China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by schoen » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #177

schoen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And unlike China, it also violates my privacy as a European. I'm happy to agree that U.S. surveillance activities violate your privacy, but I'm not sure you should say "unlike China" in this context.

Well, China doesn't get support for European governments, (unlike e.g. the US) to put their surveillance equipment in here, they weren't caught red handed spying on our top politicians (unlike the US), and while they could very well be targeting Chinese targets or people of interest, I'm 100% certain they don't mass track everyone in Europe.

All agreed up until the "100% certain they don't mass track everyone in Europe part"—what's the basis for that strong certainty? That they don't want to, they realize it would be wrong, they don't think it would be worth it, or just that they can't because the European governments aren't facilitating it or looking the other way when they do it?

There are quite a few mass surveillance techniques that don't require support from a local government:

  * undersea cable tapping
  * hacking routers
  * hacking servers
  * bribing people
  * backdooring hardware
  * spy satellites
  * RF surveillance from embassies or shell companies

Several of those seem pretty plausible for me for the PRC to be using against Europeans. :-(

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

#202

Post by TangoTrotFox » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 6:50 AM UTC

eiaoa wrote: post #191

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-neutr…

There is a yin and yang to nearly everything in reality. Without this great evil, it's entirely possible humanity might have remained completely stagnant, or even have begun to regress. Stick 1000 people in a utopia where they have everything they need to subsist and endless digital entertainment. You've now set those people on the path to idiocracy. By contrast, put 1000 people in an oppressive environment where the only path to survival is ingenuity and you've laid the groundwork for creating the great thinkers, and creators, of tomorrow.

The Nazis were a large part of the reason that our technological development accelerated like nothing before, or since. We went from having never even put a man in orbit to putting a man on the moon in less than a decade - which remains what I think is by far the greatest achievement in the history of our species. A great evil created resulted in the most unimaginable good.

The times since then remained dominated by yang. We've had relative peace, prosperity, and our greatest threat was literally just a threat. And so now we are in an era where after decades of technological devolution we struggle to even fly a rocket by the moon, unable to come even close to replicating what we achieved with seeming ease some 50 years ago.

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

#203

Post by cscurmudgeon » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #128

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is not black and white. There is a spectrum and let us not pretend that China is close to most democratic countries on this scale.

> let us not pretend that China is close to most democratic countries on this scale. Why not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

Read your own link and see how it disappears as time progresses. You can't say the same for China.

https://qz.com/906142/a-chinese-medical-study-is-being-retra...

They are conducting ethical cleansing right now.

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

#204

Post by asabjorn » Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

lifthrasiir wrote: post #200

asabjorn wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point is that science isn't clear cut, and by definition a minority dissenting opinion is what furthers science. Sometimes that dissent violates a sacred principle, such as Galileo and many others did. The concept of what is sacred evolved and now practically all of us believe in modifications that allow these ideas. Science is a process that aids this change.

Therefore if a scientist when expressing an idea meet an opposition that;

- involves sacredness partially or fully as a principle for rejecting it

- threatens with severe social sanctions or exceptional actions if their favored sacredness isn't respected

Then we have hit something where the ones that have these sacred principles should have to justify their arguments as papers as well. There needs to be some negative response to using sacredness partially or fully as a way to reject ideas, because that is how we protect the scientific process from the corruption due to flaws in human nature.

If the only thing that stops that from happening is publishing the paper then we should err on publishing it when in doubt so that we can find the truth. If they believe so much that this is wrong, let them put their reputation behind their sacredness principles in another paper objecting to this paper and let us all criticize those as well.