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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

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Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#281

Post by throwawaymaths »

abirch wrote: post #31
polairscience wrote: post #28

This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour. The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at…

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.

to steelman the issue:

what if there was overinvestment in science? as in we chased money after talent that didnt exist, or was mismatched to the difficulty of the available and fundable open questions.

a few things: you'd expect a lot of fraud and misallocated science to have been recently uncovered.

after the cuts, you would expect the quantity of science to go down, but the quality to go up

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#282

Post by rayiner »

consumer451 wrote: post #273
rayiner wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read some books on history and foreign affairs. Most of the world hates the “liberal international order” because it’s an excuse for the U.S. to impose its values on the rest of the world. DOGE revealed that USAID was funding political unrest in my home country (where activists recently overthrew the government). The U.S. has finally turned a corner on it only because the deep staters started turning that…

> DOGE revealed that USAID was funding political unrest in my home country (where activists recently overthrew the government) Let's just focus on this part for a moment. Could you please share this evidence?

For context, you should read about how USAID historically has acted to interfere in the politics of other counties: https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other...; https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/15/when-is-for...; https://www.jstor.org/stable/4017728

As to Bangladesh specifically: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/usaid-b...; https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/29m-usaid-fund-went-bangl...

There is no such thing as funding to “strengthen democracy” or whatever euphemisms USAID uses. It’s election interference directed against whatever administration is currently in power in a foreign country.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#283

Post by alfiedotwtf »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #63
abirch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.

> We may be looking at a lost decade. We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation o…

> We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

It’s not hard to understand why people believe Trump Is a Russian asset

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#284

Post by coliveira »

andix wrote: post #122
bruce511 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bearing in mind that this administration won the election and a lot of what they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on, I'm not sure democracy is at risk. One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening. This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 Edit: you can use a democratic process to kill off democracy. In the end democracy is dead, and it doesn't really matter anymore why.

You're right, but that's a flaw of democracy itself. It is known since ancient Greece.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#285

Post by [deleted] »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #214
cyberax wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a strong federative country. Individual states are almost literally _states_ (as in "country") and have a lot of power. They can impose their own carbon taxes, net neutrality rules, fund research, etc. And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.

Except that the states have no power because an unchecked executive branch can just claim that it had authority and the states have no recourse to resist. The US has an incredibly weak form of government.

[deleted]

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#286

Post by cyberax »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #272
cyberax wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a strong federative country. Individual states are almost literally _states_ (as in "country") and have a lot of power. They can impose their own carbon taxes, net neutrality rules, fund research, etc. And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.

And yet states aren't allowed to form alliances with other states according to Article 1 section 10. Sure, states might be able to fund research, but most states on their own aren't going to be able to afford to do this effectively - but if several states could band together to, say, keep funding climate science that might help keep us on track and keep scientists employed until better times come back. But they can't…

> And yet states aren't allowed to form alliances with other states

That's not quite correct. The judicial practice in the US is that the intestate compacts (agreements) require Congressional authorization only if they infringe on the sovereign Federal powers.

One good example for the 2nd Amendment lovers: states are free to make reciprocal agreements with other states for concealed carry permits. It doesn't require any authorization from the Congress.

Another example are the laws for taxation of multi-state corporations that the neighboring states can negotiate together.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#287

Post by coliveira »

jltsiren wrote: post #161
bruce511 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bearing in mind that this administration won the election and a lot of what they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on, I'm not sure democracy is at risk. One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening. This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to…

This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy. Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the v…

One thing Americans don't seem to realize is that the current constitution needs to be rewritten once we get out of this mess. One of the consequences of dictatorships is that they deform the constitution for their purposes. It seems that republicans have done enough to deform the system in an irreparable way.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#288

Post by throwawaymaths »

trhway wrote: post #104
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We may be looking at a lost decade. We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation o…

>We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. many here see it way (me too, though i'm well aware that many times whenever i was critical of Musk, he happened to be right, and in this case - Musk is naturally not anti-science guy, so i'd guess there must be some other reason for him doing that which i'm just not able to see). I wonder whether some…

> I wonder whether somebody from the opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions.

i am not on trump's side (i hate trump; i am neutral on musk except these past few weeks i think he's said -- but not yet really done -- things that are a bit beyond the pale, even for him) but i think this will be positive for American science.

as i posted in sibling comment:

> to steelman the issue: what if there was overinvestment in science? as in we chased money after talent that didnt exist, or was mismatched to the difficulty of the available and fundable open questions.

two things: you'd expect a lot of fraud and misallocated science to have been recently uncovered (Reproducibility crisis, amyloid hypothesis scandals e.g.).

after the cuts, you would expect the quantity of science to go down, but the quality to go up.

i guess technically this isn't a logocal explanation since i dont think trump is doing this in good faith but i think the US might be better off in the end.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#289

Post by mindslight »

try_the_bass wrote: post #275
mindslight wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... which has been allowed and caused by the Republican congressional obstructionism going on since the 90's. Bush, Obama, and Biden could have reduced their own use of executive power, but they couldn't undo it - rather it was Congress that would have had to reign them in and shrink executive power. Just as the current Congress is ultimately allowing Trump's ongoing authoritarian power grabs, rather than passing law…

> No, the agencies were created by congress, and have always been accountable to Congress. But Congress hasn't been doing its job, which is why they seem unaccountable. If Congress hasn't been doing its job, then they don't just seem unaccountable, they actually are.

The levers of accountability could have been pulled any time, so it stands to say that they were still accountable. Perhaps they weren't held accountable as much as you or I would have liked. But the authority was there.

But either way I don't really see what greater point you're trying to make.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#290

Post by rayiner »

mindslight wrote: post #259
_heimdall wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is continuing a trend that has been going on since at least Bush Jr. Presidents for a couple decades now have been moving more power into the executive branch. Obama and Biden both talked about undoing this, but neither did. The Patriot Act still exists, three letter agencies still have authority to spy on American citizens, and immigration laws still defy what's written on the Statue of Liberty (I think most h…

... which has been allowed and caused by the Republican congressional obstructionism going on since the 90's. Bush, Obama, and Biden could have reduced their own use of executive power, but they couldn't undo it - rather it was Congress that would have had to reign them in and shrink executive power. Just as the current Congress is ultimately allowing Trump's ongoing authoritarian power grabs, rather than passing law…

> For another example, take the frequent neofascist argument that the federal agencies are "unaccountable" without being under the direct command of the President

It’s not “neofascist” lol, it’s just what the constitution says. The first sentence of article II: “ The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

It’s not Congress’s job to hold executive branch employees accountable any more than it’s Congress’s job to hold judicial law clerks in the courts accountable. It’s the President’s job, in whom the executive power is vested.

That’s also reflected in the appointments clause. Anyone with discretionary authority must be either appointed by the president, or report to someone who is: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf. The whole point is to make the executive branch highly responsive to Presidenfial elections.

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