> No, but YOU are succeeding.

You actually just used the "No YOU'RE stupid!" retort. I'm afraid I'm not the one making sweeping generalizations like "the work of everyone else is irrelevant" when speaking about the development of global agriculture.

There are so many things in your post I want to respond to I don't even know where to begin.

> Bingo! There you go, sounding like an idiot and proving my point.

All you've done is quoted me disagreeing with you and then called me an idiot. And pray tell, what exactly is your point? That deployment is all that matters? This is a pretty common sentiment among engineers... that the general edification of the human race is not a worthwhile endeavor. You know, to become smarter and better people, in addition to building bridges? Unfortunately a lot of the rest of the educated world seems to disagree.

>Getting something into the shop for people to buy is deployment. Deployment is how science started. Look up Archimedes, because he was the guy who started math and physics, building siege engines to defeat the Roman navy. Oh yeah, and medicine and biology started with Imhotep and also the Sassanid hospital system.

What does this have to do with deployment vs. theory? You're giving examples where those people worked on what you call deployment. I'm sure they also worked on theory, because you don't know what theory is going to be deployable until you work on it. Even if those guys were pure engineers, and never worked on theoretical matters, how does what some guy decided to do in triple digits BC have to do with what the NRC should/shouldn't fund now? Nothing.

> This crap ideology you are pushing only came about relatively recently, and I don't remember anyone asking the taxpayers about it.

Okay just to be clear, what ideology is it that I'm pushing? That theoretical work can have some intrinsic value? People have been working on theoretical pursuits for a long time.

> Something that only exists on paper is no good to anyone, especially since it hasn't been tested

Do you seriously propose to know what could come of every piece of theoretical work that could be? No? Well then you also don't know what is and is not of value. Do you disagree with that? Please explain. Also, you seem to be talking about pure theory ("hasn't been tested") on one hand, and on the other hand speaking about unproven technical work (such as AI packet inspection) that has a theoretical bent. Do you think that literally everything that is not yet working and sold is useless? I doubt you do.

>The corruption has gone even further, because there used to be a division between scientific fields and engineering fields

What you're seeing is engineers intelligently realizing that there is more to engineering that just jumping right into the lab.

> you can get the same "That's not SCIENCE" bullshit from Professors even if you're in the engineering department.

It sounds to me like you've had some experience asking professors to let you build something you wanted to build just because you wanted to, and they told you no, so you're angry about it. I have never heard a professor exclaim "That's not SCIENCE!" to any reasonable request. That doesn't mean I haven't heard them say "No.", but I'm sure some other folks here on HN could tune in (if anybody was still reading this thread) and back up my feeling that this sounds like fiction.

>I'll give you one of many concrete examples

I don't know anything about your specific examples, so I can't speak to the details. However, are you claiming that the antenna idea is a sure thing and needs development, yet has been shot down (you've tried?) by many professors (surely you wouldn't characterize all of science based on your experience with one person...) simply because it's not theoretical enough? That hardly seems likely.

> So if there's a problem with academics it's because they're not top level academics, and somehow only the tiny percentage who are top level count...

Erm... I don't think you understood what I said. I said that perhaps the top level academics, who often run labs full of many other academics, are highly driven by the publish-or-perish game because that is how they get funding, and without funding NO research gets done, applied or theoretical. I don't think there's any logical problem with what I said.