of
| insecticides, and major declines in insect biomass and
| animal populations. Nailing down the culprit(s) is much
| harder because while there's a huge amount of spraying,
| there are far more chemicals to choose from. (The
| neonicotonoid family of insecticides seems like the best
| candidate, though:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid )
|
| and, btw, here's the insect decline follow-up study:
| https://www.dw.com/en/munich-study-confirms-severe-
| decline-i... 67% decline in ten years is TERRIFYING. Let's
| keep in mind that the SDG's include studying and preventing
| the potential impending collapse of the biosphere...
| tbrownaw wrote:
| International trade is cheaper and more predictable, so
| there's a lot more of it now.
|
| The economy is just _bigger_ than it used to be, which
| means it has more room for complexity to live in.
| tomrod wrote:
| Perhaps you and I have different definitions of
| complexity.
|
| I identify complexity as increased costs due to an
| increased action space. In 1920, Jim can wake up and sit
| in the house or go to work. In 2020, Jim can wake up and
| site in the house (fiddling with a phone) or go to work.
| In 1920, Royce has to take 2 hours to iron clothes with
| an iron heated in the hearth. In 2020, Royce pulls
| clothes out of the dryer and throws them on a hanger,
| reducing clothing maintenance for presentability by 75%.
|
| Cars in 1970 has simpler systems. Cars in 2020 have more
| complexity. The additional complexity lets Alice have a
| higher standard of living, meaning the time traded for
| maintaining the car herself versus taking to a mechanic
| is at worst an even trade, at best much less time to drop
| off.
|
| Just because something has grown doesn't mean the cost of
| actions have increased. Maybe its harder to corner the
| silver market due to the internet existing, but that
| really wasn't a desirable outcome anyhow.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| But complexity as related to policy design has nothing to
| do with the how much it costs any one individual to
| navigate the decision space available to them.
| jk_ra_el wrote:
| It's addressing the global hate problem. Just in the contrary (?)
| direction to what we'd [hopefully] like.
| nathias wrote:
| science does not determine urgency or priority of the problemes,
| this falls under consumption or politics
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I didn't know there is a comitee who describes what the world's
| most urgent problems are.
|
| I didn't even knew world is a thing. I believed we live in
| different countries and each and every one of us us is
| responsible for his or her well being.
| melagonster wrote:
| if there are not some scientists, people even can't understand
| how many creatures lived in one region.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Of course not. Everyone is chasing those sweet ad dollars.
| There's no money to be made in helping the poor if you live in a
| truly capitalistic society.
| tkk23 wrote:
| I wanted to tell you about Adam Smith's invisible hand [1]:
|
| >the concept has been captured to mean that the pursuit of
| individual interest leads to the general good.
|
| However, to my surprise, it seems to have been thought up as an
| argument against a global adjustment of income:
|
| >Smith was worried that if the movement of capital and the
| movement of goods (imports) were both free, the British
| bourgeoisie would invest abroad, to the detriment of Britain.
| To this, Smith came up with an argument according to which the
| British bourgeois would be biased according to their place of
| residence and would therefore make investments in the home
| country guided by an "invisible hand".
|
| Against this, I would like to argue that there is no need to
| help the poor beyond allowing them to access the global market.
| If you look at Fiverr and such, with internet access, everybody
| can participate in the global economy and take some of those
| sweet ad dollars.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| A lot of Smith's conjectures have proven to be inaccurate, it
| seems. Additionally nobody seems to read the whole text, and
| instead they suck decontextualized quotes from the text in
| support of their argument and typically do so to justify the
| capitalist modal:
|
| "Many right-wingers-in-love-with-large-corporations keep
| citing Adam Smith, famous patron saint of "capitalism," a
| word he never uttered, without reading him, using his ideas
| in a self-serving selective manner--ideas that he most
| certainly did not endorse in the form they are presented."
|
| -Nicholas Nassim Taleb, _Antifragile_
|
| David Graeber, in his book _Debt_ , points to some
| interesting work by an Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali[1] and this
| is mentioned in the article you linked - though it's nowhere
| near as thorough. This is of interest because there is, to my
| knowledge, a _considerable_ difference between Medieval
| Persia and Enlightenment Europe (to now) in both the domains
| of social landscape and moral paradigm. This is kind of an
| interesting parallel with the above point. Perhaps these
| 'components' aren't independent and require a great deal of
| structure _and_ maintenance - pulling them out of their
| context and plugging them in to a given civilization, it
| seems, does not work. And perhaps that 's evinced by the
| gross poverty suffered the world over.
|
| Taleb has an interesting point:
|
| "The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to
| rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering
| and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves.
| So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam
| Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow
| people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not
| by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. The strategy is,
| then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as
| many Black Swan opportunities as you can." -Nicholas Nassim
| Taleb, _The Black Swan_
|
| Having pointed that out, I hypothesize that even if it _were_
| as outlined by Taleb, discovery would be _random_ and that
| would lead to similar conditions mentioned in the article,
| but I would include in that hypothesis that the _rate_ of
| discovery would drastically increase.
|
| Of course, "research" in the common sense is _not_ conducted
| in the free market, it is _highly regulated_. Not only in the
| most common sense, by the government via financing
| selectivity, but also in more pernicious differential forms
| through institutions of higher learning. _One_ , in that they
| vet people in many ways (financial, ideological,
| 'intellectual') and _two_ , they withhold the tools and
| information generated which used public funding _and_ is
| dependent on a long lineage of information. As a tertiary
| point, I imagine it would be much more difficult, if not
| virtually impossible for some "layperson" (read: expert
| without a degree) to propose some new theory, or perhaps to
| do something as simple as publish a paper. This lays the land
| in a way that is truly bleak for an independent informal
| scientist, even bleaker for someone who wishes to be one -
| though the domains vary on that.
|
| I think this is _crucial_ to understanding the failures of
| the Western economic model as it relates to science.
|
| [1]: This is corroborated by Taleb.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| moelf wrote:
| >This is all according to a major new report published on
| Thursday 20 October 2023 by an international collaboration led by
| the University of Sussex,
|
| future is here!
| auaurora wrote:
| breck wrote:
| csv files are
| yawnxyz wrote:
| These "most urgent problems" aren't addressed because they're not
| urgent enough.
|
| I work with antimicrobial resistance and phage therapy, and
| everyone keeps complaining that regulatory frameworks aren't
| adapting to our needs fast enough, there's no funding, etc.
| That's all true, because there's no urgent need to move faster.
|
| COVID-19 came along and all those obstacles evaporated. If AMR
| actually killed 10M+ people a year, in Western / wealthy
| countries, you bet it would become an "urgent problem" real
| quick.
|
| I consider these "urgent" problems "aspirationally urgent" in the
| same way that "we should probably eat less red meat and drink
| less alcohol and go to the gym more" kind of urgent. It's in the
| pile of things we should be doing... but we put off.
|
| It's not "urgent" as in "step off of the train tracks or I'll get
| hit" kind of urgent.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation
| research is not focused on the world's most pressing problems
| including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying
| social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and
| wellbeing.
|
| Surprise surprise. Technical problems have technical solutions.
| Human problems have human solutions.
|
| Social problems (like racism) can't be solved with a calculator,
| and we need to stop trying to.
| ouid wrote:
| well, sure it is, just from the opposite direction.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I'll ask the other question: who determines what the world's most
| urgent problems are? Because I'm gonna guess that varies wildly
| depending on whom you ask.
| fithisux wrote:
| That's not news.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > Global science research serves the needs of the Global North,
| and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of
| companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new
| international study published today. As such, the authors find,
| science, technology and innovation research is not focused on the
| world's most pressing problems including taking climate action,
| addressing complex underlying social issues, tackling hunger and
| promoting good health and wellbeing.
|
| > Changing directions: Steering science, technology and
| innovation for the Sustainable Development found that research
| and innovation around the world is not focused on meeting the
| UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which are a framework set up
| to address and drive change across all areas of social justice
| and environmental issues.
|
| Is it really an improvement to have the unaccountable UN dictate
| research goals top-down rather than some private interests?
|
| IMO this sounds incredibly dystopian.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| netfl0 wrote:
| It would sound less dystopian if you just assimilate.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I have a strong dislike of what I call the "charity mindset" as I
| believe that humans all over the globe are truly equals.
|
| Our lives, trajectories and opportunities are obviously
| different, but I see that as historical lag that tend to solve
| themselves over time, charity is only marginally helpful and I
| think it has many second-order negative effects, especially
| corruption.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I'm extremely skeptical of worldviews that also conveniently
| allow one to avoid personal sacrifice. It is worth a lot of
| money to convince oneself that actually being generous with
| your wealth is bad.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.
|
| Charge royalties for teaching a man to fish, you can profit
| off feeding him for a lifetime.
| simonh wrote:
| A view not shared by many diseased starving children in war
| torn, natural disaster stricken developing nations.
|
| Having said that the most powerful force we have available to
| rectify such conditions is economic development based on
| liberal economics and the rule of law. Charity is analgesic,
| economic development is the cure.
| tsol wrote:
| People say that until they need charity to survive.
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's not an issue of innovation but rather about priorities in
| resource allocation - obviously the society does not consider
| that those are the world's most urgent problems, because it has
| not chosen to assign large quantities of funding towards them. If
| words say one thing but actions show another, then obviously the
| actions show the truth and the words are just lies; we the people
| have voted with our wallets that these problems are relatively
| irrelevant.
|
| And that's kind of what the article says in more diplomatic terms
| - if you really believe that sustained development is important,
| then you have to put your money where your mouth is and fund it.
| steve76 wrote:
| Frost1x wrote:
| No one said scientific research direction and progress didn't
| have bias. There's a large set of unknowns and it's dictated in
| part by the things people want to investigate, what people can
| get funded to investigate, how much progress already exists / how
| much promise seems to exist, and so on.
|
| If you look at health related research donations, you'll find a
| lot of money is poured into breast and prostate cancer. By most
| measures of overall impact, these diseases aren't all that
| critical but people care about their breasts and prostates.
| Funding agencies try to look at things a little more objectively
| but this is but one example of bias.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/6040435/als-ice-bucket-challen...
|
| Federal funding agencies themselves intentionally introduce bias
| by largely picking areas to fund that influence direction.
| Researchers work to spin whatever they really want to do in the
| context of where the money is but they need to eat and pay rent
| too.
| [deleted]
| nortonham wrote:
| Science, technology, and innovation won't address the worlds most
| urgent problems because the dominant global capitalist system is
| driven by profit over everything else.
| narcraft wrote:
| For reference, our world in data tracks progress on the SDGs:
| https://sdg-tracker.org/
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation
| research is not focused on the world's most pressing problems
| including taking climate action, addressing complex underlying
| social issues, tackling hunger and promoting good health and
| wellbeing._
|
| Should it be? Are those actually things that would benefit from
| additional expensive research?
|
| - we already know how to do fission power, and how to get rid of
| any waste (if the politicians wouldn't forbid it); there's a lot
| of research money already going to fusion power; both direct
| solar (photovoltaic) and indirect (wind) power are getting
| cheaper very rapidly as they're done more; hydro and geothermal
| are already things in places where they're a thing
|
| - social research isn't hampered by lack of funds, but by
| ideological uniformity of researchers and "I want to believe"
| (seriously, it's _amazing_ how much lasting real-world harm
| communism and more generally "the entire world is just a
| struggle between groups defined along such-and-such axis" cause
| ever time they escape from the ivory tower)
|
| - hunger is downstream of social issues
|
| - good health and wellbeing looks like it's mostly about
| infectious diseases? Aside from high-end research for new things
| (eg covid), that'd be either poverty (social issues) or trust in
| medical authorities (also social issues) or maybe outside medical
| folks being banned from places (social issues again)
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