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

China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 309 posts

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#241

Post by iamshs »

selimthegrim wrote: post #224
iamshs wrote: post #208

Off topic: Has anyone noticed purge of Muslim students from Chinese labs? I follow some Chinese professors, and they onboarded 2 Pakistani students and within two months, both were removed from the website. Same story with 4 more students in a different university and different laboratories. Incidentally, Xinjiang concentration camps started being mentioned in the news soon after. Also, noticed an uptick of Indian st…

This is disturbing given the paeans to the working relationship between the two countries, if not just down to poor Pakistani education quality

I don't even know if it is a widespread problem, or even if there was any malice involved in those cases. I found it a bit curious that the names were purged from the websites, not even put in the Alumni column. There can be myriad of reasons...

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#242

Post by dh5 »

baybal2 wrote: post #196
oh-kumudo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change, and turned those topics into highly political charged issues. Also the US education system prior to college takes an another interesting aim to cultivate students' confidence, not by equipping them with logical training, but circumventing hard subjects like…

>Maybe it's time for US to let it down its own myth about American exceptionalism, and revisit the true cause of its current lead in global research: large influx of foreign talents, first from Europe, then Soviet Russia and now China/India. US was lucky to have this constant grab of the best minds from the rest of the world, but sadly, or maybe not, I can't see this would continue. That actually is US weakness, US a…

You are highly mistaken if you believe Chinese undergraduate courses are anywhere near the difficulty of American ones. Chinese classes involve having students going to have participation counted and maybe a trivial exam at the end. There is no studying done outside of some cramming at the end of the semester. Contrast that to the stream of assignments and tests from even lower-ranked schools in the US.

You're right about the difficulty of getting into undergrad, but the system is well-known for having tremendously difficult years in middle/high school to prepare for the gaokao, and the students coasting through undergrad afterward.

I would bring up some articles to show but a cursory search doesn't reveal anything.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#243

Post by Someguywhatever »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #176
throwaway713 wrote: post #36

The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on sci…

US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change, and turned those topics into highly political charged issues. Also the US education system prior to college takes an another interesting aim to cultivate students' confidence, not by equipping them with logical training, but circumventing hard subjects like…

>US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change

This is not a manifestation of stupidity, I think it is motivated by distrust of authorities.

Essentially: "If I agree that X is true, what will you do next?". If I don't trust what you will do, well then X cannot be allowed to be true. Since I need rhetorical ground to stand on and by giving up that position I'll have no position from which to argue against the policies that follow on, I choose not to agree with X. Sure there are probably stupid people that don't understand but they are not driving so to speak.

This logic is true for all political stripes.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#244

Post by gdy »

adventured wrote: post #88
Eridrus wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are people becoming more risk averse, or do we have more people in precarious positions where they face more serious down sides if their gamble doesn't pay off?

The US social safety net is drastically better today than it was in the recent past (eg 1980 or 1990). It's now comparable to the OECD median. I know this is an unpopular statement, because for decades it has been a common attack point to go after the US on this front. However the US is spending a lot more per capita on its welfare policies, inflation adjusted, than it was a few decades ago. Particularly since the mi…

Why aren't those 8.8% covered?

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#245

Post by dnautics »

dnautics wrote: post #91
tacomonstrous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage is allocated to basic research? The US government is continuing to abdicate its responsibility towards funding it.

what is the US government's responsibility here? There are very good arguments that government funding of science has actually been a problem, starting with the big picture: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science

Lots of down votes but no explanation. I'll put a counterargument. Lots of good science has been privately funded: A lot of things in the early 20th and 19th centuries, Salk Sabin and the cure for polio, Peter Mitchell and solving the chemiosmotic effect, the entire HHMI, etc.

Do we actually need a lot of science? A lot of the low hanging fruit has been picked and it seems to me like the next advances will require deep reflection and study that isn't compatible with the tenure-track-driven-by-grant-receipt / grant-receipt-driven-by-performance-on-other-grants cycle of government driven science. At the same time, if government does anything else the scientific endeavor it funds will devolve into an exercise in channeling funds to a few golden children that are selected.... How? And will be detached from any reasonable standard of good governance and accountability.

So I challenge someone to explain why the us government has a responsibility to fund science, where that authority comes from, and how acceptable standards of accountability will be established.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#246

Post by JackFr »

reacweb wrote: post #150
btrettel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier, but not easy. During my PhD I've translated about a dozen papers into English, mostly from Russian. Google Translate and Yandex Translate did the actual translation (I would compare the two), but what they produce is not always intelligible or correct. On a few more important papers I went through the paper sentence by sentence to clarify the translation. It's not uncommon that I have to change certain phrase…

I always complain about the poor results from google translate between english and french. It works well for litteral translations, but I do not need help for litteral translations. I need help to translate from idioms in a language toward idioms in the other one. I often use https://www.deepl.com/translator which is slightly better than google translate.

I could care less.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#247

Post by stickfigure »

rsj_hn wrote: post #178
GlobalFrog wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue though that we live in highly accelerated times compared to when latin was used. It took quite a long time for the roman language domination to be built : between 509 BC to 480 AD (roman republic and western roman empire), whereas the english dominance came in roughly 70 to 140 years only (depending on the importance you give to the british empire, my opinion being that it is mostly since WW2). So, to…

So, I'm not talking about total use. English isn't the most popular first language even today. I'm talking about which language is the most popular second language used in international dialogue, especially research. And the relevant speed there is not population growth but how fast the interconnections and traditions of science change. On the one hand, you have a lot of new scientists coming online, but on the other…

It's funny that in a startup/techie forum like this, nobody's yet brought up Metcalfe's Law. The network effects of language are incredibly strong, the switching costs are high, and English is well established.

It's hard to imagine what could shift this trend, especially to Mandarin. China's population is probably not going to get dramatically larger than the current 1.4 bn, which is only 20% of the world total. Maybe some sort of civilization-destroying world cataclysm like a meteor impact, pandemic, or nuclear warfare.

If I could live long enough to see the payout, I'd be willing to bet that far future humans will speak only one language, and that language will have evolved primarily from English.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#248

Post by BillChapman »

jabl wrote: post #137
mrb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« English will remain the defacto global Lingua Franca of science. » Just like Latin remained the defacto lingua franca of science? :-)

We should all switch to Esperanto! :)

Kial ne uzi Esperanton? Why not use Esperanto?

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#249

Post by lmpostor »

Someguywhatever wrote: post #243
oh-kumudo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change, and turned those topics into highly political charged issues. Also the US education system prior to college takes an another interesting aim to cultivate students' confidence, not by equipping them with logical training, but circumventing hard subjects like…

>US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change This is not a manifestation of stupidity, I think it is motivated by distrust of authorities. Essentially: "If I agree that X is true, what will you do next?". If I don't trust what you will do, well then X cannot be allowed to be true. Since I need rhetori…

>This is not a manifestation of stupidity, I think it is motivated by distrust of authorities.

I'm not seeing how those things are mutually exclusive.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#250

Post by baybal2 »

eastWestMath wrote: post #236
baybal2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe it's time for US to let it down its own myth about American exceptionalism, and revisit the true cause of its current lead in global research: large influx of foreign talents, first from Europe, then Soviet Russia and now China/India. US was lucky to have this constant grab of the best minds from the rest of the world, but sadly, or maybe not, I can't see this would continue. That actually is US weakness, US a…

Uh, I mean, I’m a graduate student at a pretty good Canadian school and this hasn’t been my experience with the Chinese undergrads I teach or grad students I’ve worked with. I’m not saying they’re weak or anything, I just haven’t really seen anything to suggest they’ve been through a much more rigorous education program.

Have you considered the possibility that ones who study overseas are there because their exam scores simply made them ineligible to attend a university back home?
Post reply on HN