XPost: sci.space.policy, sci.physics   
   From: benj@nobody.net   
      
   On 8/23/2017 7:00 PM, jacob navia wrote:   
   > Le 20/08/2017 à 17:45, Doc O'Leary a écrit :   
   >> For your reference, records indicate that   
   >> "Robert Clark"  wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> I haven't seen how much these teams have spent developing their   
   >>> robots but   
   >>> considering they are privately funded, and many using university   
   >>> students to   
   >>> do the research and construction, there's no doubt they cost less   
   >>> than the   
   >>> NASA developed robots.   
   >>   
   >> Can you really say something is cheaper when you externalize costs by   
   >> exploiting free labor to produce it?  Are there going to be any actual   
   >> *jobs* for the people they’re using, or is this going to be yet another   
   >> cycle of telling kids they need to go to college, and then shoving them   
   >> into a job market that no longer values the skills they learned?   
   >>   
   > Thanks for this message.   
   >   
   > A little bit of rational thinking is really welcome.   
      
   Shows how little science is understood by anyone. But why should they?   
   Brainless journalist fill their heads with fantasy nonsense hourly. Crap   
   is king.   
      
   Point is science isn't a "job". Making cars is a job. Building houses is   
   a job. inventing cellphones is a job. Hell, even making up fantasy   
   stories and selling it as "news" is a job. But science is a vocation.   
   You do it to further human civilization and the human race. The fact   
   governments have found that they can fund scientists who are normally   
   poor and dedicated to build things like better ways to kill people or   
   better ways to watch people. Real scientists won't sell out like that   
   which happily limits the quality of the weapons and spy tools in most   
   cases.   
      
   And what is sold out science? It's all the government stuff you see like   
   NASA where basically the job is to spend "free money" (tax dollars) and   
   try to generate a new fantasy to grab even more. For a long time science   
   was a part time hobby. Done by rich folks as a diversion and by   
   university people whose actual "job" was teaching the next generation.   
   But WWII and the Atomic bomb changed that. Suddenly it was obvious that   
   science could give politicians power. And even better they could use   
   other people's money (or in our case no money at all just a promise that   
   some future generation would pay you back) to get that incredible power.   
   And the world changed for the worse.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)