thus begins the end of pax americana; you can't have a space-age economy if you don't have science.
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Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
141–150 of 201 posts
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#142I remember how "master" and "slave" were banned a few years back in information technology context and people cheered that ban. And surprise surprise, the same mechanism of arbitrary bans can be turned 180 degrees. And it appears that if the only criteria is a superficial offense at the established word unrelated to the imaginary offense, then many different people can use that same mechanism to ban or attack whateve…
When you say they were "banned", do you mean a handful of companies voluntarily decided to stop using those words internally and published blog posts about it? I don't recall it going any further than that.
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#143Why did this just plummet to page three? Very weird. [Edit] A few seconds later, I cannot find it no matter how many times I click "more".
Standard HN procedure, some people flag it that way when it's unflagged gets lost in 2nd page or behinde. It happens with other "divisive" or "delicate" subjects too.
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#144Freedom of speech does not imply freedom of funding.
> Freedom of speech does not imply freedom of funding. The first amendment is specifically about preventing government reprisals for speech. If I would have won a federal grant, but was denied it because I said "trans rights," that's the definition of a first amendment violation.
You're wrong in this case. All you have to do is replace the target and it becomes obvious.
If a scientist currently or previously spammed papers of the form "why Nazis were right all along", we should all hope the government doesn't fund that subject or person.
The mass retraction of previously published papers is ethically concerning, but choice of who/what to fund in future is always completely in-scope for leadership to choose, regardless of whether you agree with the particular decision.
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#145I remember how "master" and "slave" were banned a few years back in information technology context and people cheered that ban. And surprise surprise, the same mechanism of arbitrary bans can be turned 180 degrees. And it appears that if the only criteria is a superficial offense at the established word unrelated to the imaginary offense, then many different people can use that same mechanism to ban or attack whateve…
These were not banned. I still call master-slave systems master-slave, and I haven't gotten banned from anywhere because of that. Some people don't like it, and other people don't like that some people don't like it, and some people ban its usage from their platforms, and other people enforce its usage on their platforms, which sounds like a free marketplace of ideas to me!
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#146I remember how "master" and "slave" were banned a few years back in information technology context and people cheered that ban. And surprise surprise, the same mechanism of arbitrary bans can be turned 180 degrees. And it appears that if the only criteria is a superficial offense at the established word unrelated to the imaginary offense, then many different people can use that same mechanism to ban or attack whateve…
"banned"? Like there's some singular entity in charge of all of IT that gets to ban things?
Yes, we have mandatory linter rules which won’t let us check in code that contains the word “whitelist” or “blacklist” or “master” because they are somehow racist.
I work at the biggest tech company, which employs hundreds of thousands of people and these rules are applied across all codebases.
This stuff is widespread across big companies and the government.
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#147thus begins the end of pax americana; you can't have a space-age economy if you don't have science.
Also... if you stop trading with everyone else.
One of the USA's main power sources is controlling the world reserve currency. This means that every other country imports inflation from the USA, in exchange for delivering vast quantities of useful goods and services to the USA. Without this special status, the USA will have to export as much as it imports.
"Controlling the world reserve currency" and "Having a massive trade deficit" are the same word, since trade deficit is how much stuff other countries sent you without you having to send stuff to them, which is how much currency you sent to those countries. Trump says he wants to eliminate the trade deficit.
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#148In particle physics we usually use these terms which will be at any proposal. This is an interesting textbook definition of false positives when you have list that is using too common words. - Minimum "Biased" data - "Discrimination" or "Discriminatory" variables - Phase space "excluded" - "Inclusion" of data/variable/anything - "inequality" -> wow bell's inequality and all this theory work about inequalities will be…
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The words searched are so common that it could literally flag a sizeable portion of all of science and such flags are liable if the trend continues to be handled by political hacks with zero expertise and expansive targets for cuts.
Heavy collateral damage is incredibly likely.
Also research with the wrong ideological underpinning can't violate anti-discrimination laws even if one imagines erroneously that application of same in hiring would despite prior supreme court findings.
Lastly over zealous punative punishment of lawful speech leading to aggressive self censorship is a entirely legitimate concern.
The logical result is suppressing the sciences. It is in fact the very same political correctness oft decried by nazis and bigots weaponized against everyone who isn't a christian white male.
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#149Here’s a relevant XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/1357/
I was shown this back in college when I raised concerns about how cancel culture was stifling the free exchange of ideas and when I argued against the idea that speech was the same thing as violence. I guess if this is the world we live in the same thing applies in the other direction.
“The first amendment doesn’t shield you from criticism or consequences”
“It’s just that people listening think you’re an asshole”
“And they’re showing you the door”
Re: Words flagged in search of current NSF awards
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was being charitable by asking whether you are gullible or a parrot. Gullible is the charitable interpretation. This whole action has been done on a pretext of lies: getting politics out of science, when it fact is is putting politics into science.
The politics was already in the science. So in the same spirit of being charitable that you afforded me, are you naive or foolish?
But just the science relating to "women", not the science relating to "men?"