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

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

#191

Post by eiaoa »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #170
eiaoa wrote: post #23

[flagged]

Just to provide some historical context, our space program that ultimately put a man on the moon was largely driven by Nazi science. In particular, Wernher von Braun was a key figure in the design and development of the Nazi's V-2 ICBM, receiving accolades and rewards directly from Hitler himself for his successes. After WW2 he, along with hundreds of other Nazi scientists and engineers, were secretly recruited (see:…

Exactly my point. Science wasn't neutral in WWII, and it's not neutral now. If von Braun hadn't been part of their regime, they may not have had V-weapons. If Hitler hadn't been such an anti-Semite, Jewish scientists may not have fled Europe en masse and instead helped the Nazi's develop the atom bomb.

Back then, if people celebrated and supported Nazi science in the name of an idealistic concept of politically-neutral human scientific advancement, Europe and maybe even America may be subjugated under a Nazi flag.

Everyone who cares about liberal political institutions should hope that authoritarian regimes are scientifically and technologically backwards, and work to keep it that way.

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

#192

Post by candiodari »

asabjorn wrote: post #190
candiodari wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main reason there is so much opposition is what happens when it does. Then there is no reason to change the laws/policies (because they don't override how humans are built). That means there is no reason for the careers of politicians and activists and no money for the initiatives to fix it. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In practice, of course, biology explains a large portion of differences b…

You make some good points, but I would like to add caveats on the usefulness to think in terms of groups when judging an individual and make the point that group inferences has severe limitations when making decisions about an individual. There are bigger differences within groups than between them, although there are also large differences between groups. For instance, people of jewish descent have an average IQ tha…

I am explicitly talking about the generally used definition of diversity, which I believe boils down to what I put in the comment:

> "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution of participants"

(and sometimes even extended to the distribution of the population)

Like you say, an individual's performance, like any other individual data point in statistics, can be anything, or anyone in this case. I should probably have mentioned that.

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

#193

Post by eiaoa »

dang wrote: post #148
eiaoa wrote: post #23

[flagged]

Please don't Godwin already-flameprone threads. That's trolling, whether you intended to or not. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546130 and marked it off-topic.

> Please don't Godwin already-flameprone threads. That's trolling, whether you intended to or not.

If you weren't aware: Godwin has repealed "Godwin's law":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/...:

> If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.

Or any other regime.

My comment was not hyperbolic, as WWII is pretty much the perfect real-world example of the political ramifications of scientific and technological advancement. Far from "benefit[ing] all of mankind even if the benefits are initially felt closer to where they're conducted," if the Nazi's had invented the atom bomb before the allies, mankind would have suffered more than it has.

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

#194

Post by asabjorn »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #187
asabjorn wrote: post #120

As a former researcher I am not surprised to see another nation capitalizing on the counter-productive politicization of US science. I used to be a researcher and writing proposals suddenly started taking up much more time around 2010 to 2013 because each grant became much smaller. Each grant also became more specific in what science you were expected to produce, which essentially made us all contractors for NSF plus…

On [1], I found that tptacek's commentary [4] was much helpful to shape my own opinion about it. At the very least I believe the Quillette article is inadequate as an example of, say, biology under the leftist attack. [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17949340

I think the problem with tptacek's explanation is that it does not address the larger context of how certain topics have become sacred in academia [5], and how breaking or criticising these sacred ideas leads to an outsized reaction. Do you think the reaction was focusing on merits and that it was not an outsized reaction due to someone violating something sacred?

Lets dig more into evidence of suppression of biological research:

How would you then explain the reactions to anyone stating the biological fact that human gender is overwhelmingly bimodal with almost everyone being male/female [1], suppression of research into intelligence [2], or the diversity pledges some candidates now have to write before becoming professors [3].

The grievance studies hoax proved how grievance studies is acting like ideological whitewashing of extreme political ideas that would be unacceptable otherwise [4]. These ideas are used to justify political actions in universities and in culture to suppress sacrilegious ideas [5], and it is a concept of sacred only a small very loud minority of progressives believe in and these comprise 8% of the population [6].

Personally I find the radical leftist explanation of these two incidences unconvincing:

- it seems like the opposition to McKinnon’s paper was argued primarily from a moral angle due to his violation of some progressive sacred principles, and other explanation does not seem to explain the size of the response

- The reaction to the grievance studies hoax was that peer review is flawed and them still claiming that it is fair to use favored political views as a valid criteria of what should be publishing of papers of very poor scholarship. This does not engage with the real very disturbing conclusions of this study, and the fact that their hoax papers in addition to winning prices within grievance studies are also indistinguishable from other scholarship regularly published there.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6phePAZueQw [2] https://jordanbpeterson.com/transcripts/douglas-murray/ [3] https://www.thecollegefix.com/ucla-to-require-diversity-pled... [4] https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8 [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...

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

#195

Post by asabjorn »

candiodari wrote: post #192
asabjorn wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make some good points, but I would like to add caveats on the usefulness to think in terms of groups when judging an individual and make the point that group inferences has severe limitations when making decisions about an individual. There are bigger differences within groups than between them, although there are also large differences between groups. For instance, people of jewish descent have an average IQ tha…

I am explicitly talking about the generally used definition of diversity, which I believe boils down to what I put in the comment: > "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution of participants" (and sometimes even extended to the distribution of the population) Like you say, an individual's performance, like any other individual data point in statistics, can be anything, or anyone in…

Makes sense.

Yes, only a small subset of people in general have a good understanding of statistics.

- People on the radical left without a good understanding of statistics are often outraged by how they misunderstand how statistical should be interpreted

- People on the identarian right make outrageous statements the statistics can't support.

I try to avoid both misunderstandings by explicitly stating the caveat.

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

#196

Post by asabjorn »

john_moscow wrote: post #175
asabjorn wrote: post #120

As a former researcher I am not surprised to see another nation capitalizing on the counter-productive politicization of US science. I used to be a researcher and writing proposals suddenly started taking up much more time around 2010 to 2013 because each grant became much smaller. Each grant also became more specific in what science you were expected to produce, which essentially made us all contractors for NSF plus…

>We should ask ourselves if we want to be equal on a sinking ship or make life better by allowing everyone to compete as individuals regardless of which identity you think they belong to. I think, there's a very solid cause behind it. Most of "competing individually" is essentially making different decisions and benefiting/losing from the consequences. Except over the past few decades our society has automated/protoc…

I think if we were all the same and we could use a few group identities to understand individuals you would be right. However, maybe there is a great deal of variety within us that is not expressed because of the measures applied in the name of compassion and equity. The sta

The equity agenda is inherently a very pessimistic agenda in the same way that communism is pessimistic. It assumes that our current tangible as well as intangible resources is a good approximation of what can be, and I think we over the last 100 years have proven that this is not true.

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

#197

Post by lifthrasiir »

asabjorn wrote: post #194
lifthrasiir wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On [1], I found that tptacek's commentary [4] was much helpful to shape my own opinion about it. At the very least I believe the Quillette article is inadequate as an example of, say, biology under the leftist attack. [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17949340

I think the problem with tptacek's explanation is that it does not address the larger context of how certain topics have become sacred in academia [5], and how breaking or criticising these sacred ideas leads to an outsized reaction. Do you think the reaction was focusing on merits and that it was not an outsized reaction due to someone violating something sacred? Lets dig more into evidence of suppression of biologi…

You seem to complain to tptacek for not addressing the "larger context" but you don't really give any alternative explanation of the event. I'm just pointing out that the event is probably not a good example given the context, and tptacek in the linked thread just presents that context. I'm pretty much aware that, for example, variability hypothesis is being thoroughly attacked while there are evidences supporting some (but not all) sorts of variability and you don't have to repeat your claim to me.

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

#198

Post by asabjorn »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #197
asabjorn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with tptacek's explanation is that it does not address the larger context of how certain topics have become sacred in academia [5], and how breaking or criticising these sacred ideas leads to an outsized reaction. Do you think the reaction was focusing on merits and that it was not an outsized reaction due to someone violating something sacred? Lets dig more into evidence of suppression of biologi…

You seem to complain to tptacek for not addressing the "larger context" but you don't really give any alternative explanation of the event. I'm just pointing out that the event is probably not a good example given the context , and tptacek in the linked thread just presents that context. I'm pretty much aware that, for example, variability hypothesis is being thoroughly attacked while there are evidences supporting s…

I think you are missing my claim that the severity of the response seem to be due to him violating a sacred value and that this was a large part of the justification of the response, regardless of the merit of any other claim they could have made on the merits of the paper itself.

My second follow-up claim is that if the response had been entirely based upon merits then the response would have not been anything remotely this severe. tptaceks claim is on the merits of the paper, which might or might not be correct to some degree, but does not address this concern with the response and how problematic it is that sacredness is now part of the academic review process.

Ideas should be engaged with and critiqued through scholarship, and basing any rejection of scholarship partially or fully on an idea of sacredness is dangerous to the integrity of our scholarship. We need to have zero tolerance of this, and McKinnon’s situation or the reaction to Charles Murray before it shows how sacredness stops us from properly critiquing ideas through scholarship.

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

#199

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

monocasa wrote: post #53
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with lots of Chinese scientists and they say they are never going back. They don't trust Chinese papers or labs at all.

Wouldn't there be an implicit bias towards those who don't want to return? The others made their way back to China.

We have only had one leave and go back to China and he was terrible and only here to get the "worked in the USA" seal so he could go back and get a better and higher paying professorship in China.

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

#200

Post by lifthrasiir »

asabjorn wrote: post #198
lifthrasiir wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to complain to tptacek for not addressing the "larger context" but you don't really give any alternative explanation of the event. I'm just pointing out that the event is probably not a good example given the context , and tptacek in the linked thread just presents that context. I'm pretty much aware that, for example, variability hypothesis is being thoroughly attacked while there are evidences supporting s…

I think you are missing my claim that the severity of the response seem to be due to him violating a sacred value and that this was a large part of the justification of the response, regardless of the merit of any other claim they could have made on the merits of the paper itself. My second follow-up claim is that if the response had been entirely based upon merits then the response would have not been anything remot…

So you are not concerned about the response itself; you are concerned that the response is too severe. How can that be relevant to my initial reply assuming that?

And I think his response was severe exactly because sacredness had won over merits---reviewers accepting a sub-par paper for a political reason. He even explicitly stated that Mathematical Intelligencer could be a reasonable fit for the paper.

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