China Leads Research in 90% of Crucial Technologies - a Dramatic Shift this Century (nature.com) 135
China is leading research in nearly 90% of the crucial technologies that "significantly enhance, or pose risks to, a country's national interests," according to a technology tracker run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) -- an independent think-tank. Nature: The ASPI's Critical Technology Tracker evaluated research on 74 current and emerging technologies this year, up from the 64 technologies it analyzed last year. China is ranked number one for research on 66 of the technologies, including nuclear energy, synthetic biology, small satellites, while the United States topped the remaining 8, including quantum computing and geoengineering.
The results reflect a drastic reversal. At the beginning of this century, the United States led more than 90% of the assessed technologies, whereas China led less than 5% of them, according to the 2024 edition of the tracker. "China has made incredible progress on science and technology that is reflected in research and development, as well as in publications," says Ilaria Mazzocco, who researches China's industrial policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-profit research organization based in Washington DC.
Mazzocco says the general trend identified by the ASPI is not a surprise, but it is "remarkable" to see that China is so dominant and advanced in so many fields compared with the United States.
The results reflect a drastic reversal. At the beginning of this century, the United States led more than 90% of the assessed technologies, whereas China led less than 5% of them, according to the 2024 edition of the tracker. "China has made incredible progress on science and technology that is reflected in research and development, as well as in publications," says Ilaria Mazzocco, who researches China's industrial policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-profit research organization based in Washington DC.
Mazzocco says the general trend identified by the ASPI is not a surprise, but it is "remarkable" to see that China is so dominant and advanced in so many fields compared with the United States.
Crrot and Stick (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to stop coddling US industries with tax write-offs for phony R&D investments and generous depreciation allowances for capital investments. Either get to work actually innovating and building stuff. Or go out of business.
Re:Crrot and Stick (Score:4, Insightful)
that time was 20 years ago. that's still good advice, mind, but it's way too late to rescue hegemony and i'm afraid it's sadly not going to be heeded anyway.
Re:Crrot and Stick (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies no longer invest in r&d because it doesn't generate instant profits. We'll never see another Bell Labs.
Re:Crrot and Stick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crrot and Stick (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the two technologies you just mentioned also have the potential to wipe out millions of jobs. I can't really think of a more disruptive technology myself. Even when the bubble pops, who ever survives will be in a wonderful position to make a lot of money and change a lot of society, for better or worse.
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Looks at the hundreds of billions being funneled into AI research with no profit in sight (aside from those providing the chips and data centers)
Right...only invest in instant profits.
Takes a look at all the self-driving car research that has yet to produce much of anything.
AI and self-driving car technologies have both been instant profit. How much was OpenAI worth as a result of the first LLM release? How much were the self-driving car companies instantly worth on those announcements? They did aim for, and did achieve, instant profit on the stock market.
Re: Crrot and Stick (Score:3)
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What happens if I loan you $100 with the expectation that you'll give me $110 in a year, but you spend it on beer instead and at the end of the year you give me $0?
Ha, I see you. Far before the end of the year you sell this "loan" to another smart guy, promising to give him $120 imaginary at the end of that year.
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Looks at the hundreds of billions being funneled into AI research with no profit in sight
My guess: It's a scam, built on pre-existing 'bot technology.
When it's all done with, the "investors" will have a huge tax write off for their losses plus some neat new data centers, high end servers and utility resources to go into Bitcoin mining big time.
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Looks at the hundreds of billions being funneled into AI research with no profit in sight (aside from those providing the chips and data centers) Right...only invest in instant profits.
That's not instant profits, that's to prove you have a bigger dick than everyone else in the hopes the stock market will reward you for it. Completely different business model, the Chinese R&D funds products, the AI R&D funds number go up.
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"Instant" profit is more like "in five years" or "during my time in charge" profit. That AI "research" is very much aimed at generating profits in the short term. Nobody really cared that much until OpenAI announced something that could potentially cut into Google's ad+search money pipe, then the race was on. It follows precisely the silicon valley software company strategy: write some software, offer it free or steeply discounted at a loss to get users (i.e. "scale") then monetize it with ads.
Re: Crrot and Stick (Score:2)
Haha, remember when everyone said QE was just temporary and the Fed balance sheet would be drawn back down to pre-2008 levels? Is it too soon to call that widely-made prediction wrong, 17 years on with the balance sheet still at $6.5 trillion and growing again?
When will armchair economists give up their zero-sum thinking about money? Where did that $6.5 trillion come from? Does it cause cognitive dissonance to say "thin air"?
And if the Fed can increase base money from less than $1 trillion to $6.5 trillion,
Re:Crrot and Stick (Score:4, Interesting)
Industrial R&D is important, but it is in a distrant third place with respect to importance to US scientific leadership after (1) Universities operating with federal grants and (2) Federal research institutions.
It's hard to convince politicians with a zero sum mentality that the kind of public research that benefits humanity also benefits US competitiveness. The mindset shows in launching a new citizenship program for anyone who pays a million bucks while at the same time discouraging foreign graduate students from attending universtiy in the US or even continuing their university careers here. On average each talented graduate student admitted to the US to attend and elite university does way more than someone who could just buy their way in.
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Seriously, the idea that we know all the practically important physics there is is the kind of thing only somebody who's never done science or engineering would believe.
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We know enough about physics to say there isn't going to be anything as impact as entering the age of stream, or the atomic age again.
Thank goodness we made those leaps in microprocessor design and software back in the 1980s. So there's no need for further incremental improvements.
Typed on my $2500 IBM PC, with 640K of memory. Using MSDOS.
Protectionism carrot (Score:3)
If the other country is doing it better, you can sue them and keep them from going after your customers. This leaves your customers with lesser options but at least they're forced to buy your stuff.
China is beginning a big push for patents and intellectual property protection. This will slow them down.
But look at the ugliest case of the absolute failure of a total national economy in 2025.
The Germans are in a panic because Chinese
Conservatives cause this (Score:1, Insightful)
When conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives are continually against education, and research because "they don't like government spending", this is what happens. I understand being against corruption and poor uses of money, but because the majority of people are NOT educated with a focus in science, these people who are against investing in science cause countries to fall behind. You even see it with what has been going on with the space programs from different countries, the ones where conservatives hav
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You picked a really lousy argument example when talking about space. SpaceX is perhaps the cheapest option the world has for getting payloads into space and it's a private company in the United States. No doubt SpaceX has taken advantage of government contracts despite you saying we've cut science spending.
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Commercial applications vs. SCIENCE. R&D is what results in the breakthroughs that end up advancing things. The stuff where "yea, put a lab in space for research that might be dangerous to the planet" isn't necessarily going to be profitable, but it sure will be safer during the scientific discovery phase. SpaceX isn't going to build a pure science station, even if it will be used to get things into orbit.
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SpaceX exists only because we fucked up NASA long ago and SpaceX is based mostly on the old work of NASA and what they did could have been done by the old NASA; possibly faster and certainly decades sooner. We had to build an idiotic shuttle which had parts made in every state. Rotating leadership too often is also foolish. They kept/keep trying to funnel money into contractors just like the military does flushing their money.
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Let's toss Europe into the mix as part of "the west". They have twice the population as the US, a lot of free education and are falling even further behind.
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You really should stop this "anything that's not MAGA is fake news" bias. Let's see, 26% of Americans can't read above THIRD GRADE LEVEL, and 21% are functionally illiterate. The EU, I see, has above a 98% literacy rate.
You are the problem.
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I don't know what my bias is, but it sure isn't pro-MAGA/Trump. I consider myself as very conservative as in marked by moderation or caution (this is the complete opposite of Trump, who is marked by impulse and excess). Not speaking of the political conservative and sure as hell not a MAGA/Trumpeter. So I'm not sure what I've said that gives you that opinion. Yes, the US has an education crisis. No doubt. It's part of why I homeschool my
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Outlawing home schooling is too dangerous. Also MOST homeschooling is destructive, but some is the exact opposite.
I'll agree that home schooling is destructive to society, even when making accommodation to geniuses and other "special needs" students, but it's destructiveness isn't even the same order of magnitude as that of "social media". (I'll agree that social media needn't be destructive, but just about all of it is.)
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>we demand the legal right to groom your children!
yeah, fuck you.
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My 3 seconds of research (asking chatgpt) comes up with about a roughly 25/75 ratio of STEM vs pretend degrees. Which does kind of track when you consider the female/male enrollment disparity (find that humorous, or don't -- your choice)
>So many of our best and brightest don't go into research or science or engineering; they instead get into financial services, stock trading or end up making millions at FAANG.
We can find common ground there at least, our best and brightest working on new and creative way
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Hold up, I said humanities vs everything else. Does stem include Law, Medical and Business?
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I don't know. Ask ChatGPT yourself.
I'd file 'business degrees' under pretend though, and tbh we have enough lawyers, so you can count those as well.
But for the sake of argument are we discussing undergrad? Graduate? Doctorate level?
In any case, it doesn't look like STEM encompasses the majority of students at any level.
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And neither does humanities or social sciences is my point. The dominance of "woke progressive" programs is a conservative media bogeyman creation, as I said.
Also you do still need humanities and arts. We agree on business and law being flooded so I would prefer those people go into arts besides thoughts. America has dominated arts and entertainment for like a century.
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Mmm, I'm not sure I agree with you. Cunty "woke" bullshit has infested university education to the point where no matter what you study, it's impossible to avoid -- regardless of major.
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Do you attend or work at a university or is this all coming from alternative and social media reporting? There's a pretty stark difference between say, law and economics departments and your liberal arts department.
Colleges are filled with 18-24 year olds, how do we expect them to act? Also you're in college, you're not supposed to be "avoiding" alternative viewpoints and arguments, its actually where youre supposed to confront and discuss them, you're supposed to have some radical thinking in college, it
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>you're not supposed to be "avoiding" alternative viewpoints and arguments :)
Unless they happen to be right-leaning, right?
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I will take your non answer as "yes, i get this viewpoint from social and conservative media". Moving on.
Point out where I said that.
Banning arguments or speakers is cringe and should not happen on campus but again, I don't think that happens as much as conservative media wants us to believe.
If you are ideas are unpopular or you are dogshit at arguing them out (most conservatives today) that's different, that's called get better arguments.
Not the college kids fault the conservative movement is bereft of pr
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Well, I got my BS in economics from portland state univ. Even back in 2006, yes the university experience was extremely left leaning. Granted that's part and parcel of Portland OR in general -- but pick a university anywhere in the country, being conservative or republican (with or without trump, it matters not) is frowned upon.
You seem to have a bit of a fixation on 'conservative media', could you elaborate on what exactly that means? But by-the-by, where do YOUR view points come from exactly?
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Oh college students are supposed to spare the feelings of conservatives. Maybe they need their own safe spaces they clamored against for rage bait for so long.
By conservative media I mean the entire apparatus from Fox, to the alternative cable networks, to the social media influencers to the podcasts to the Youtube channels where they are all lockstep in talking points and messaging.
Where do I get my viewpoints from? Probably what youd call "liberal" media but I almost don't really trust them so I like to
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=/ I mean my initial claim was
>my 3 seconds of research (chatgpt)
the follow up was a tongue in cheek reference to that. I have no idea what the breakdown of college majors are, but again (pure supposition) STEM is not the majority.
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Your initial claim was "And overall if a goodly chunk of your college students are engaged in programs that are seemingly focused on deconstructing society at it's most fundamental levels, how are you going to compete with automatons?"
I never claimed STEM was the majority but I also had a supposition that social sciences sure as well aren't either. so while we may have both been talking out our butts I wasn't using my ass-extracted point as a launching board to gripe about culture war nonsense.
But hey, go
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Even back in 2006, yes the university experience was extremely left leaning. Granted that's part and parcel of Portland OR in general -- but pick a university anywhere in the country, being conservative or republican (with or without trump, it matters not) is frowned upon.
That's because universities are full of smart, educated people. The Venn diagram has little overlap with conservatives.
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When you say "STEM vs pretend degrees", you clearly don't know what you're talking about. There is a near continuum of "hardness" of subject, and even that's not well defined, and the quesiton of whether EE is harder than pure math doesn't have a clear answer, but which way you answer definitely affects what the opposite is.
E.g., "German" is not a STEM major, but it's also not a pretend degree. OTOH, Philosophy is often a fluff major, but some of them attempt to be as rigorous as any experimental physicis
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I was being slightly facetious, which I'm not sure you picked up on (continuum is another word for spectrum.. if you follow me)
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They are as subservient as the managers and owners want them to be, most engineers are employees. \
But they are way way more beholden to the finance guys today than say 1940-1970.
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STEM students who can't hack it should be shuffled to the trades.
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True but for many you don't know you can't hack it until you try. It's a natural transition point; can't handle the math for engineering? Become a CNC machine operator
I work in audio visual, we are always, always, always short up for skilled people and it's a very STEM adjacent area.
We're not standing still, we're going backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashing science budgets and gutting higher education somehow doesn't seem like it's going to close the gap.
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Slashing science budgets and gutting higher education somehow doesn't seem like it's going to close the gap.
Don't worry, all the cuts and changes by RFK, Jr. will even things out. /s
Re: We're not standing still, we're going backward (Score:2)
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There isn't a lot of effort going into researching DEI, but people who are "not white" are clearly getting discriminated against by the Trump administration, so yea, they would rather go somewhere their work will be appreciated, rather than being treated as if they are less skilled or able to do things just because of their sex, gender, or whatever. Picking people just because they are white and look good on camera is just as much DEI as anything else, because they are picked for their race, even when gro
Can you trust the research? (Score:1)
When a country enforces bans against facts like the Tiananmen Square incident (which I witnessed in person, as a Chinese language school student), what won't they lie about?
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If your basis for judging research is truth in propaganda why would you trust science from the USA? The current president is a pathological liar and his regime is trying to convince the world that Venezuela's government is a cartel of narco-terrorists so the USA can invade and hand Venezuela's oil wells over to American oil companies. Truth has no value in the USA.
Re: Can you trust the research? (Score:1)
"If your basis for judging research is truth in propaganda why would you trust science from the USA?"
Who says I do? What if it's just lies and trolling all the way down?
Re: Can you trust the research? (Score:2)
Re: Can you trust the research? (Score:1)
Wait a minute, isn't this whole "China is ahead of the US in the hard sciences" article political? Are you trying to pretend that politics doesn't pervade every aspect of science, because every measurement is a social act?
As for Tiananmen, can I say that I visited it a lot before the actual incident, seeing lines of stone-faced Red Army soldiers guarding the Great Hall of the People, but I did not see violence coming because the guards were unarmed? Can I add that the day of the incident I was on a train to
Damning with faint praise (Score:5, Insightful)
According to TFA, "the United States is still an important player globally in these technologies."
We're doing our best to become irrelevant, but we're not quite there yet.
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The US is Roy Kent.
Sensible economic policies work. (Score:1, Flamebait)
China taxes the rich and spends money on educations. The US gives the rich tax breaks, the rich hoard their wealth, and in many parts of the country schools are literally falling apart while good teachers leave the profession because they cannot afford to live on a teaching salary. Thanks to Reaganomics and MAGA the USA will not be a leader in anything in a few decades.
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China is a serious country. The West is (mostly) not.
The economics is largely irrelevant. China could be in just as bad a state as the West if they put people in universities based on sex or skin colour rather than merit, taught them that people can change sex just by saying so, and continually told them that China was evil and Chinese people should just disappear and be replaced by Indians and Africans.
> in many parts of the country schools are literally falling apart while good teachers leave the prof
You're blaming this on chicks with dicks? (Score:5, Interesting)
What China does well is that a central power allocates resources based on long-term planning. As academics say, the most efficient form of government is a benign dictatorship, which China was historically in the 21st century and mostly is today. Yeah, I don't like the Taiwan saber rattling, authoritarian censorship, treatment of minorities, etc....but what you can't argue with is that China is pretty good at getting shit done when they want to. They are a credible player on the global stage economically and scientifically. We should equally celebrate their success and criticize their misdeeds.
I know Fox News or whatever echo chamber you're in told you it's because of our liberal policies, but those are totally irrelevant. I work in big tech and live in one of the best biotech hubs in the world. I meet elite scientists regularly, some are my neighbors. They don't give a shit about the trans community. They're laser-focused on their job and earning money and securing funding. To put it your way, they're serious people. They don't get distracted by the fat weirdos with full beards in dresses and high heels insisting everyone call them "they" instead of "he."
Any social unrest was not caused at universities producing top scientists. MIT has been consistently running things as usual. Harvard?...yeah, there was some drama. I would argue it was due to external factors instigating them rather than homemade stupidity, but either way....everyone in the area knows that Harvard produces mostly managers, politicians, lawyers or leeches of various occupations who gain immense wealth. MIT produces innovation and advancement.
If you think seeing a chick with a dick changes anything in life, you've got trans dick on the brain. It's OK if you're attracted to trans women. There's really no shame in it. Give it a try, you might like it.
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taught them that people can change sex just by saying so
Can you cite any person, by name, who is not a republican who has said that? A direct quote, written or video, would be helpful. Because I've only ever heard it coming from foaming at the mouth maga types.
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The US gives the rich tax breaks, the rich hoard their wealth, ...
To be fair, they don't all hoard all of it; some buy really, really expensive yachts - and slightly less expensive backup yachts for those yachts - or media companies, like TikTok and Paramount, a Nth back-up mansion, or donate money to the President for favors, etc...
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The US gives the rich tax breaks, the rich hoard their wealth, ...
To be fair, they don't all hoard all of it; some buy really, really expensive yachts - and slightly less expensive backup yachts for those yachts - or media companies, like TikTok and Paramount, a Nth back-up mansion, or donate money to the President for favors, etc...
Those really, really expensive yachts are a huge wealth transfer to the working class. Do you have any idea how many working class people it takes to build, maintain and operate those things?
And most of the rich don't hoard their wealth because if they did, inflation would make them a lot less rich. Most of the rich have most of their money invested in ventures that make them more money.
But if they did hoard their wealth, that would actually counteract (at least partially) inflation. Taking money out of cir
Re: Sensible economic policies work. (Score:2)
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Good! They should! We all know what marginal means right? Marginal rates? Marginal utility?
Why does anyone think this talking point means again,? Also what is their "effective tax rate". Most 0.1% pay an effective rate far less than the other top 10%
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Income taxes, not taxes.
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Piling on some more qualifiers? You are probably correct that the rich pay most of those as well, but if so then why the misleading generalization?
Probably because the number isn't as big. Income taxes are (usually) designed to be progressive. That's the point. Most sales and property taxes, including the hidden ones, are only weakly so. Billionaries don't eat thousands of times more bananas than poor people.
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You said taxes. Here, let me quote it for you:
The link you included as "evidence" clearly says "income taxes."
If you believed your argument you wouldn't have a problem with stating it accurately. Instead you're weaseling. I can't even figure out why since it's pretty clear the people with the most money pay the most taxes.
Focus. (Score:5, Interesting)
What does the West have? Science is beginning to have a bad name here. They tell you you're a sucker if you take a STEM major in college, except perhaps if you study to be a doctor or a dentist, or "something something AI". You're even dumber if you actually pursue a career in academia. Meanwhile we have New Math (a US thing, I know, but here in Europe schooling in mathematics is just as dire), or whatever new nonsense they cooked up. In my country, they are again lowering the nr. of hours per week spent on STEM subjects in high school. More focus on humanities and civics... as they say: "teaching children to be good citizens". Dumb AF, but... good citizens, sure. Taught to challenge everything, and not given the tools or knowledge to do so effectively. One in three kids aged 15 here is functionally analphabetic. Because even reading comprehension and accurate spelling are now optional. Chinese kids work and study hard, ours are taught that being on time is a "white construct", and that STEM education needs to be "decolonized".
No, we're not going to catch up with China. Unless we change our focus.
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18% of Black 12th graders read at a "Proficient" level. It’s about the same for mathematics.
That’s shocking. What’s going on USA?
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Funny you should mention decolonizing STEM, because that's basically what has happened here. Even now many people are in denial about what the Chinese have accomplished. They seem to think that only white people can invent stuff or push the state of the art forward, and that everyone else just copies them, steals their ideas and technology.
Many Western countries put a lot of effort into maintaining existing hierarchies. They would rather some people just don't have access to a good education and opportuniti
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This is NOT how "many Western countries" operate.
China is still way behind (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, they might have the lead in most things that will effect the future.
But did they maximize shareholder value? I think not
. U-S-A! U-S-A!
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Sure, they might have the lead in most things that will effect the future.
But did they maximize shareholder value? I think not
. U-S-A! U-S-A!
Over the next quarter or five-ten years? 'Cause U.S. companies only really seem to care about the former, while the Chinese seem to care more about the latter.
Re: China is still way behind (Score:2)
Shortage of MBAs (Score:2)
China has not caught up on MBAs with the USA yet! Give them time... we probably need to help encourage them because they seem too shrewd to repeat out mistakes.
Weird (Score:2)
Weird! How could this happen. All we did was freeze or remove federal spending for education in every decade since 1980. And suddenly we're behind after 45 years. I wonder why feeding colleges and universities thousands of unprepared students should have such a negative impact on our higher education and research programs. Well, we better tighten up our borders and stop accepting immigrants into our universities just to be sure...
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Oh bullshit. We're 5th in spending per student in the world https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab... [duckduckgo.com]
We get shitty results but it's not a lack of spending that's creating this problem. Maybe fewer dollars going to the gym and administration and more going towards classrooms and teachers. And a lot less going to "tech" solutions where absolutely none are needed.
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Ensure ALL schools get the same funding per child nationwide , irrespective of race, socio-economic status, location, etc. This WILL include all "top ups" from where ever so no backdoor funding happens.
Ensure ALL teachers are qualified to teach the subjects they are expected to teach, eg STEM, and by this I mean a Degree in those subjects.
Private "Charter schools" held to account for grades, attendance , etc with personal liability for board members/owners with NO relig
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Adjusted for inflation, the federal government simply spend less on education than we used to (ref1). And that doesn't even account for the fact that the population has grown.
Not that per student spending is the only or best metric to measure education. You could look at college graduation rates, in 1980 it's 16.2% and by 2020 it's 37.5%, so by that metric we're doing very well. (sorry, Statisa won't provide me the source unless I pay the money. I had a hard time finding the 1980 graduation rates)
Looking at
Priorities (Score:4, Informative)
Two possibilities (Score:2)
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And the USA is just as bad for subsidising industries , giving hand outs to industries, special tax breaks, etc at federal and state levels.
The USA has been caught multiple times putting spyware etc into technology, and given the state of the USA government at the moment, the USA is also untrustworthy.
US Grants are being Misallocated to Non-science (Score:3)
BS (Score:2)
You are a sucker. Good research funding has been undermined and corrupted since at least Nixon and it has not been shifting to social science it has been going DOWN hill. The war on education began during Nixon but didn't get momentum built up until Reagan. It's been a long time coming but it's now a downward trend and doesn't look likely to stop.
There are endless areas to study and many are not as practical; however, it's popularity does the most to control it's size. Gender studies, etc. becoming too lar
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Papermill (Score:2)
Scientific facts over radical-postmodern feelings (Score:3, Interesting)
Surprise, surprise, but it looks like prioritizing science and scientific facts over (60s) radical-postmodern feelings really does pay off! Especially when the population does not have a choice since a totalitarian regime run by a mafia-esque clans party dictates it, and nobody is allowed to have human rights in the face of alleged progress. Everything has to bow to this essential highly diversified war-time economy.
Meanwhile, in the last ten years the US was not sure about their identity and basic vaccines and really tripled-down on these partisan idiocracies. Highest of the high Maslow hierarchy bullshit!t that does not really serve anyone but the peddlers who push it so they can increase their personal influence over and bullying of others.
Propaganda (Score:2)
Re:No surprise[s in today's SF?] (Score:2)
Mod parent up? Deserves more visibility than -1, even though I disagree about Liu Cixin. Good, but I wouldn't rate him that highly. Really hard to pick a favorite... Possibly Iain M Banks? The Culture is such an optimistic view of the future, notwithstanding all the gruesome deaths?
But mostly I've been disappointed by most of the current SF authors. Too much rehashing of old themes... Currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Pretty goo, but again I wouldn't rate it at the top.
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Sorry, too tough of a question. I think I'd have a better shot at picking five nonfiction books... Even if the dimensions were clearly defined, picking the top SF would be really tough. And should fantasy be included in the consideration? Two examples did pop into mind in response to your question, though I don't think I could claim "top" status for either. I thought the style of Stand on Zanzibar was quite impressive, but perhaps it was merely one of the first multi-threaded books I read. In the humor ca
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What abut Neal Stephenson? His books are a bit hit-and-miss. Snow Crash I found to be excellent, but Seveneves was just awful -- a waste of time that seemed designed merely to satisfy the author's interest in the physics of whips.
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Good call and I've read many of his books. However, there are lots of other authors at various levels of goodness and I was basically running away from the request for a top list. I do tend to read other books from an author who wrote a good one, but there are some excellent authors who only had one good book in the, even before you allow for third-book effects.
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But now I have a different hypothesis. My new hypothesis is modern authors are skilled, but they have a different aim (which they achieve). Instead of being energetic like Bradbury, they are aiming for a feeling that is more like opium
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Now I think you're mostly referring to the publishers. Funny business that, even before Amazon tipped over the table. Most of the books they publish are failures that don't even recover the cost of the first print run. I've heard numbers from 80% to above 90%, but that was a while ago, and largely from a delivery driver who delivered fresh books while picking up the unsold ones. The profits were entirely from the bestsellers, and of course the publishers love opium-like books for that reason.
I acknowledge t
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Thanks for the kind words, but I'm older than you think and the idea of writing a book just feels too pointless to me these years. I hope I have a few good years left, but... I even went through a period of looking for a coauthor but gave up that idea, too.
In related news, I just finished a rather amusing piece by Umberto Eco. Last essay in one of his last books. He's talking about the disadvantages and advantages of death. Starts with a long and somewhat recursive joke about human stupidity but finally com
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Possibly Iain M Banks? The Culture is such an optimistic view of the future, notwithstanding all the gruesome deaths?
And the concept of artificial hells (Surface Detail).
Iain Bans wrote one of the all-time great first lines in a novel:
"It was the day my grandmother exploded"