EPTYes, by example in the video you are throwing money away by destroying windows but it doesn't consider any other factors. In an analogy to a space program, if someone started to break a lot of glass, eventually someone would get the idea to create glass that can't be broken by a rock which you wouldn't have otherwise and in the long run that could actually save you the amount of glass broken. By the same line of thought we could potentially gain a lot of technology and knowledge from a space program that we wouldn't have otherwise. How you value that compared to the amount of money spent will decide whether or not you think it's worth the cost.
On Space Funding - Page 3
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nam nam
Sweden4672 Posts
Yes, by example in the video you are throwing money away by destroying windows but it doesn't consider any other factors. In an analogy to a space program, if someone started to break a lot of glass, eventually someone would get the idea to create glass that can't be broken by a rock which you wouldn't have otherwise and in the long run that could actually save you the amount of glass broken. By the same line of thought we could potentially gain a lot of technology and knowledge from a space program that we wouldn't have otherwise. How you value that compared to the amount of money spent will decide whether or not you think it's worth the cost. | ||
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smokeyhoodoo
United States1021 Posts
On October 19 2012 01:35 oneofthem wrote: i don't know what reardon metal is. but in general technology has two effects. increased capital productivity, which means additional labor input has a scaling effect of more value generated, and also a displacement effect, where machines displace tasks done by humans. it is not a rule that the scaling effect is greater than the displacement effect particularly in resource limited situations, which we are indeed confronting shortly. with unlimited resources, the same labor force can be employed at better machines and turn out greater wealth. however, with resource limitations, you'll get displacement of the labor force and capital owners having much more of the product. the current problem is obviously not mechanization of farming, or even industrial production. it's mostly white collar automation of the administrative and IT kind. btw, it is not automatic that greater production leads to quality of life improvements for everyone. circulation has to occur. an increase in the production of nigerian oil fields does not necessarily improve life for nigerians. None of that really matters. You're still just outlining problems that are outweighed by the benefits. Its not even a matter of opinion as we live in a welfare society. Even the jobless live comfortably. Stuff being produced more efficiently and at less cost is objectively good, regardless of social ramifications. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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smokeyhoodoo
United States1021 Posts
On October 19 2012 01:45 oneofthem wrote: seems like you are at some sort of youtube economics 101 stage i'll say this is pointless. You're arguing against technological progress. Think about that for a moment. No matter how much you try to complicate the issue that's all you're doing at the end of the day. Edit: And you're arguing against economic growth. You're quite the economist. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
when you stop doodling with simplistic models and look at more complex, real world situations not everything is BAD or GOOD. | ||
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smokeyhoodoo
United States1021 Posts
On October 19 2012 02:07 oneofthem wrote: i merely pointed out very uncontroversial problems associated with automation. it's not arguing against anything. when you stop doodling with simplistic models and look at more complex, real world situations not everything is BAD or GOOD. Don't patronize me, I acknowledged that some are hurt but on average it is beneficial. That's objective fact. If it resulted in increased income disparity, which is basically the extent of the social problem you outlined and somewhat doubtful as I think new jobs would come into existence based off of history, it still doesn't matter because of our redistributive society. It would result in increased prosperity under all scenarios. Saying you weren't arguing against anything is false. You told someone to worry about it and that people would have trouble paying their rent, when in reality people should only look forward to it. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
you think he should be looking forward to losing his job to robots or competing against workers with no rights? | ||
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smokeyhoodoo
United States1021 Posts
On October 19 2012 01:40 nam nam wrote: Yes, by example in the video you are throwing money away by destroying windows but it doesn't consider any other factors. In an analogy to a space program, if someone started to break a lot of glass, eventually someone would get the idea to create glass that can't be broken by a rock which you wouldn't have otherwise and in the long run that could actually save you the amount of glass broken. By the same line of thought we could potentially gain a lot of technology and knowledge from a space program that we wouldn't have otherwise. How you value that compared to the amount of money spent will decide whether or not you think it's worth the cost. That is not the sole consideration. A straight investment into research of practical technologies would lead to greater results for less money than relying on the space program to hit them by chance, or at least it is overwhelmingly likely. By some fluke the space program could produce something utterly revolutionary, but so could investment in other things. That's the point. The space program needs to be justified according to its own merit. Learning about space. Its not for anything else. I agree with the OP that we're simply launching money into space. I don't agree with him that that's not worth it, at least not necessarily. The ISS was a massive waste of money as its academic value is severely limited yet it cost a fortune. | ||
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smokeyhoodoo
United States1021 Posts
On October 19 2012 02:23 oneofthem wrote: sigh. what? the guy should be worried for further wage erosion unless he finds a career that's automation proof (or immigrant proof) you think he should be looking forward to losing his job to robots or competing against workers with no rights? Is the OP in some sort of situation in which this kind of drastic effect would take place? If we're speaking of the general population then I think wages will keep going up, in spite of the factors you outlined, but perhaps more slowly, while in the meantime there will be an unprecedented drop in the cost of living more than compensating for it. Yes, a small number of people would be hit hard, have to reeducate themselves and completely change their career. So what? Should they be protected at the expense of others? No one owes them anything. In the long run it could still end up making even those people better off. What is wrong with a foreigner having a job, and why should consumers pay more for goods, just so someone can be protected from competition they've never had in their lives? Edit: But really I shouldn't be condoning your characterization of this as something new, that only now the world is facing. These things have always been around. Its called economic growth. | ||
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revy
United States1524 Posts
1) Motivates kids into STEM. Kids think space is cool (lets be honest, so do I) which encourages them into the sciences. 2) The challenges presented by space are unlike the challenges on earth. When designing things that go into space, there are many differences between designing things for earth. The stringent requirements encourage unique solutions, which are ultimately shown to have useful applications on earth. In this regard it's not a lot different that military spending. Military requirements are strict, engineering around the requirements helps improve the work performed on commercial systems. 3) Space is a laboratory on a whole different scale. Think for a minute how useful GPS is -- so much of our lives are now dependent on GPS. GPS falls flat on its face if you don't apply General Relativistic corrections. GPS would be out of our reach without knowledge of GR. GR was proven by astronomers, and hints to the theory of GR were provided by astronomers. As strange as it may sound, someday the things which impact your life will be made possible because someone made precise measurements of the accretion disc of a black hole. Investment in basic research is very rarely a bad idea. | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
Your framework is fundamentally incompatible with an answer that will satisfy you, or even mollify you. Science proponents are in the habit of having to tell people constantly why it's a "good investment" to fund research. There are so many ways you can slice this it doesn't really matter, and I'm sure you've heard a lot of good ones, and you are probably partially persuaded that funding research can have a lot of great payoffs that result in improved economic wellbeing or quality of life. But that's not the point of science. I think this is where the root of the problem is for you? You don't understand why people are doing something "pointless" off of your back. You don't value understanding the universe. If you feel like that last statement rings true, you need to evaluate your perspective in multiple ways. First of all, your amazing life in the 21st century is made possible only by scientific inquiry. Literally everything around you in your everyday life is made possible by countless discoveries that were made in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake without precondition of practical application. But of course if you know more you can do more, so even if the discovery wasn't motivated by materialistic ambition it still fulfills it. Do the fruits of scientific inquiry always change people's lives? No, not all of them. Some of them may not ever have much practical effect. But some of them empower huge leaps forward. And everything in between. It usually takes time for new knowledge to become new comfort. Perhaps it rankles that right now part of your money essentially just disappears. Nothing comes of it. But how do you know? If you wanted you could trace percentages of your pennies that go to various research programs, and inevitably you'd find out that you contributed to some breakthrough that you value. It might take time, though, to see something tangible, to hold progress in your hand. Though indeed, do you buy seeds and plant an orchard expecting to eat fruit that afternoon? Later that week? You won't be eating or selling that fruit for years, but you still plant orchards. So, from a practical standpoint, science is useful to you. But perhaps more importantly, there is something else to consider. What does your time here on Earth mean to you? You mention that there are better causes than science that need your money. Why do you care about these things? Say you want a comfortable life, okay. But then why pay for the education of children? So you obviously care about other people, and the future. Science is a part of this. A huge part of this! And it only gets a smidgen of our budget. Our federal spending on healthcare dwarfs our spending on research. How much good is that doing? (It's a tough question, let's not dwell on it. I won't even bring up defense spending.) Certainly we should fund scientific research, and a host of other things. You can quibble about how much in proportion but almost everyone would agree that the answer should be something roughly like "enough so that we're making progress in all areas". Even with the limited funding we provide, science has great success. In part, this is because knowledge multiplies. The history of science is littered with unforeseen connections and unexplored roads crisscrossed at the horizon. The whole point is that you can't know what you might find out until you start trying to find stuff out. The universe is quite literally filled with endless surprises. + Show Spoiler [the couch] + It's like digging under your couch cushions, except it's not your couch, it's a couch you've never seen before in a place you've never been. Anything could be in there. Sometimes you find lint, or a hairclip. Sometimes you find a nickel. Sometimes you find $1000. Sometimes you find a battery, except you've never seen a battery before and you don't know what it is or does. Sometimes you find a flashlight. At some point you realize "holy shit the battery fits in the flashlight" and you fumble into turning it on and "HOLY SHIT it makes light". Whether you found the battery or the flashlight first, you wouldn't have any idea you should be looking for the other object. A REALLY smart person might see some clues but that wouldn't even help you dig in the couch any better. A working flashlight might come in handy though, needless say it's awesome and will be nice to have anyway. And having made that first great find, of course you're going to go couch diving some more. Back to what you're going to do with your life. That's a heavy question, sure. Even if you don't take it too seriously though, you can think about "well I'll hang out for a while, try to make a difference maybe, check on out at some point". I don't think anyone reasonable would hold that against you; most people would say right on man. Most of us relate in this way. Depending on your perspective, you'll have a different idea of making a difference. I invite you to push the boundary of your perspective, even just a little, and see if it changes how you look at it. I'm thinking of questions like, "Okay let's say we solve world hunger. Great. What now?" I think you'll find that you quickly reach a point where you say, "Hmm. I dunno." Maybe with an attached "I need to know more, I should look that up." And then it gets to the point where it's "Huh no clear answer, we should find out about that." | ||
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EdSlyB
Portugal1621 Posts
On October 18 2012 22:53 Twinkle Toes wrote: But wouldn't missions be more efficient if we wait longer when we already have the advanced technology (like better combustion, navigation system, materials) so that we waste less? We have to make challanges today so discoveries are made. These discoveries will enable the technologic advancement in the future not the other way around. You don't advance technology just by mere chance. You have to have some challange to tackle and you need time and money to work things out. If we don't give our scientist something to make they scratch their heads, if we don't give them work conditions, if we don't give them money so they can try crazy theories, the future WILL be late to the party. I keep referring 'we' but I'm not even from NA. But I understand that what NASA and other scientific associations do are way ahead of a flag or a country. It's Mankind's future that is at stake. | ||
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TotalNightmare
Germany139 Posts
A apparently very little known fact about the US is that they, in fact do spent (speaking in relative amounts here) the same amount as european countries on education. You may find this completely unbelievable because of a more well known fact: The american education system sucks(apart from universities that is). Both can however be explained by looking at where the money goes. If I am not completely misinformed - which I rarely am - the money goes to a few people in high positions, one example being (and this is taken from memory) the head teacher from a school in NY, who recieves more than 700.000 $ each year. Another example being one state that introduced iPads instead of Books, a desicion that probably already wasted amounts of money that would make you feint. PS: While this is probably quite off topic, just keep in mind that the problem may not be the amount of money spent but rather the distribution of it. Just look at the US army. | ||
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Chargelot
2275 Posts
What about 1000 years? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000,000? What will matter more then: that we learned to terraform other planetary bodies, or that you got proper medical attention given to your broken arm? And why should education get any budget if we are just going to be educating people who will work in positions that require no extensive education? If you want education to mean something, there must be places for the educated to collect, combine their efforts, and produce something totally new to the world. One such example of a place is NASA. | ||
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semantics
10040 Posts
On October 19 2012 02:46 revy wrote: Why NASA? Several reasons: 1) Motivates kids into STEM. Kids think space is cool (lets be honest, so do I) which encourages them into the sciences. 2) The challenges presented by space are unlike the challenges on earth. When designing things that go into space, there are many differences between designing things for earth. The stringent requirements encourage unique solutions, which are ultimately shown to have useful applications on earth. In this regard it's not a lot different that military spending. Military requirements are strict, engineering around the requirements helps improve the work performed on commercial systems. 3) Space is a laboratory on a whole different scale. Think for a minute how useful GPS is -- so much of our lives are now dependent on GPS. GPS falls flat on its face if you don't apply General Relativistic corrections. GPS would be out of our reach without knowledge of GR. GR was proven by astronomers, and hints to the theory of GR were provided by astronomers. As strange as it may sound, someday the things which impact your life will be made possible because someone made precise measurements of the accretion disc of a black hole. Investment in basic research is very rarely a bad idea. 3 things proven to grow an econ is, investments into infrastructure, investments in education and investments into scientific research. Nasa is really great at doing scientific research, nasa's pr is really poor at least in adversing what they have contributed to society over the years, whole industries have come from nasa's research and it's not just dealing with things in space or flight. http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2011/pdf/Spinoff2011.pdf | ||
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OldManSenex
United States130 Posts
We Stopped Dreaming Episode 1: We Stopped Dreaming Episode 2: | ||
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
On October 19 2012 02:49 EatThePath wrote: @OP: Your framework is fundamentally incompatible with an answer that will satisfy you, or even mollify you. Science proponents are in the habit of having to tell people constantly why it's a "good investment" to fund research. There are so many ways you can slice this it doesn't really matter, and I'm sure you've heard a lot of good ones, and you are probably partially persuaded that funding research can have a lot of great payoffs that result in improved economic wellbeing or quality of life. But that's not the point of science. I think this is where the root of the problem is for you? You don't understand why people are doing something "pointless" off of your back. You don't value understanding the universe. If you feel like that last statement rings true, you need to evaluate your perspective in multiple ways. First of all, your amazing life in the 21st century is made possible only by scientific inquiry. Literally everything around you in your everyday life is made possible by countless discoveries that were made in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake without precondition of practical application. But of course if you know more you can do more, so even if the discovery wasn't motivated by materialistic ambition it still fulfills it. Do the fruits of scientific inquiry always change people's lives? No, not all of them. Some of them may not ever have much practical effect. But some of them empower huge leaps forward. And everything in between. It usually takes time for new knowledge to become new comfort. Perhaps it rankles that right now part of your money essentially just disappears. Nothing comes of it. But how do you know? If you wanted you could trace percentages of your pennies that go to various research programs, and inevitably you'd find out that you contributed to some breakthrough that you value. It might take time, though, to see something tangible, to hold progress in your hand. Though indeed, do you buy seeds and plant an orchard expecting to eat fruit that afternoon? Later that week? You won't be eating or selling that fruit for years, but you still plant orchards. So, from a practical standpoint, science is useful to you. But perhaps more importantly, there is something else to consider. What does your time here on Earth mean to you? You mention that there are better causes than science that need your money. Why do you care about these things? Say you want a comfortable life, okay. But then why pay for the education of children? So you obviously care about other people, and the future. Science is a part of this. A huge part of this! And it only gets a smidgen of our budget. Our federal spending on healthcare dwarfs our spending on research. How much good is that doing? (It's a tough question, let's not dwell on it. I won't even bring up defense spending.) Certainly we should fund scientific research, and a host of other things. You can quibble about how much in proportion but almost everyone would agree that the answer should be something roughly like "enough so that we're making progress in all areas". Even with the limited funding we provide, science has great success. In part, this is because knowledge multiplies. The history of science is littered with unforeseen connections and unexplored roads crisscrossed at the horizon. The whole point is that you can't know what you might find out until you start trying to find stuff out. The universe is quite literally filled with endless surprises. + Show Spoiler [the couch] + It's like digging under your couch cushions, except it's not your couch, it's a couch you've never seen before in a place you've never been. Anything could be in there. Sometimes you find lint, or a hairclip. Sometimes you find a nickel. Sometimes you find $1000. Sometimes you find a battery, except you've never seen a battery before and you don't know what it is or does. Sometimes you find a flashlight. At some point you realize "holy shit the battery fits in the flashlight" and you fumble into turning it on and "HOLY SHIT it makes light". Whether you found the battery or the flashlight first, you wouldn't have any idea you should be looking for the other object. A REALLY smart person might see some clues but that wouldn't even help you dig in the couch any better. A working flashlight might come in handy though, needless say it's awesome and will be nice to have anyway. And having made that first great find, of course you're going to go couch diving some more. Back to what you're going to do with your life. That's a heavy question, sure. Even if you don't take it too seriously though, you can think about "well I'll hang out for a while, try to make a difference maybe, check on out at some point". I don't think anyone reasonable would hold that against you; most people would say right on man. Most of us relate in this way. Depending on your perspective, you'll have a different idea of making a difference. I invite you to push the boundary of your perspective, even just a little, and see if it changes how you look at it. I'm thinking of questions like, "Okay let's say we solve world hunger. Great. What now?" I think you'll find that you quickly reach a point where you say, "Hmm. I dunno." Maybe with an attached "I need to know more, I should look that up." And then it gets to the point where it's "Huh no clear answer, we should find out about that." Well put! Cience is an end in and of itself, but, as it turns out, it is also one of the greatest long-term investment any developed society can make, even if it can never know with precision how it will better its citizens' lives. | ||
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VaultDweller
Romania132 Posts
Especially since one of your questions was about how can looking for yet unreachable stars or planets be of any use in the foreseeable future. ( For those too lazy to watch it talks about how the algorithm initially used to find stars in fuzzy images is applied to scanning for breast cancer, noting that different parts of science interact in often surprising ways and therefore none should be neglected ) To be honest I don't really care who invests in a space program as long as somebody does. We have ( if we don't screw ourselves over) a potentially infinite number of people on a finite planet. Space needs to happen. Saying that it's the least of our concerns right now is similar to people saying that we can pollute the hell out of the planet since we won't be alive to have to face the consequences. | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
I also wanted to say thank you to the OP for bothering to make a thread to discuss the question rather than just moving on with a closed mind. That's really important!  | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On October 19 2012 02:45 smokeyhoodoo wrote: Is the OP in some sort of situation in which this kind of drastic effect would take place? If we're speaking of the general population then I think wages will keep going up, in spite of the factors you outlined, but perhaps more slowly, while in the meantime there will be an unprecedented drop in the cost of living more than compensating for it. Yes, a small number of people would be hit hard, have to reeducate themselves and completely change their career. So what? Should they be protected at the expense of others? No one owes them anything. In the long run it could still end up making even those people better off. What is wrong with a foreigner having a job, and why should consumers pay more for goods, just so someone can be protected from competition they've never had in their lives? Edit: But really I shouldn't be condoning your characterization of this as something new, that only now the world is facing. These things have always been around. Its called economic growth. let me see those libertarian job retraining programs. | ||
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