"practically all" was the initial statement. The second mention is a reference to that statement.

A basic education in economics (and manners) might be in order.

>A basic education in economics (and manners) might be in order.

Oh, I apologize. I have idiotism allergies.

>"practically all" was the initial statement

Yeah, and my original statement still stands.

Go open a history book or something. Or find out what "N" in "NSF" stands for, or realize that China exist.

NSF budget is 10 bill or so out of a 20+ trill economy, less than a tenth of a %. Even if you thought 90% of work wasn't important... 10 bill out of 2 trill is tiny.

So you measure importance of work by the amount of money spent on it?

My do you have some peculiar ideas.

Re-read it. I'm measuring the amount of work by the amount of money. Total GDP = total work. 10% of GDP = 10% of total work. GDP is a decent proxy for total work... Add reading comprehension 101 to econ 101 and then it will compute.

Re-read what you wrote yourself.

You were using the NSF budget as a measure of importance of its work.

You also compared it to the GDP, which only makes sense if you think that all work done is equally important. How very socialist of you.

>Add reading comprehension 101 to econ 101 and then it will compute

What you say "computes" only after adding Dunning-Kruger to the mix.

Nope, the calcs above assume all NSF work is important, and they show how little work they do as a % of all the work. Then as a % if we assumed 90% of all work (keeping all NSF work important) wasn't important.

To calculate a %, both the numerator and denominator have to be the same units.

> and they show how little work they do as a % of all the work. Then as a % if we assumed 90% of all work (keeping all NSF work important) wasn't important.

Great, you're simply saying that pretty much all of science has the same importance as 10% of all other work being done. And you consider budget as a measure of output.

All that in the context of a conversation about technological breakthroughs, mind you.

By that metric, someone like Richard Feynman has produced less important work than your average run-of-the-mill engineer with a slightly higher salary.

Did you time-travel here from the USSR? The leadership there had similar ideas back in the day.

This is becoming very entertaining at this point.

Econ 101 is your friend.

It is. So is the reality.

Highly recommend, A+++, 10/10.

"Impact is hard to measure, so let's take budget as a proxy" has got to be the hottest take of the year, and yes, I'm aware it's January.