[falcor84]

What does this have to do with anything? We as a culture decided that science is worthwhile, and that it's worth funding it with public money, which I personally strongly support. With that in mind, I want us to continue contributing to making scientific research and the benefits that it provides to be disseminated freely, while also paying good scientists with actual dollars that they could spend in restaurants.

[DiggyJohnson]

Individuals and small groups make decisions in their own interest. The same is not true of society. That’s the issue that the GP is asking you to respond to

[falcor84]

I suppose I might not be understanding your and the GP's intent correctly, but I thought that the question was based on the following sentences:

> I think it would be good service to use AI tools to bring open source alternatives like sympy and sage and macaulay to par.

> It would be really nice to have better software written by strong software engineers who also understands the maths for mathematicians.

And my response is that I think that this sort of work, which is in the public scientific interest should be funded by tax money, and the results distributed under libre licenses.

[jazzyjackson]

So if as a culture we decide scientists are worth paying to do research, why should Wolfram not be paid to build the tool scientists use?

[inigoalonso]

Nobody is saying "don't pay the developers". Some of us advocate for "pay the developers to develop free and open source software". Rent-seeking is not good for society.

[bryanrasmussen]

>We as a culture decided that science is worthwhile, and that it's worth funding it with public money, which I personally strongly support.

what country are you in, and what percentage of the public purse goes to funding science? In the U.S about 11%, and with that number I often read articles, linked to from this site, about U.S Scientists quitting and going into private sector work or other non-scientific fields to get adequate compensation.

>while also paying good scientists with actual dollars that they could spend in restaurants.

see, my admittedly vague understanding of how things are structured tells me this part isn't what is happening.

[golem14]

Um, where did you get the 11% from?

Looking at https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-fe..., federal tax revenue used for "science" seems to be <=1%?

Education is another 5% accroding to that site.

[bryanrasmussen]

hmm, you're right, I made a mistake and was going on discretionary spending, of which it is a higher percentage than the whole budget.

I normally look at ncses, but in this mainly going off the last stuff I looked at from AAAS

https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/AAAS%20R%26...

I think the CBPP maybe underplays research under different organizations, for example is DARPA under DOD or is it under science and education? If under DOD then can probably increase the percent by another .5 from DARPA, and so forth with other organizations.

However, I am certainly fine with taking your stats since that just underlines they point I made and evidently got downvoted for, that the U.S does not pay for scientific research at a level where one can blithely assert that it is something considered important by the government.