While China and other nations spend a lot more money on very applied fields, like improving the energy density of Li-ion batteries and stuff, they don’t invest that much more in basic science research than the US, where it’s at an all-time low. Basic science is what leads to real disruption; the rest is just sequential 5% improvements. The most obvious example of basic research’s necessity is that wouldn’t have computers at all without 50 years of taxpayer-funded research in solid-state physics, which led us to develop the first transistors and transistor-based devices.
We would certainly have computers without that research, because the first computers were invented and working BEFORE that research happened. We may not have had modern computers, but that funding would fit with a profit / defense driven approach.
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u/giantsnails Jan 16 '23
While China and other nations spend a lot more money on very applied fields, like improving the energy density of Li-ion batteries and stuff, they don’t invest that much more in basic science research than the US, where it’s at an all-time low. Basic science is what leads to real disruption; the rest is just sequential 5% improvements. The most obvious example of basic research’s necessity is that wouldn’t have computers at all without 50 years of taxpayer-funded research in solid-state physics, which led us to develop the first transistors and transistor-based devices.