Not All Tech Bubbles Are Bad

Based on the book "Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation" by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber, the three key trends they identify as the causes for the decline in scientific innovation (and the current era of stagnation) are:

1. Risk Aversion and Conformity: The current institutional structure of science rewards orthodoxy rather than bold exploration. Funding bodies (like the NIH or NSF) and peer review systems tend to favor "safe," incremental research that is guaranteed to produce publishable results, rather than high-risk, high-reward projects that might fail but could lead to breakthroughs. This creates a culture where scientists are incentivized to conform to established paradigms rather than challenge them.

2. The Bureaucratization of Science: The authors highlight that the administrative burden on scientists has exploded. They cite evidence that university faculty and researchers now spend roughly 40% of their time writing grant proposals and dealing with compliance rather than doing actual research. This "grant treadmill" forces scientists to focus on selling their work to bureaucrats rather than following their curiosity or anomalies in the data.

3. Hyper-Specialization: As the total body of scientific knowledge grows, it becomes impossible for any single person to master a broad field (the "burden of knowledge"). To cope, scientists must specialize in increasingly narrow niches. While this allows them to manage the cognitive load, it leads to "myopia"—researchers lose the ability to see the big picture or make cross-disciplinary connections, which is often where the most transformative "zero to one" innovations come from.

Context from the Book: The authors argue that "bubbles" (like the Apollo program or the Manhattan Project) historically solved these three problems by providing vast funding, a unified transcendent mission, and poor accountability. This unique environment allowed scientists to take massive risks, ignore bureaucratic red tape, and collaborate across disciplines without worrying about grant cycles.