On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 05:16:11PM -0700, john hull wrote: > The economic benefits of this separation [between Applied and Basic > researchers] outweighs the cost of paying for basic research. How is this separation a benefit at all? Not separating them will mean that they can better cooperate with each other and cross-breed their work. In France, we have a very high rate of separation, and France has a reputation for great researchers - but what good are these french researchers, if they can't cooperate with each other and with the industry? France also has a very low reputation for actually useful science, for cooperation that leads to actual results, etc. Your whole argument is a dubious petitio principii.
> That's not to say that basic research is not valuable, > but it evidently follows strange and unpredictable And how is that an argument for or against state funding of research? Obviously, the government didn't forecast the unpredictable path of discovery any more than the "private sector". Non sequitur. As usual, the only contribution of government intervention is irresponsibility and rent-seeking. Mind you, in a free society, if you and 50% of the people want to fund gratuitous research, no one is going to stop you. Yours freely, [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] [ TUNES project for a Free Reflective Computing System | http://tunes.org ] -- Question authority! -- Yeah, says who?