Do you hear that sucking sound? It's biggest brain drain you've ever seen. It already been happening, I know several great scientists who've already left, this BS just kicked it into high gear.
What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#42Are we burning Beatles records yet.
My how we’ve fallen. Trump could says he’s bigger than Jesus and sell a bible with the quote
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#43Watching the tech community waltz into DC and pretend that they know how all the levers of government work is pathetic. Are there inefficiencies? Sure. Are there places to improve? Of course. But pretending that they can understand the intricacies of literally decades of institutional knowledge and deep connections across the globe in the course of a single weekend is asinine. We need to do better. The US government…
Note this isn't representative of the tech industry in general. When I worked for Google I visited NIH, sat on study groups, and helped advise program managers how to move more compute to the cloud. Like many other techies in SV I have a PhD in a quantitative science and understand how NIH works. My efforts were entirely designed to help update the establishment, not tear it down, and that's true for the wide swath o…
Unfortunately, that subset is the tech community leadership.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#44[flagged]
What books did "they" burn? I'm asking about the actual books.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#45Watching the tech community waltz into DC and pretend that they know how all the levers of government work is pathetic. Are there inefficiencies? Sure. Are there places to improve? Of course. But pretending that they can understand the intricacies of literally decades of institutional knowledge and deep connections across the globe in the course of a single weekend is asinine. We need to do better. The US government…
Small nit, but these folks 100% can not be described as the "tech community". They're owners of big tech monopolies, their VC backers, and our new oligarchs. Tech community, however, they are not.
That feels like a No True Scotsman argument after decades of chasing VC approval, prestigious jobs at those huge companies, and adopting their practices and software. I don’t like the oligarchy either but it’s a huge part of the tech world under any definition I can come up with. We’re having this conversation on a board run by one of the VC firms with partners who are openly supportive of what’s going on, after all - is this not part of the tech community?
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#46Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#47The cynic in me thinks that the US is going to roll over and take this fascist shake down. The optimist in me thinks that the people will rise up with a resounding NO and do something about it. Right now I'm not sure which I believe.
I think the former is most likely. The people are largely unhappy with how things have been and it's unlikely to get materially worse for the majority of people in the near term, so I don't think there will be a fire lit under enough of the population to rise up. If it gets bad enough that most people are starving, rather then just struggling, we'll see action, but I doubt it'll get there anytime soon.
>The people are largely unhappy with how things have been
This is an understatement to say the least, and the fact it's been denied and even refused by the powers that be until today is why the pendulum has swung as hard as it has.
Americans wanted change, and they finally got it with ferocious retribution because it's been held back for so long.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#48[flagged]
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#49Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.
China, for example, could set up a very European-style English-speaking institute in Hong Kong or Macau with high salaries to attract scientists. Singapore and South Korea too. One day Americans might well follow the money and the research freedom?
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#50The idea is to destroy every part of the American federal government so that techno fiefdoms can be ruled by oligarchs. It's pretty obvious. Not sure if we can stop it! In this particular case, the goal is to privatize science entirely.