alt Hacker News> In retrospect it does seem like in the 1950s-70s the military was willing to fund some stuff that was actually not especially close to applications of killing people.
There's no "seem" about it, what you're saying is true, and it was because of changes in federal law. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield#Mansfield_Amend...
Thanks for pointing that out; I was not aware of it.
At the same time, when I helped with research in a cognitive psychology lab in school (much closer to the present than to that law), our PI said our funding came partly from a grant from the US Navy. We worked on Bayesian models of human learning and reasoning -- so "direct or apparent relationship to specific military function" has perhaps at times been interpreted somewhat loosely?