Re: DARPA Grand Challenge

"Randy M. Dumse" <rmd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:PS03f.40$Su.152
@eagle.america.net:

> "Brent S." <bseeley@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:digrkl$ugn$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> I think you are ignoring more than half of the picture. I see it as
>> the
>> great success it is. I'm sure you will benefit from this research in
>> ways only a non-pessimist can envision.
>
> Funny you choose to summarize that way, that I am ignoring more than
> half the picture. On the contrary, I think I'm the only one posting
here
> giving balance to the whole picture.
>
> Wonderful book by Henry Hazzlitt, "Economics in One Lesson" where he
> opens in Chapter 1 this way:
>
> "Economics is haunted by more falacies than any other study known to
> man. This is no accident. The inherient difficulties of the subject
> would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a
> thousandfold, by a factor that is insignificant, say, in physics,
> mathematics or medicine - the special pleadings of special interests.
> While every group has certain economic interests indentical with those
> of all groups, every group also has, as we shall see, interests
> antagonistic to those of all other groups. The group that would
benefit
> by such policies, having such a direct interest in them,will argue for
> them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds
to
> devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally
> either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so
> befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to
> impossible."
>
> Henry goes on in Chapter 2 to apply his lesson in Chapter 1, and talks
> about a baker who has a window broken out by a vandal with a brick.
Good
> or bad? The baker replaces the window, so some glasier makes $250, and
> we see that money going round and round the community making business
> for everyone.
>
> The problem is, that is ignoring more than half the picture. The
> transaction with the window is visible to all. What is invisible, is
> that the baker was going to spend that $250 on a suit. He didn't. So a
> tailor went without business that day. And the baker, rather than
having
> a window and a suit, has only a window, so he is poorer too.



But the glasier bought a suit, which he would not have been able to
afford had his son not thrown the brick through the window.





>
> Stanford and CMU spent $20M collectively on their two entries. That's
> visible. That dozens or even hundreds of other research projects, for
> who knows what, at those universities, got shelved, is the invisible
> part. Maybe one of those students would have made a nano bot that
could
> clear arteries.


Maybe, maybe not. Reality is everything that happens, not a bunch of
what ifs.



Many university programs are working on such
> technologies right now. Maybe we'd have a cure for strokes and heart
> attacks by that. But we'll never know. The half that is visible, the
> half that is the "great success", is we now have demonstrated a few
> vehicles which can raise a lot of dust in the desert, follow a very
> carefully plowed out course, and many carefully provided waypoints,
but
> have to be followed by chase vehicles lest they become a threat to
> public safety, and have no other immediate use.
>
> Maybe there will come an industry from this. Wonderful. That too will
be
> visible. I will reinforce the idea this was a great success. But we
will
> never know that part that is invisible, that was lost, because it
never
> happened. Because $20M from two Univ. alone, and hundreds of other
> groups in like manner was drained out of the robotics industry to
chase
> a $2M prize. The issue is not if something good might come from it.
The
> issue is what was sacrificed for it, and it is a truth and an expense
we
> will never know.

Indeed, the money might have been spent on developing biological weapons
of mass destruction, and there could have been an accident in the lab,
and the germ could have run rampant throughout the world and we'd all be
dead. We'll never know.

If only Hitlers mother would have had an abortion, the world today would
be even more overpopulated than it is, straining our resources even
more.


>

.

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