I guess I should clarify; I think that the pace of our advances is being bottlenecked by our current system because we (as nations) continue to exploit via a relentless focus on profit rather than try to actually spread knowledge and tech as best we can.

A free education system for the world would be incredibly easy to achieve with our current technology, but as nations we don't even try to aim for such a thing. As universities and other education institutions (publishing companies, etc), we have no incentive to truly aim for this in the current paradigm because it reverses profit growth (which, honestly, in the case of education, is pretty much all over-inflated anyway). There's no malicious intent, no conspiracy, and noble goals abound, but we're doing it at a snail's pace out of selfishness.

Individual people act much more nobly than large, well-established institutions. You see a rather strong trend of such large groups behaving closer to the "rational" approach from economic game theory, i.e. the one where self-preservation and gain are maximized first and foremost. If we just rely on our institutions to fix the problems at their root or think that the incidental improvements tied to increased tech and knowledge are being nurtured even half as well as they could be, I think we'd be gravely mistaken.

I think we both ultimately hope for the same outcome, but we clearly disagree on the extent to which our current society(/societies) effectively move towards those outcomes. I would personally like to see us double down on those things that help move us forward.

EDIT: Some examples of ways we're bullshitting ourselves and not doing half as much as we could, for your pleasure.

Princeton University's motto is "In the service of the nation and of all nations" (probably slightly off on the phrasing, sorry), and they have BILLIONS of dollars of endowment. If they and their alumni network took this motto seriously, with their knowledge of business, tech, and science, they could easily bring entire nations out of poverty by simply helping local people adapt tech in sustainable ways to provide food for their population more easily, institute strong education access, and more. Harvard, Oxford, all the other big names are in similar situations. They can do SO MUCH, but just do little projects while answering to their boards about making sure to keep the cash flow positive, keep the endowment growing, keep using alumni donations to pay for things where possible. It's bullshit.

Most large organized religions are also lazy about service. There are many who do seriously just aim at food and medical aid, but most are more interested in conversions and extra tithes than eliminating poverty. How many Christian missionaries of various sects are there around the world? Of them, how many devote their missions to actual service of everyone they can to show their religion through their works as opposed to just focusing on bringing people into the fold via preaching? Additionally, the old "teach a man to fish" concept comes into play here; giving food is good, but we need to be helping people help themselves as well so that they can thrive.

I know shit is very complicated and the answers aren't easy, but we can EASILY do better than this.

Your video, Nine Inch Snails, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Ew? Snails are much cuter than ants.

Did he just call J. Edgar Hoover a, "monstrous snail on steroids?"

Someone should show this video to the alpine resort staff. They seriously need to up the bucket seats and revise their delay timing between units. This should never be allowed to happen in the first place. The persons were in line of sights as he took off and i'm betting that ain't the first time a pussy goes at snail speed if that's the interval.

That being said, a sincere apology were in order, i'll bet he didn't want to ram her that bad, just to give a good nudge to say: "hey, you are dangerously slow!" He did have a certain douche in him, that's for sure, maybe the reason i disliked him from the start. That screaming part, that's what i would've done but after giving the impression of "there's high speed bullet coming, gtfo" just to stop them braking at every turn.. Then would've paused and let some gap form. You have to remember that you can't pause for long or you are the one slowing down the bunch..

All three are at fault here: the resort, the idiot in the front who's delaying 4 buckets and the douche himself.

To clarify, mantis shrimp don't create sonoluminescence in the same way that pistol shrimp do, by "squeezing their claws together". They create it when the smack things, like snails, really hard with their raptorial appendages.

Another interesting angle to think about: We have all of this scientific interest in sonoluminescence, and the host of cool hypotheses mentioned, not just because it's cool. ..but because, among other things, the Navy REALLY wants to understand the process of cavitation, and throws money at research on the subject. Why? because ship and submarine propellers also create cavitation, and they want to create war machines that are not loud and whose propellers last longer.

Your fanaticism is in not being able to see that I'm not arguing against you, nor really against your true hurdles (the guy in the video above who will never see the merit in slugs or snails regardless of your evidence). I'm arguing against the need to see the other side as a combatant and instead as a group that has a different expertise and perspective. The 2nd voice in a complex evaluation at a national or global level.

Science minded people can easily project the benefits of research and have a lot of faith in science's ability to provide exponential benefits in the future. It's because this IS the case that this is even a debate. What WE seem incapable of doing is accepting that even exponential benefits and aggregate benefits can fall prey to scope and mass.

People on the other side don't see the long term or the exponential benefits however because theyre not science minded. Their focus has likely been somewhere else like business, healthcare, politics, social issues, etc. and so they will know more about THOSE lasting impacts than science minded people (including you and I). Unless youre suggesting science minded people are more experts on these topics as well?

So when using the explicit or implicit "greater good" as a measure it can be surprising how things unfold. I say "greater good" like that because the idea that the future benefit of current research is worth current spending over immediate problems implies "the greater good of society over time" and if you disagree with that then we can discuss that some other day.

Let me assist you quickly in countering my own comments so you can see why I feel we're not on the same page. The counter to the arguments i've expressed would be that "greater good" evaluation from moment to moment is NOT the correct way to fund research. Because the value that the general population will put on immediate issues (or support through public policy/voting/opinion) will always carry more weight than solving problems in the future (the immediacy bias of humans) it can not be used as a forward thinking way of funding research.

In other words, we don't need to convince people of greater good or of researches value over other uses of resources. The reason is that the only way to properly do science research is as a ongoing project on a mass scale with inter-dependencies that are too complex for anyone but the most informed to evaluate.

Arguing dollars and cents through cost benefit analysis or some other method would ultimately work against research funding, particularly when arguing with business and fiscal spending experts that can play on immediate human need/emotion.

As an aside, i enjoy this discussion but I truly think that there is a miscommunication about what topics you and I are concerned about and what our exact stances on them are. Perhaps this is my fault for not making my stance or opinion more clear because I was not trying to chime in on the debate at large, but chime in on the way people were undertaking the debate.

I believe research funding is even more important than immediate needs and that the justification for them does not have to meet any "greater good" measures because, having studied economics in college, I'm aware of how bad our evaluation of non-concrete goods/services are (ie the evaluation of human life or environmental impacts expressed in real world terms like money).

Because I believe this, I have to accept that it is an IMPORTANT balance to have people as biased in the opposite direction around to offset my opinion and I welcome open discussion (ie without assuming they don't know what theyre talking about from the beginning) with those people because it helps me to feel that our society IS actually meeting the needs of both types of people as best it can.

What I don't do is raise my nose at them as being uninformed and incapable of understanding the issues at large because I believe they do, but with a different process all together which still has value. I also don't assume that my fact and science based arguments will always win out over arguments with immediacy and immediate human benefit (which are very difficult to put a value on).

I apologize for harping on greater good, but it was being thrown around and wielded (even if implicitly) as though it was a single edged sword when it is in fact a double edged sword when the issue is viewed with the proper scope. I also didn't feel the need to be yet another voice clamoring for science funding when the opposite side had little to no presence. Group think is dangerous and without voices to temper the enthusiasm it's easy to forget that debates have 2 sides and both typically have merit even if the other side wouldn't care to admit it.

@dirkdeagler7

You keep saying I'm being fanatic, or aggressive. Nothing in that quote could be construed as such. It was a direct response to the following quote from your previous post:

"Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs."

Presumably you would also argue that they would not be convinced by the need to study the intricacies of sea-slug gill withdrawal reflexes. Your posts seem to suggest that someone other than scientists (some vaguely defined "greater good") should be dictating which specific research aims should be funded. You suggest we should be "asking" these people if that money should be spent.

My contention is that scientists have spent their (already meager) funds with remarkable efficiency. My example was meant to illustrate that asking lay people what science should be funded is likely to have prevented some of the most critical research of the last century from ever having taken place. They don't understand the broader impacts of the research, and thus lack the expertise necessary to evaluate its merit. Sure, someone in pain will probably balk at those sorts of studies. However, if you ask them "are you glad someone did the necessary research to develop ____insert_medical_procedure here____," then I think you'll find they're happy their forefathers spent a few pennies studying snails. The fact is the reverse argument does not hold up. We all, scientists not withstanding, are experts in basic human needs and suffering. For many, scientists that's what drove us to the work. You act as though we can not evaluate the merit of research with respect to the larger picture. I think you're wrong. We do it all the time.

Also, I'm a bit insulted by your reference to people with medical bills, or family members fighting abroad as I fall into both categories. We all have our cross to bear. I don't think I'm alone in responding "I'll be fine, spend the money on the future."

I was attempting to say that people should not be fanatic on either side of this argument, as not all scientific research is the most efficient topic or use of resources and not all research deemed "insignificant" is actually insignificant.

The fact that people reacted so strongly to ANY criticism of current research or justifications for it shows just how fanatic some people are about the need to defend any and all research.

It's the nature of a scientist or science minded people to find value and merit in almost any scientific pursuit. But in a world of limited resources and with many other problems, we have to accept that there is an opportunity cost to any and all research, no matter how important.

For some the valuation of this opportunity cost will differ.

Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs.

Then watch them give you the look of "thats great but why do I care about that now?" and understand that they are part of the greater good too.

I'm sorry, but there are lots of bogus points in here. First of all, no one is arguing that the scope or impact of funded science should be anything less than great. The question is who should decide it. It seems the republicans want to take the awarding of scientific grants out of the hands of peer review, preferring that politicians micromanage the appropriation of research grants. Personally, I think that will lead to an end of basic science. Politicians are bound by their sponsors whom for the most part have an interest in public funding of applied rather than basic research.

This particular research is not about ecology or the environment, or some squishy bleeding heart first world problem. It's about the relative value of sexual and asexual reproduction. This particular snail can reproduce in either fashion, and it raises fundamental questions about when and why sexual reproduction would be preferred. It will likely lead to a deeper understanding of the genetic mechanisms that underlie sexual recombination, and how they relate to the success of progeny. Sounds like it's got some scope to me. The competition for grants is so stiff within science today that it's highly improbable that narrow research aims will be awarded. The fundamental question you need to ask yourself is "should basic science be funded, or should the only funding available be for applied science." My answer is an emphatic yes to basic science. It has proven its value beyond all doubt. Further, I personally feel that the applied work should be forced into the private sector as anything with a 5 year pay off will be funded naturally by the market anyway.

You also sing the praises of defense funding. I agree, many great discoveries have been funded by, say, DARPA. However, break it down by dollar spent. Because the money isn't allocated by peer review, but rather the whims of some brass, I personally don't feel it is efficiently allocated. Our impression when dealing with ONR (for example) is that they had absolutely no clue what they were interested in as a research aim, and had no clue what we were actually doing. They just thought we had some cool "high tech looking" stuff. Further, we as researchers didn't really care about their misguided scientific goals. It was sort of an unspoken understanding that we were doing cool stuff, and they had money to burn or else they wouldn't be getting anymore. All the while, the NIH is strapped with many of their institutes floating below a 10% award rate. Most of the reviewers would like to fund, say, 30-40% of the projects. Imagine if a quarter of that defense money was allocated by experts how much more efficiently it would be spent.

It's actually even more vital than that, the snails in question carry parasitic worms which cause deadly snail fever. I wish I were making that up.

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126031

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosomiasis

Also, this kid is on a roll, he was also on Science Friday this week.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/04/12/2013/the-teenage-troublemaker-fighting-for-science.html

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

snails are voracious crop pests and quick reproducers as well - I would think that figuring out their mating habits would be really important.

Steve Moore is a sensationalist doofus.

Dang Big Snail, taking away all the hard earned money Muricans slugged away for

I'd have rather just watched the snail porn.