[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.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you are misreading intent. I am not implying the opposite, but establishing foundation.

As mentioned above, I am not talking about the motives of this administration, which you keep coming back to as if it is relevant.

I'm discussing cost in terms of money.

[mindslight]

So, foundation - as a libertarian I learned a long time ago that one has to be very careful to not let one's ideals be selectively used in service of justifying the actions of entrenched power. This is all too easy to do with lofty ideals of individual freedom, by framing authoritarian control as freedom for some powerful actor (ie de facto government).

Or for a financial example closer to the subject - if I'm incensed by the overgrown and out of control NSA/DEA/ATF, extrapolate to harping on the need for less government in general, but then my arguments get taken up and only used to attack less hardened public-good-providing agencies like NPS and USPS - I haven't actually succeeded at my original goal! Rather my ideals have been abused to by people who don't actually care about my ideals, aren't looking to increase individual liberty, and merely want to destroy NPS and USPS - likely to focus on growing the type of agencies that I originally started off against!

As such, the motives of people actually carrying out the actions are highly relevant, and this is exactly why I keep coming back to discussing these motives. If the reasoning here is actually about money, we would expect to see reductions in costs across the board, perhaps some unevenness based on priorities, but still with the biggest cuts being on the biggest expenditures. However instead, we see $5T in new debt (monetary inflation), and increased wasteful spending on many things. Their goals are clearly not about fiscal responsibility.

So then if we're espousing an ideal of fiscal responsibility, it behooves us to condemn and distance ourselves from this administration. First, because they're burning the credibility of our lofty ideal rather than using it to create reasonable solutions in good faith. Second, because if they're cutting things based on a different metric than efficiently spending public funds, it actually means that public funds are then being spent less efficiently - so we're actually going backwards.

[s1artibartfast]

Im still not interested in discussing the administration, but the actual state of funded research in absence of the administration, its motives, and actions.

It seems you only want to talk about trump and their goal. If you see it as impossible to separate the topic from politics, even after sufficient disclaimers, then there isnt anything to discuss.

[mindslight]

I don't see the point of criticizing our research institutions at a time when such criticism is just being used as justification for attacking them to make them worse. Spend time and energy teasing out extremely nuanced points just so the nuance can be ignored and add to the destructive rallying cries? What do you see as the point?