I used to work at a 'non-profit research institute' on scientific research projects for EPA, DOD and DOE. Often, the overall premise of a project was just insane, or something that everyone on the project knew was not going to work. It never mattered. We were paid to do something that might look like science to someone on the outside. Our reports always confirmed that the premise on which the funding body was based was, in fact, correct. There was never a hypothesis, just the agenda of the people who paid our bills. We often referred to it as scientific welfare. I got out of that and into the world of start ups. The simple goal of making things that people will want by the application of science feels a lot more honest to me.
I have so many questions. The world you describe is not one I have any familiarity with; I only know the version from inside academia. And yet it’s exactly the same: no hypotheses, all agenda. WHO was writing the grants you were presumably the beneficiaries of, though? Federal grants require at least one Principal Investigator, and it used to be the case that PIs required not just a terminal degree in a relevant field, but also a position at a university…but maybe that is what has changed? A researcher at a “non-profit research institute” can be a PI too? Were you guys generating the ideas, such as they were, for the grants? If not, who was?
I was mostly in the lab and the upper level PhD's did all of the contract stuff, so I was not directly involved with that side. What I do know is that the funding agencies for some of the work I did were DOE, DOD and EPA. A friend of mine in an adjacent group got funding from NIH and USAID. On occasion, I was asked to write sections of proposals which would describe how we would approach and complete a section of the research project. Often, we had a 'cost share' agreement with a university, and some of those universities were Harvard, UT, UoM, Cal Tech, etc. I think the PI was usually someone with a research group at a university. As I understand it, a university would partner with us to write the proposal. Often, the arrangement was that they did the part that they were good at and we did the thing we were good at-- polymer chemistry and instrument fabrication in my case. Some of it was great fun, and polymers I formulated were able to protect microsensors that were used in oil wells and on the backs of endangered snails in Tahiti. But some of the projects I worked on were never going to work, and we had to pretend they would. To be fair, some of that is just the nature of upstream research, but some was grift. There are definitely some research papers out there that I wish I hadn't been part of.
Thanks for the background. I wonder about the part of your story where you say that researchers at the universities "did the part that they were good at." That is, I wonder what, in fact, they are good at anymore, besides knowing the system and how to win within its rules.
I also know that you're right, but object to the inevitability of "some of that is just the nature of upstream research." I don't think that it has to be this way. And I have to believe that you are relatively rare, having both seen what was happening and having had the motivation to leave. The longer people exist in a system like that, the more entrenched they become.
It was one of the true strengths of Evergreen that science faculty were not required to be constantly applying for grants in order to stay within the good graces of the administration. I even said that "I don't want to play that game" during my interview, and still got the job, even with two excellent scientists who were regular recipients of big federal grants on the hiring committee. Perhaps this is another case of zero being a special number, then. Evergreen had to be destroyed.
I am, of course, curious about the backs of the endangered snails in Tahiti.
"Data do not come first in science. Observation and hypothesis come first. Absent that, data are nothing more than numbers. Numbers are easy to manipulate. When data come first, data can quickly turn into propaganda."
Amen. As has often been said, there are lies, there are damned lies, and then there's statistics. There's a bunch of numbers out there, measuring pretty nearly everything. You tell me the conclusion you want, and I will find you the numbers that 'prove' it.
In my 70+ years I have thought a lot about the Fermi Paradox. For years I thought that increasingly advanced technologies have the effect of making individuals less fit so that by the time that they are capable of exploiting their whole solar systems they have lost the will to do so. But I think that there is another more threatening issue. The more advanced technologies that are relied upon, the less capable individuals are of doing without them. I can make a sling and I believe that I could make a bow if I had a good knife, but could I feed myself with one? I know of several ways to make fire but could I do so without years of regular practice? I grew up racing motorcycles and twisting wrenches but don't know that I could even change the spark plugs on my new truck. I am beginning to believe technology can be a civilizational trap. Even if we manage to avoid destroying the planet can we survive our reliance on technologies that ever fewer of us can really manipulate and maintain? Or is the Fermi Paradox merely our conceit that we understand how common a technological civilization should be? Can we appreciate our own uniqueness in the universe without being equally appreciative of our own unlikelyness?
Yes, and I was glad to see the Hera Mission begin yesterday when SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched Hera into orbit. Postmodernists didn't do that; nor did technocrats. Instead it seems they'd rather -along with "bad ones" in our own government- squash Elon Musk and his projects in order to retain their control over the fake science and fake history lessons (to mention a few) they dole out daily.
Godspeed, Hera, defender of our planet. You're a worthy one.
The underlying assumption that interstellar travel is possible is not supported by the evidence we have. The energy costs of escaping normal earth gravity are astronomic. Solar radiation, unfiltered by the atmosphere, is devastating to biological lifeforms. And, although it's theoretically possible for a spacecraft to travel through the void without catastrophic damage from random bits of meteoric sand and gravel the odds against are overwhelming.
We need science, absolutely. But is it the very thing you are calling for: a firm grip on reality and paying attention to the available evidence, not post-modernism, that is the determining factor in resolving Femi's paradox.
The light-speed barrier precludes interstellar travel for any but the simplest and most rugged machines. I believe the best place to search for ET's is our own asteroid belt. Imagine a machine launched to a neighboring star by solar sail that seeks a source of raw materials, solar energy and microgravity. It could set itself up on a likely asteroid, manufacture copies of itself and launch them to nearby stars where they continue the process. Even at solar sail speeds such a machine could fill the galaxy in 100,000 years or less. That is what we should be looking for.
I'm reminded of some comments on post-modernism that I came across a while back that, for me, also connects it to transhumanism:
"To stress that humans are a specific kind of animal, that they are influenced by genetic information and that there was no right or wrong for the billions of years it took life forms to evolve on earth is a deeply suspicious notion for postmodernists: It restricts the (allegedly) unlimited freedom of humans to shape their destiny. Humans are believed by postmodernists to be utterly different from other animals—an idea that is not easily compatible with that of evolution. Such Weltanschauung has been labeled 'secular creationism' because of the dislike for evolutionary theory similar to that found in religious creationism where evolution is unacceptable because it 'demotes' humans to the status of beasts. As diverse as these secular and religious discourses may be, they are united in their dislike for Darwinism and follow the moralistic fallacy." —German anthropologist Volker Sommer, from his contribution to "Infanticide by Males and Its Implications," Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000
Excellent essay—another “keeper.” Since you are talking about the cosmos, your readers might be interested in a series of posts in The Menelaus Gambit, the second of which is:
By draining off entropy, the cold dark night sky allows information to rise, from which we can build so much that, under capitalism, it pays to “do good to those who hate you.” Marxism, fascism, and other big-government socialisms are fundamentally wrong because they do not recognize that capitalism can keep creating new information without big government involvement, and therefore can keep creating new and better products.
I used to work at a 'non-profit research institute' on scientific research projects for EPA, DOD and DOE. Often, the overall premise of a project was just insane, or something that everyone on the project knew was not going to work. It never mattered. We were paid to do something that might look like science to someone on the outside. Our reports always confirmed that the premise on which the funding body was based was, in fact, correct. There was never a hypothesis, just the agenda of the people who paid our bills. We often referred to it as scientific welfare. I got out of that and into the world of start ups. The simple goal of making things that people will want by the application of science feels a lot more honest to me.
I have so many questions. The world you describe is not one I have any familiarity with; I only know the version from inside academia. And yet it’s exactly the same: no hypotheses, all agenda. WHO was writing the grants you were presumably the beneficiaries of, though? Federal grants require at least one Principal Investigator, and it used to be the case that PIs required not just a terminal degree in a relevant field, but also a position at a university…but maybe that is what has changed? A researcher at a “non-profit research institute” can be a PI too? Were you guys generating the ideas, such as they were, for the grants? If not, who was?
(Like I said, I have so many questions.)
I was mostly in the lab and the upper level PhD's did all of the contract stuff, so I was not directly involved with that side. What I do know is that the funding agencies for some of the work I did were DOE, DOD and EPA. A friend of mine in an adjacent group got funding from NIH and USAID. On occasion, I was asked to write sections of proposals which would describe how we would approach and complete a section of the research project. Often, we had a 'cost share' agreement with a university, and some of those universities were Harvard, UT, UoM, Cal Tech, etc. I think the PI was usually someone with a research group at a university. As I understand it, a university would partner with us to write the proposal. Often, the arrangement was that they did the part that they were good at and we did the thing we were good at-- polymer chemistry and instrument fabrication in my case. Some of it was great fun, and polymers I formulated were able to protect microsensors that were used in oil wells and on the backs of endangered snails in Tahiti. But some of the projects I worked on were never going to work, and we had to pretend they would. To be fair, some of that is just the nature of upstream research, but some was grift. There are definitely some research papers out there that I wish I hadn't been part of.
Thanks for the background. I wonder about the part of your story where you say that researchers at the universities "did the part that they were good at." That is, I wonder what, in fact, they are good at anymore, besides knowing the system and how to win within its rules.
I also know that you're right, but object to the inevitability of "some of that is just the nature of upstream research." I don't think that it has to be this way. And I have to believe that you are relatively rare, having both seen what was happening and having had the motivation to leave. The longer people exist in a system like that, the more entrenched they become.
It was one of the true strengths of Evergreen that science faculty were not required to be constantly applying for grants in order to stay within the good graces of the administration. I even said that "I don't want to play that game" during my interview, and still got the job, even with two excellent scientists who were regular recipients of big federal grants on the hiring committee. Perhaps this is another case of zero being a special number, then. Evergreen had to be destroyed.
I am, of course, curious about the backs of the endangered snails in Tahiti.
"Data do not come first in science. Observation and hypothesis come first. Absent that, data are nothing more than numbers. Numbers are easy to manipulate. When data come first, data can quickly turn into propaganda."
Amen. As has often been said, there are lies, there are damned lies, and then there's statistics. There's a bunch of numbers out there, measuring pretty nearly everything. You tell me the conclusion you want, and I will find you the numbers that 'prove' it.
In my 70+ years I have thought a lot about the Fermi Paradox. For years I thought that increasingly advanced technologies have the effect of making individuals less fit so that by the time that they are capable of exploiting their whole solar systems they have lost the will to do so. But I think that there is another more threatening issue. The more advanced technologies that are relied upon, the less capable individuals are of doing without them. I can make a sling and I believe that I could make a bow if I had a good knife, but could I feed myself with one? I know of several ways to make fire but could I do so without years of regular practice? I grew up racing motorcycles and twisting wrenches but don't know that I could even change the spark plugs on my new truck. I am beginning to believe technology can be a civilizational trap. Even if we manage to avoid destroying the planet can we survive our reliance on technologies that ever fewer of us can really manipulate and maintain? Or is the Fermi Paradox merely our conceit that we understand how common a technological civilization should be? Can we appreciate our own uniqueness in the universe without being equally appreciative of our own unlikelyness?
"Giant space rocks are a credible threat."
Yes, and I was glad to see the Hera Mission begin yesterday when SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched Hera into orbit. Postmodernists didn't do that; nor did technocrats. Instead it seems they'd rather -along with "bad ones" in our own government- squash Elon Musk and his projects in order to retain their control over the fake science and fake history lessons (to mention a few) they dole out daily.
Godspeed, Hera, defender of our planet. You're a worthy one.
The underlying assumption that interstellar travel is possible is not supported by the evidence we have. The energy costs of escaping normal earth gravity are astronomic. Solar radiation, unfiltered by the atmosphere, is devastating to biological lifeforms. And, although it's theoretically possible for a spacecraft to travel through the void without catastrophic damage from random bits of meteoric sand and gravel the odds against are overwhelming.
We need science, absolutely. But is it the very thing you are calling for: a firm grip on reality and paying attention to the available evidence, not post-modernism, that is the determining factor in resolving Femi's paradox.
The light-speed barrier precludes interstellar travel for any but the simplest and most rugged machines. I believe the best place to search for ET's is our own asteroid belt. Imagine a machine launched to a neighboring star by solar sail that seeks a source of raw materials, solar energy and microgravity. It could set itself up on a likely asteroid, manufacture copies of itself and launch them to nearby stars where they continue the process. Even at solar sail speeds such a machine could fill the galaxy in 100,000 years or less. That is what we should be looking for.
I'm reminded of some comments on post-modernism that I came across a while back that, for me, also connects it to transhumanism:
"To stress that humans are a specific kind of animal, that they are influenced by genetic information and that there was no right or wrong for the billions of years it took life forms to evolve on earth is a deeply suspicious notion for postmodernists: It restricts the (allegedly) unlimited freedom of humans to shape their destiny. Humans are believed by postmodernists to be utterly different from other animals—an idea that is not easily compatible with that of evolution. Such Weltanschauung has been labeled 'secular creationism' because of the dislike for evolutionary theory similar to that found in religious creationism where evolution is unacceptable because it 'demotes' humans to the status of beasts. As diverse as these secular and religious discourses may be, they are united in their dislike for Darwinism and follow the moralistic fallacy." —German anthropologist Volker Sommer, from his contribution to "Infanticide by Males and Its Implications," Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000
Excellent essay—another “keeper.” Since you are talking about the cosmos, your readers might be interested in a series of posts in The Menelaus Gambit, the second of which is:
The Cold Dark Night Sky, Entropy, and Us
https://ernestdlieberman.substack.com/p/the-cold-dark-night-sky-entropy-and
By draining off entropy, the cold dark night sky allows information to rise, from which we can build so much that, under capitalism, it pays to “do good to those who hate you.” Marxism, fascism, and other big-government socialisms are fundamentally wrong because they do not recognize that capitalism can keep creating new information without big government involvement, and therefore can keep creating new and better products.
And, for the astronomy and physics underlying the cold dark night sky: https://ernestdlieberman.substack.com/p/our-expanding-universe-the-cold-dark
Related -I think
How often does the Nobel prize for physics go to work in virtual space?