Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First they came for the Iranians

scottaaronson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 460 posts

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#411

Post by rpiguy »

cplanas wrote: post #397
rpiguy wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Republican was duped. He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Temporary ban on immigration, build a wall, take an axe to the bloated federal government, can the TPP, next week we should get our first conservative supreme court nominee. Even better it is driving leftists into a rage, showing everyone where the real bullying and violence comes from - the Left! I have never been more hopeful about the fut…

> Temporary ban on immigration [...] I have never been more hopeful about the future! I was curious about you -there are not many that support your positions in HN- and I checked your past comments. You seem to be an immigrant too, as you define yourself as a "Valley startup expat". If that's the case, how can you support a ban on immigration -even if it's temporary- being an immigrant yourself? Don't get offended, I…

I am not offended, no worries. A temporary ban on immigration for the purpose of security is a reasonable proposition to me. Every country has the right to secure itself and define who can and can't enter the country. It is fundamental to the concept of being a nation. India, China, Japan, Korea, even Mexico all have very restrictive immigration policies and I have yet to see anyone work themselves into a rage over it on Hackernews. India even started building a wall between itself and Bangladesh (I have no idea if they completed it honestly, but again I don't remember an outcry at the time).

Historically the US has gone through times of very low immigration and also times of very high immigration. It will swing back in twenty or thirty years.

Specifically in reference to this article, there are very few PhD seats for advanced physics in the US and the universities are so prestigious if someone is denied a visa from a temporarily banned country, another person of equal brilliance from another country will take that seat.

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#412

Post by InitialLastName »

whenwillitstop wrote: post #371
helpfulanon wrote: post #35

What's more worrisome is how fervently anti-science the new administration is. Academics may eventually be persecuted in the US across the board - as they are already at the EPA, USDA etc - and regardless of citizenship. I firmly believe anyone with a brain should begin making contingency plans to regroup somewhere like Australia or Japan, outside of the reaches of far-right populism. An Erdogan-style academic purge…

This couldn't be farther from the truth. People branding the current administration like this are destabilizing the country. The media in this country is on an ideological witch hunt, and you are proliferating it.

Friend, if witches are causing irreparable damage, shouldn't do everything we can to proliferate a hunt for them?

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#413

Post by misingnoglic »

turc1656 wrote: post #293
misingnoglic wrote: post #190

I really can't believe this. First the US goes into Iran, and destabilizes the popular government (see: 1953). Now, after literally no threat from any Iranian immigrants, they ban them. Good thing my parents came here before, I guess??

The threat isn't directly from Iranian immigrants but the the nation itself. I would like to remind you that the Obama administration's state department declared Iran to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism. That's not something to take lightly.

Obama's position clearly states that the Iranian government is the issue. Trump's clearly says "We don't want your kind in our country"

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#414

Post by InitialLastName »

wfunction wrote: post #156
jekdoce wrote: post #11

Advice from a high-level staffer for a Senator: There are two things that everyone concerned should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things. You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing. 1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time - if they have town halls, go to them. Go to their local office…

Question: what if your representative already supports what you're saying? Like what if they're already Democrat? What can they even do? The Republicans are the ones who seem to be supporting this. That's what's always stumped me about this advice.

Use the Tea Party strategy: threaten to fund and support primary opposition from the left unless they push back harder.

The GOP only barely has a majority in the Senate. They'll need Democratic support for some things, and as far as I know filibusters are still legal.

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#415

Post by wyager »

selimthegrim wrote: post #205
wyager wrote: post #88

It always surprises me how countries don't offer automatic citizenship for people either working towards or who have already received advanced degrees in scientific/engineering fields. Surely there are few better ways to achieve technological superiority, either for economic or military reasons. It also tends to filter out religious extremists, if that's your justification for immigration restrictions in the first pl…

False - many of the 9/11 hijackers had engineering degrees. Engineering education especially in a lot of those countries actually makes one less of a critical thinker and more vulnerable to accept dogma without objecting.

Interesting, I did not know that. Thank you. Interesting argument wrt educational dogma in the Middle East. I know it's a problem in Indian higher education.

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#416

Post by macintux »

guptaneil wrote: post #320
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is not new. If you leave the US for more than 6 months, you can potentially lose your green card at the discretion of CBP regardless of where you're from.

OP is not talking about people away for 6 months. These are American residents who might be traveling for a week and suddenly find themselves homeless. If you think that can't happen to you, I have a bridge to sell you.

I went to sleep on election night and woke up homeless.

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#417

Post by guildwriter »

edmccard wrote: post #345
guildwriter wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, let me go into more detail. I know a lot of people who fervently believe that Trump is the second coming of Hitler. If you dig around on Twitter it won't be long before you find this sentiment practically everywhere. It's not "could be a fascist" it is "actually is a fascist and we need to actively resist". This is not unique to Donald Trump. W Bush is the most recent example where Bush=Hitler was practi…

>I think it's fair to argue that it's a tenant of faith for liberals that all conservatives hate gays, hate minorities, hate women, etc. Well, to paraphrase your next sentence: "that these people exist in the Democratic party is impossible to deny, to tar and feather the entire Democratic party as this way is how we get to the binary world view." In particular, I am a liberal in a rural Pennsylvania county that voted…

>Well, to paraphrase your next sentence: "that these people exist in the Democratic party is impossible to deny, to tar and feather the entire Democratic party as this way is how we get to the binary world view."

That's fair, I should have included that point as well.

>You mentioned Twitter; if Trump being a Nazi is one bad option, and there are x-1 other good options, I think it's only natural that the kind of people who like to tweet are going to tweet about what they think is the most dangerous one.

I mentioned twitter mainly because it's what comes to mind first. Here's a tumblr example:

"I have seen a lot of people talking about the issues that were removed from the White House website. What I have seen little discussion of (or any, tbh) is what’s gone up in their place. There are exactly six issues now listed:

America First Energy Plan

America First Foreign Policy

Bringing Back Jobs And Growth

Making Our Military Strong Again

Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community

Trade Deals Working For All Americans

Just those headings should be terrifying enough: between the focus on state violence and the coded “America First” white ultranationalism, this is an unabashedly, literally fascist platform."

https://shotfromguns.tumblr.com/post/156267047201/i-have-see...

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#418

Post by rak00n »

Amezarak wrote: post #389
wfo wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you want to actually do science it doesn't really produce profit, it produces knowledge and results which someone else may use for profit decades or centuries later and the idea of "shortages" or "supply" or "demand" are all ideas that come from the market which is not relevant here. There's high pay for brilliant scientists who want to work on weapons manufacturing or oil drilling or high frequency tradin…

Then it sounds like we should be fixing the funding issue, not importing cheap labor to work in bad conditions. Nevertheless, BLS statistics tell a different story. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-ste... For most Ph.D.’s, the United States has a surplus of workers, especially in tenure-track positions in academia. The exceptions are certain fields within industry, such as petroleum engineerin…

You're just trolling this guy. Science knowledge is not transferable. I cannot make a rocket scientist do high energy particle physics research. If there is no demand for rocket scientist then his wage would be low.

How hard is that to understand?

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#419

Post by rdhyee »

nkurz wrote: post #407
jekdoce wrote: post #11

Advice from a high-level staffer for a Senator: There are two things that everyone concerned should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things. You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing. 1. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time - if they have town halls, go to them. Go to their local office…

This process seems ripe for abuse. Phone calls do not necessarily come from the geographic area they appear to, and there likely aren't any legal consequences for lying about zip code. How can this be both the most effective way to influence a politician, and at the same time not be subverted to the point that such feedback cannot be trusted? Are there other checks that are less obvious? If what you say is true, I'd…

I've wondered about this question myself. Wondering whether a financially well-resourced group would just use money to get access as an easier and more efficient approach to influence of a member of Congress. That to simulate an avalanche of calls from concerned citizens by paying people to call is a less financially efficient method to get influence. (I'm just speculating.)

Re: First they came for the Iranians

#420

Post by helpfulanon »

rpiguy wrote: post #406
helpfulanon wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pendulum swings both ways, and right now it is swinging faster and harder than ever before in this country. When it swings back, in a tsunami of the unrelenting rage and profound hatred for the other side, there will be blood. That is the future.

Possibly. Remember it is the right wingers with all the guns :-)

You can troll your way into a civil war, but you can't troll your way out of it.
Post reply on HN