>"Peter Thiel has been pointing this out for many years. He asks, do we really have scientists anymore? Or are they really bureaucrats and politicians pretending to be scientists? I am convinced it is the latter. I think we have whole universities filled with cargo cult science. This relates neatly with some awkward facts about the modern education system. For all the extraordinary efforts and feats of intellectual prowess it is also extraordinary how little they practically achieve. The number of breakthroughs has dramatically declined. Once you get past the PR bullshit and backslapping there is very little actually happening in many places in the ‘innovation economy’. Take nanotech. I am not aware of any advances that make their appearance in a consumer’s home. I can think only of a handful of niche applications like expensive hydrophobic coatings. If the advances were occurring in the factories we should be seeing more refined low cost goods on a massive scale. Is that actually happening? I don’t know that it is. We’ve been promised a lot and been waiting for long time. Take biotech. Nothing. Just nothing. I think the last biotechnology I interacted with was a yogurt. Can anybody name a single biotech invention or innovation that actually exists in people’s houses? In the 50s and 60s we had the Green Revolution, that counts. However the price of food has been rising considerably for several years now. There is certainly no food product that I consume that has become much cheaper."

This is extremely condescending. Just because you might not understand science doesn't mean there are no scientists anymore. Science works slow, what do you mean how little they achieve? Maternal mortality is at an all time low, we nearly have a cure for AIDS, life expectancy has dramatically increased, Cas9 offers new therapeutic hope for millions.

"If the advances were occurring in the factories we should be seeing more refined low cost goods on a massive scale." Do you know how cheap goods are these days? So cheap that American fisherman catch tuna, ship it to china to be processed ad canned and ship it back to US markets.

"Take biotech. Nothing. Just nothing." This must be satire.

Interesting read.

Could be more interesting with a bottle of scotch. :)

Some replies. I'll put it on one so my post count isn't so high.

> >Interesting read. > >Could be more interesting with a bottle of scotch. :)

But Sir! I expected my readership would be already adequately provisioned! ;-)

>> "Trump is Sauron!" > >Seriously?

I was referring to the perspective of Californians. My often mocked but secretly loved blue rascals.

> This is extremely condescending. Just because you might not understand science doesn't mean there are no scientists anymore. Science works slow, what do you mean how little they achieve? Maternal mortality is at an all time low, we nearly have a cure for AIDS, life expectancy has dramatically increased, Cas9 offers new therapeutic hope for millions.

Resist attacks on my person. Direct those to my ideas if you must. If you want credentials, I've been to an elite university. Have studied science there, made the Dean's List, even won international recognition as a student. More importantly I do really care about science in a more generalist way. I am pro-science. Not anti-science. Let us be super straight on that.

I am talking about the impact of science through technology. I am saying it is unimpressive when contrasted with past accomplishments in the previous years.

Even on a purely scientific basis output has declined though.

The 'science industrial complex' is huge and produces relatively little of value. Understand this is in relation to former times. In 1900 we had 1000 physicists on the planet. We had a lot of good work done. 100 years later, we have 1,000,000 physicists on the planet and comparatively little to show for it. Do we have 1000 times more advances in physics since that time? Of course not. There have been diminishing returns. That is normal in any field, but the lack of progress generally (we should see a flowering of different disciplines if things were going well) is not.

The discovery of DNA is a great scientific leap forward. It not a technology. It could be turned into technology with advances in biotech. Presently it has benefited almost nobody on the planet.

Please pause and think about it. The PR is utterly out of control in relation to the actual physical effects.

That is not heresy. It is a fact.

I know it is a fact because the FDA could only be making legal about 16 new biotech drugs per year. Those are the kind of numbers we're talking about. This is not world shaking stuff.

Even though I think there are problems with the FDA, I am not blaming them for this. This is a much deeper problem that has largely gone unacknowledged. The 'Science' -> 'Technology' -> 'Mass production' algorithm isn't scaling the way it used to. We need to talk about that, but first we must recognize the problem is real.

> "If the advances were occurring in the factories we should be seeing more refined low cost goods on a massive scale." Do you know how cheap goods are these days? So cheap that American fisherman catch tuna, ship it to china to be processed ad canned and ship it back to US markets.

I credit you that shipping containers are a great engineering solution. Fish including tuna is still expensive. Demand is high in the developing world. Many seafood items that were categorized as waste by our ancestors are now prized foodstuffs, such as lobster. That process now appears to be accelerating.

In fact this is a perfect example. Fish has been getting more expensive for a while now and with present trends there shall be no more Fish in the ocean in few decades.

Aquaculture is evolving into place, but the prices of fishes mean it shall become an elite foodstuff. Used to be that salmon was something the poor ate.

This is the kind of problem technology is supposed to solve for. We were supposed to be creating vats with quality meat in them. The end of farmed animals. That has been science fiction for 50 years and still is.

As you may be aware, there is not enough land on earth to feed the cattle that would be required for each Indian and Chinese person to have a meat diet equal to that of the average American.

Thusly, we have a technological problem on our hands. One that we have been told would be solved 'in ten years' for 50 years.

In fact this is something of a theme. If you read old magazine e.g. Readers Digest and articles from journalists, all the stories sound very familiar. A lot has been promised. Not much has happened in reality.