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Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

> That's the wrong question.

I asked the question I meant to ask. The point is not that we should stop doing blue sky research if examples exist where it has produced no benefit. It is quite obvious that blue sky research has been useful to us over the course of time. That fact does not give anything called blue sky research carte blanche to spend taxpayer money.

The point is to weigh the likely benefits of all the various types of blue sky research available to us at any given time and try to spend more on research that is likely to be useful.

> Neither does any known investment vehicle.

And like any investment vehicle, I ask that we consider whether any given piece of blue sky research is likely to appreciate or be a money sink. This was, if you'll read back, my original query. I don't understand why the people in this forum consider this question so outrageous.

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The difficulty is that much of the time, blue sky research projects appear at the time they are being funded, to have absolutely no known possible applications, nor any sense that future applications will come along. It is not possible in the present to know what the benefit will be. This is basically the definition of basic research, and if we just said "ok, no funding for stuff that has no known application" then we would be sitting around with very very smooth wheels on our carriages.

all blue sky research, by definition, is likely to be a money sink then by that purposely obtuse set of requirements.

Ask any lab director what the risk level (of failure) of pure R&D is and they'll happily respond "very high". Pure R&D is such a high gamble that its virtually not commercially viable. And history shows that successful research often does not immediately benefit the organization that conducted the research.

But nearly everything you interact with on a daily basis was blue sky research at some point. The electricity you use, the car you drive, the networks you communicate on, the rf technology that underpins that, the processors that control your devices, the components that make up a modern microprocessor, the storage and memory technologies in your electronic devices, probably much of the food you eat, the products you clean yourself with, nearly all of the medicine you might take and pretty much any modern medical techniques you may benefit from, the water you drink, the plumbing and sewage systems you use and on and on and on and on.

Unless you live in a purposely technologieless enclave (and even those groups benefit from time-to-time from pure R&D), you personally benefit in uncountable ways from the research that was the result of what many people thought was pouring money down a hole.

But your point That fact does not give anything called blue sky research carte blanche to spend taxpayer money.

Is also absolutely true. That's why its important to put knowledgeable people in the decision making process to pull the trigger on something like this and we don't end up burning money on perpetual motion machines or faith healers.

> I ask that we consider whether any given piece of blue sky research is likely to appreciate or be a money sink

Good idea in theory perhaps, but how do you suggest to make that assessment?

I think ironically the more obvious the return on investment of the research is, the less sense it makes for government to fund it - the private sector is more likely to fund something where the route to commercialisation is clear.

Or: basic science is a public good, and is underinvested in by free markets.

DARPA's rule is that if more than 10% of their projects succeed, they're not taking enough risks. Blue sky projects are presumably much, much lower probability than that.

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