[mindslight]

> Can you think of any examples where central planning resulted in misallocated resources?

Plenty, of course.

> If so, why is state directed research a special case?

It's not a "special case", but rather there does not seem to be a better way to allocate significant resources for scientific research than governmental funding. Thus, the decision is either to accept that there will be some misallocation from centralized funding (while working to mitigate those inefficiencies), or to give up doing most fundamental research.

Also note that government funding of research is "additive" to an otherwise default-open system - independent actors can always fund research they'd like to see. Whereas most of the time we bemoan central planning we're talking about closed dynamics from which there is no opt-out. If privately funded research were generally lucrative, then we would see much more of it. But outside of some very specific contexts (straightforward patentability, prospects of immediate commercialization, subjects adjacent to highly lucrative centralized industries (which is closer to government funding than not)), we don't.

In general markets are not supercomputational - markets are merely one heuristic that works well for some things and terribly for others. If we were talking about say how many gas or electric vehicle charging stations to build and where, that's something that is decently handled decently by private investment. But an endeavor where the gains from discoveries will end up distributed and a private investor can't reap most rewards from their investment won't be.

[s1artibartfast]

it seems plausible that there are diminishing returns to fundamental research, and that those returns are conditional on the funding system environment.

I think many people have concluded that the marginal ROI is negative or the system environment is prohibitively inefficient.

[mindslight]

Sure? I would say that "many people" have concluded the system is a negative due to political propaganda fueled by general feelings of powerlessness, and are now trying to backfill justifications as if this is about anything more than the "culture war".

Your argument would be appropriate if we were debating the amount of spending in the context of other spending, or relative to itself. But in isolation as some heuristic it's "not even wrong". The larger context is this same movement blindly destroying our scientific research institutions also just added $5T of new debt, with a large chunk of that being spent on nothing more than a spectacle of performative cruelty (ICE).

And so I have to ask - do you really want to be making an argument in support of indulging the mob in their desire to see people hurt instead of actually advancing as a species?

[s1artibartfast]

>Your argument would be appropriate if we were debating the amount of spending in the context of other spending.

Thats what I'm talking about. Im not talking about the merits of a movement or mob.

Do you think the underlying reality of ROI is irrelevant? Do you support "advancement" at all or any cost?

[mindslight]

It's irrelevant in the context of your own argument because you have not specified what you consider those costs to actually be (beyond the implicit financial dollar amounts).

I obviously do not support "advancement" at any [large] cost. But it's fallacious to extrapolate from that to not supporting it at any [small] cost, as the thrust of your argument implies.

[s1artibartfast]

can you point to where I imply that?

>it seems plausible that there are diminishing returns to fundamental research, and that those returns are conditional on the funding system environment. I think many people have concluded that the marginal ROI is negative or the system environment is prohibitively inefficient.

[mindslight]

> Do you support "advancement" at all or any cost?

Obviously nobody supports any specific thing at any cost, yet you are still asking this question rhetorically. The implication is the inverse whereby the cost is already too high - without actually substantiating this argument.

Thus the main part of my comment asking what you're actually seeing this cost in terms of, which you didn't respond to. Focusing on merely the monetary cost would be utterly fallacious in the context of this spendthrift administration.