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China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

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71–80 of 204 posts

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#71
post #24

This may not be accurate, but I feel like the US benefited a lot from many foreigners knowing English. This does not seem to be the case for Chinese, though I imagine that will change.

Because of the difficult writing system (thousands of characters to memorize, rather than a mere 26), Mandarin is unlikely to replace English as a world language.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#72

Frankly, it's embarrassing how an absolutist regime can create a sense of more on-the-ground intellectual freedom than can a supposedly free country. Socially enforced censorship of painfully obvious facts in the west has gotten out of control, and unless we place limits on our newfound authoritarian impulses, we're going to be out-competed. While it's true that we've been very successful for a long time, success bre…

I don’t think the ethical grounds for objecting to gene editing are vague at all. Taken to logical extremes, the ability to edit out ‘undesirable’ qualities in our descendants should ring alarm bells in anyone - who decides what is undesirable? There are plenty of practical grounds too. They don’t just turn off the cancer switch - gene editing ‘turns off’ some deep cellular function that is involved in cancer develop…

If you had the option to grant your child the ability to live to 150 in perfect health, and if, experimentally determined, the risk of negative side effects were the same as, say, postponing childbirth by five years, would you withold this advantage from your child, sentencing him or her to a shorter and more miserable life? How could a responsible parent choose to do that?

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#73
post #67

Frankly, it's embarrassing how an absolutist regime can create a sense of more on-the-ground intellectual freedom than can a supposedly free country. Socially enforced censorship of painfully obvious facts in the west has gotten out of control, and unless we place limits on our newfound authoritarian impulses, we're going to be out-competed. While it's true that we've been very successful for a long time, success bre…

Are you saying the west should allow human experiments on innocent (to-be-born) humans like in China just to keep the pace ? The right to decide what we do to your body, the right to not serve as guinea pig to experiments that aim to achieve a Nazi-like goal of creating a superior race... These are "vague" ethics? If you were currently dieing because of secondary effects due to an experiment we did on you as an embry…

The west performs human experimentation all the time for the sake of validating new drugs and surgical devices. While current standards are, IMHO, too strict, the system more or less works, and few people have serious ethical problems with clinical trials, despite clinical trials being literally human experimentation.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#74
post #23

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When you're fanning the flames of nationalist fear like this, comparing the rising power to Nazis.. are you thinking of yourself as an anti-nazi? Anyone could pull up 3 links about the USA, UK or Russia being really bad to Muslims.. why single out China? Do we want cooperation or do we want to fight it out?

Only one of those links was about Muslims. One was about the terrible conditions in labor camps that even Han Chinese are sent to, and another was about the jailing of human rights and defense lawyers for doing their jobs.

I don't care what nationality advances science, but I do want unabashedly authoritarian regimes to be at a technical and scientific disadvantage to ones that at least pay lip service to human rights.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#75

Well, you know, it’s not like the USA isn’t luring a lot of Chinese researchers and students already. Speaking as an American who worked as a researcher in China for almost 9 years, China is way late to the “leveraging global talent” game. They should catch up, it’s only natural.

Seems like it's much easier to leverage global talent when you are leading the research at a global level. This has arguably not been this case for (modern) china until recently.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#77

[flagged]

I am confident that most scientists would never want to work on any of the projects you've mentioned nor could China lure people in to work on such things. Instead, just the fact that one day China might be the first destination for young talent instead of the US will be enough to give them the edge in their fight for superiority. Whatever the case humanity will see at least some benefit from these type of competitio…

You followed the news right ? They removed a gene from a baby not to cure him but just to experiment and see what's going to happen to him. This absolutely inhumane. This children had scientist messing with his DNA without his consent, just to see if they can create a new generation of more resistant humans. So scientists are perfectly fine with doing inhumane experiments it seems...

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#79
post #3

I don't really think China is luring too many U.S. scientists... Most of the scientists I know pretty much ignore research out of China, because a large portion of it is just not replicable (and / or lies).

This used to be the case but it is changing rapidly. Especially in Math and CS right now.

Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students

#80
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're fanning the flames of nationalist fear like this, comparing the rising power to Nazis.. are you thinking of yourself as an anti-nazi? Anyone could pull up 3 links about the USA, UK or Russia being really bad to Muslims.. why single out China? Do we want cooperation or do we want to fight it out?

Only one of those links was about Muslims. One was about the terrible conditions in labor camps that even Han Chinese are sent to, and another was about the jailing of human rights and defense lawyers for doing their jobs. I don't care what nationality advances science, but I do want unabashedly authoritarian regimes to be at a technical and scientific disadvantage to ones that at least pay lip service to human right…

Lip service indeed. We imprison our own at 4x the rate they do, and spend all our surplus capital on bombs and guns while they build trains and bridges. 2 of the past 3 Presidents had less votes than their opponent.

But hey, we've got lip service!

Not that there aren't problems in China. But people should check their biases and learn some history before advancing radical hot takes.

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