This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I am heavily sympathetic to your concern, but research, especially military-related research (which is 40% of federal basic research), is not an area where we have much of an alternate mechanism, for reasons I outlined here. It's not like business, where a dispassionate economist can sit back and confidently believe that the market will appropriately determine winners/losers with showers of cash/bankruptcy, depending on whether they ultimately provide value to the market, in this case comforted by the fact that they are putting their own skin in the game.
Instead, we have a situation where your military is very very rarely 'tested' (in fact, ideally it is very rare). You very rarely get actual feedback. When you do, you do not have access to the counterfactual of what would have happened if you had invested differently. Yet, you almost certainly have to invest in this in the modern world. Your adversaries are investing, and from what I've read, the adversaries of the US are investing very specifically to counter existing US systems (and near-term planned systems they they've learned about via espionage). If you simply stop and they do not, it is highly likely that they will counter your systems, push further to develop overmatch systems, and proceed to be able to conquer you and yours.
As such, your problem is to determine how to invest. This is a wicked problem. As I said in the linked comment:
Those experts will have skin in the game. The general who thinks airplanes will change the nature of warfare? Probably part of whatever cluster of folks who became the Army Air Force. They were probably personally invested in aircraft. If their ideas were embraced, they were likely to be the people leading those efforts, in charge of said investments. If their ideas were not embraced, they were likely to be sidelined, a bit player in comparison to whoever else's theory of military progression was embraced. Those other people, with other beliefs, telling you that airplanes are just toys? Yeah, they have skin in the game, too. They think that there's some other thing (probably in their portfolio) that is going to be dominant in the next fight. Who do you believe? How do you invest? Do you just cut them all off because they have skin in the game? As discussed, that's probably not going to lead to better results, and you probably couldn't measure it with respect to the counterfactual even if it did.
It is fundamentally a wicked hard problem, especially because the nature of warfare is anti-inductive (as soon as you find and exploit something that seems to work, your adversaries notice and respond accordingly). Trudging along and trying to just make the best decisions for your research investments at each point in time, knowing that everyone who is trying to convince you of their vision of the future probably has skin in the game, is probably the best you can do. At least, I don't really see a better way to proceed. I also don't think the right response to realizing that there doesn't seem to be any good options other than trudging is to just give up and quit, either. I think that probably leads to China just countering all US systems and dominating militarily.
Isn’t SV getting pretty heavy into military and doing a great job eg Palantir
I believe so. I don't see what the relevance of that really is, though? Is your point that now we should be more suspicious of what they're saying, because they have skin in the military funding game?
My point is we have an alternative to your military research ie SV
Anti-inductive system. You don't know where the developments are going to go. It's great the SV is doing a good job ATM. Their efforts are within the house of "trudging along", not a replacement for it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link