Brady, your animator really has a fantastic knack for expressing the content through his art. Kudos to Pete McPartlan! It's such a natural fit to the subject that I'm sure a lot of viewers take it for granted, but it's great stuff.
This is why I don't like it when people ask "What can you do with this?" or "How is this research useful?". Oftentimes, you just need to learn more about some basic property of the universe or of biology, and we won't actually know "what it's for" until several decades after it's been studied and an attempt has been made to understand it. What's the point of relativity? Turns out...GPS. What's the point of astronomy? I have no idea...but let's find out together!
E Hernandez There are two ends of this thing: what we want and what is possible. You could first choose what you want and then look for ways to do it (applied end), or you can just see what is possible to do and then figure out what it can be used for (basic end). Both ways are legitimate.
I couldn't agree more. As Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Often times, when I speak to non-scientists/non-mathematicians, they do not understand how important basic research is, even if its applications may not be plainly obvious. I think I will just show them this video; Dr. Lander explains it wonderfully.
Matthew M But you have to admit that most of basic research never gets applied at all and stuff gets published that nobody reads. I like to think of it as a very high risk but high potential returns investment. Getting that useful 0.1% (or whatever) is probably worth paying for all the other stuff as well (since you can't tell from the outset what will become useful). So not each individual piece of research is useful, but the system as a whole probably is (one would need to analyze some data to say for sure).
@@FandangoJepZ Eric Lander was at the time nominated for the position of, and now is, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (which didn’t used to be, but now is, a Cabinet-level position). I was just saying his massive intellectual curiosity and scientific chops made him a great choice.
I like the way Mr. Lander speaks, highly educational and passionate of something. I have a theory of my own however, to extend the forest analogy even further: Perhaps the forest is similar to the Pando organism, whereby all the "trunks" are interconnected beneath the surface. Perhaps there is some research in the "other direction" if you will, of fundamentals, that can connect ideas that were previously (or currently) thought to be entirely seperate. Perhaps there is a completely different methodology to how we can potentially learn, discover, and evolve as a species.
+Wyatt G (Teck1015) The more mathematics I do and the more I look for new experiences in life that are separate from it, the more it feels to me like this is exactly the case.
The first thing I thought of when he said "forest" was "yeah, but it's a birch forest". There are ways at which we're already exploring that rhizome part of knowledge. I've recently been reading up on the interconnections between logic, set theory, category theory, and homotopy theory. In a way, they're all expressions of the same facts, but they also can each cast light on the others and grow the forest as a whole.
As an individual, I study as many subjects as I can, for at least a few hours a day. I very rarely become an expert in any of them, but I tend to have major insights from studying (seemingly) disparate subjects. Everything is connected to everything else. There is definitely merit in generalism when you relate to viewing things in the "big picture". :)
I feel that I am a kindred spirit in having an interest and knowledge in many different areas, but that unfortunately makes me struggle with the sort of specialization I'm needing to pursue
Great presentation, I would like to add that a reason (there are many) that there is no difference between basic and applied is that both are about learning something new. If the basic research finds something he can engineer into a product it will happen. If applied research finds a dead end, it will be noted as basic knowledge and someone else will build on it.
The trunk could be translational research. The roots are basic research which draw in knowledge, the leaves are applied research and application. The trunk is translational research that builds theory out of the applied, and applies basic theory to solve problems.
Amazing! I have been trying to explain concepts like this to people for years after them saying stuff such as "so what use is this paper on symplectic geometry" etc. I find it very hard to convince people even though it's usually because they themselves don't understand the beauty of it all/ the fundamental concepts.
I like the idea of coral as an analogy here instead of a tree (an idea I'm hijacking from evolutionary biology). Corals grow together so that different stalks can actually fuse back together towards the top, and I think that's an important distinction here: the iPhone requires basic research on foundational ideas in many thousands of areas, for example. So each "leaf" doesn't just come from a particular branch on a particular trunk, but a complex intermixing of many, many different branches.
I wish I had more professors like those you interview, Brady. These are brilliant people willing to make us see a simple complex world instead of a complicated simplistic one. I only "understand" when I get to see the whole forest, which gave me great difficulties during my studies, and I am glad to see that somewhere, someone teaches the way I learn. And indeed, there are no less-important research. Gracefully illustrated, great video as always. I never miss a single one of them and I've never regretted it. Thank you!
May I offer a metaphor? There may be a forest, but it's much like a quaking aspen forest. There are many basic fundamental ideas creating trunks, but they all share a root system. I would consider the universe to be the roots, it holds all of the mathematical truths that we are attempting to flesh out completely.
this video is great! what are the basic fields of research today? what are we just beginning to explore that could open up another door like when we began using electricity or microscopes or telescopes?
its a very gd point he makes there Because yeh what we have some in this era is get the nuts and bolts of scientific knowledge to make more asnd more things but we have forgotten the critical levels of that knowledge which is the how and why of that making of that stuff
I really like this video and wrote a translation to brazilian portuguese. I would like to add it as a subtitle, so more people could enjoy it, if possible.
What is the trunk? Well much of biology depends on chemistry, with some mechanics too Much of chemistry depends on physics (quantum, exclusion principle, electrostatic forces, etc), as does the mechanics and all physics theory is expressed in maths (sometimes the maths predates the physics, like group theory or complex numbers, and sometimes the maths was invented specifically to further physics, eg calculus, quaternions) And much of maths is expressed in Greek, the root of all knowledge So when someone says of anything technical "it's all Greek to me" they are actually being quite profound
Most states in the American West have a natural resource "extraction tax" that for nonrenewables (mining and petroleum) seeds the permanent endowment of their universities and renewables (extracting timber) seeds the operating subsidy. I like that because it converts one form of sovereign wealth capital into another form. The glaring exception is California just because of the way it was settled during the gold rush (no tax on extracting gold). Even Texas taxes oil extraction, but California instead puts regressive sales taxes on its peasants.
my only complaint, and it could totally be some issue with youtube... is the volume seems to peak at maybe an 1/8th of full scale... even with full volume on youtube and my laptop... i cant hear what he is saying over the background noise in this room. It also means a loss of dynamic range in the audio. I guess ill have to watch it again later with some headphones.
Hello! I really like this video and would like to contribute with Portuguese subtitles. By any chance could you allow community contributions for this video??
+888SpinR I was under the impression that all smart phone platforms were built on the same foundation of basic research. I guess not. It's only the iPhone.
The current education reform movement is obsessed with "real-world applications", which are mostly made up anyway. Factoring, etc. could be forced into a real-world example, but how often do people who know it use it every day outside math? It's killing curiosity among students, coupled with high-stakes tests. All they want to know now is, "is this going to be on the test?" At the summer school this year we had new teachers from the NYC Teaching Fellows program. They did a wonderful lesson and the students paid attention and gained the skills. They were criticized by their mentor, an elementary school teacher, for not bringing in real-world examples.
I think this animation was nice but very distracting. I like Brady's films because the sets are so natural, but this was like an ad on TV, duplicating all the info without giving new meaning.
Who decides what basic research gets funded? It turns out, not the people who pay for it, which is again distinct from the people who decide that it must be paid for. If these things are so beautiful, it should be no problem getting the money from volunteers. If somebody decides that something is not beautiful, and doesn't want to pay for it, the government has told them that they don't have a right to exercise their preference.
Be careful about letting the state tell you your own opinion about what non-profits should get a subsidy. Your opinion might change without your go ahead.
I see it as my role to convince people to depend less on the government middle man, and to encourage giving more freely on their own terms. Then it's not a plurality deciding where your money goes, it's 100% of you. You're the one in favor of more concentrated control, not I.
The most fundamental root base on which all is built is missed by many, which is to follow Christ. Why so? Because through God's Word, do all things exist.
