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Comment by 0xcafefood | Hacker News Reader

> look at where almost all technological innovation has happened in the last 50 years

I take this to mean:

  1) Communism obliterated the Soviet Union's ability to fund science (or anything else for that matter)

  2) The people driving science forward in the West are educated some other way than strictly according to a "Common Core" quality curriculum

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your first point is (very) historically inaccurate, on the contrary the Soviet Union heavily funded science and research, which led them to a whole bunch of scientific breakthroughs

Over the past 50 years though (1976 onward)?

Soviets ruled only until 91. So those 50 years speak more about the collapse thereafter. And the cream of their mathematicians emigrating to Israel.

The poster above that mentioned commercialization has it right - while the soviet science was often top-notch, the skills in commercialization and getting the finances to get things done were simply not there, severely eroded by the decades of Soviet time.

The Soviet Union existed for less than half of that time period, and a lot of talented researchers moved to the West after it collapsed. (I know because I've worked with a lot of them). So that's kind of a weird time period to sample. It's like saying if Einstein was so smart, how come he hasn't published anything recently?

Considering 35 of these 50 years is quite literally not the Soviet Union, that list is still long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation

> The people driving science forward in the West are educated some other way than strictly according to a "Common Core"

And they always have been, in addition to just being more intelligent, curious, and motivated than average.

> ability to fund science

More like "commercialize" rather then fund.

Technological innovation on both sides of the iron curtain happened due to public investment. If you doubt the US role in this, I'll remind that silicon valley and many of its key accomplishments are outgrowths of military spending.

No government spending, no nice things.

I think you're agreeing with my first point but I can't tell.

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