Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#271

Post by conn10mfan » Tue, May 13, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

nickledave wrote: post #38

the tl;dr: > The NSF’s investments have shaped some of the most transformative technologies of our time—from GPS to the internet—and supported vital research in the social and behavioral sciences that helps the nation understand itself and evaluate its progress toward its democratic ideals. So in 2024, I was honored to be appointed to the National Science Board, which is charged under 42 U.S. Code § 1863 with establi…

that semaphore article is pretty interesting, there is a whole body of work being developed by folks like Gil Duran, Naomi Klein, Emil Torres, etc. right now diving into the Tech Right and characters like Andreessen

one thing I'm struck by is the willingness of people who greatly benefitted from the downstream effects of basic research (ex: the entire internet economy being downstream of DARPA, CERN, etc.) to tear down basic research, to .... unleash science?

take Peter Thiel for instance, across Youtube, blogs, and articles you can hear him railing against science and how it's stuck in the 70s...there almost seems to be this Silicon Valley disdain for science & scientific research and I'd love to understand why engineer/innovator characters are so antagonistic to researchers

Thiel on Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbk5Lccr_e0

(aside: there is a strong chance these characters are hyper interested in race science, eugenics, and gene modification and they are simply upset about ethics which they euphemistically refer to as "dogmatism")

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#272

Post by xboxnolifes » Tue, May 13, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #135

rtkwe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly way more with just being the one super power standing after the war. We were basically untouched, even accounting for dead and wounded we only lost ~1 million people and practically zero manufacturing infrastructure so we came out of the war roaring and flush with cash. That catapulted the US to where it has been for the whole of the time since but a lot of people seem to have believed we were owed that or e…

This feels revisionist to me. It was not accidental. The US had the booming wartime economy, AND it had a State department that went at solidifying global influence. Essentially the "greatest generation" locked in America's situation, and doubled down on cultural and economic dominance. The combination of state, industry and WMF-type loans extended American power globally. It was a very very good time to be American.…

Maybe not "accidental", but it's lucky for the US that the Nazi regime came to power in central Europe instead of Northern Mexico or Canada.

Or even inside the US itself.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#273

Post by hackyhacky » Tue, May 13, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #249

hackyhacky wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being appointed by a former president makes her unqualified to comment on the subject how? If you want to disagree with her commentary, do so on its merits. Dismissing her arguments because of who is making them is ad hominem fallacy. You're using a person's associations as an excuse to avoid engaging with their ideas.

That's the exact argument that I was responding to! The parent post's claim that the current President's lawyer is unqualified, because? Surely you looked into the arguments, and judge them without bias, and didn't jump to a conclusion based on his associations . They are both political appointees, you like one and don't like the other is just political bias.

> They are both political appointees, you like one and don't like the other is just political bias.

No: one was appointed legally, the other was illegally installed in an unconstitutional power grab. That's all that matters.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#274

Post by bitlax » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:01 PM UTC

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #230

bitlax wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

8 years ago. And also, much better than the stuff that goes viral on twitter today, like Kanye's latest Nazi song, along with defenses of people singing along to it.

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#275

Post by const_cast » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:28 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #146

whatshisface wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an incomplete list of things that it's impossible to research in industry: 1. Astronomy. 2. Physics. 3. Geophysics concerning the parts of the Earth deeper than the crust. 4. Biology aside from medicine. 5. Chemistry aside from industrial chemistry. 6. Theoretical computer science. 7. Mathematics. I'm not blaming you for not knowing this, but I am holding my head in my hands - how can people not know about as…

> Astronomy. What benefits do you expect to see from the kinds astronomy that require this sort of funding? Sure, knowing things can be nice but this ignores opportunity costs, eg. would practical knowledge like fusion research be further along if talent weren't focused on impractical knowledge? > Physics. Not strictly true, see quantum computing for instance, lasers, semiconductors and so on. There are some types of…

> What benefits do you expect to see?

This is exactly the problem: you're describing a for-profit mindset, and it's exactly why research in the private sector floundering.

If you pretense everything with "what value will this bring" then you've already lost. Research is about finding things out for the sake of it. You don't know if it brings value because you haven't researched it yet. That's what breaking new ground is all about.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#276

Post by naasking » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:28 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #203

naasking wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> so much fraud has been uncovered lately which fraud? please elaborate

Stuff like this, the Alzheimer's fraud, the superconductor fraud, etc.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-scientific-fraud...

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#277

Post by const_cast » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:30 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #266

voxl wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you deliberately leave out the whole quote? "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent ... Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, "I can nudge this up a bit," so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here .... We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is…

The rest of the quote makes no difference. He originally presented these numbers as based on science. Later, he admitted he actually made them up based on opinion poll results. Not science and not even "science best guesses", but numbers chosen to always be a bit higher than what most people said they felt comfortable with in order to create social pressure. It was pure social engineering, with no connection to scien…

Well that's not true at all, in his own words the science says the number is between 70-90%. And he said somewhere between those numbers. So it's based in science. It's not made up, that's not what made up means.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#278

Post by const_cast » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:34 PM UTC

jsbg wrote: post #161

BowBun wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it results in megacorps 'forcing' papers that misrepresent the truth for their own gains, yeah that's pretty bleak. Think weed killers, sugar, etc.

this is a major misperception of what private research output is actually like

Yes, and no. It's no secret that corporations will purposefully play ignorant when a profitable product has safety concerns.

J&J kept their asbestos baby powder out of the public eye for 50 years. 3M knew about forever chemicals in their adhesives for decades. Bayer knew their drug had been infected with HIV and they sold it anyway.

That's not to say all private research is untrustworthy. But, we should be skeptical.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#279

Post by const_cast » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:42 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #249

hackyhacky wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being appointed by a former president makes her unqualified to comment on the subject how? If you want to disagree with her commentary, do so on its merits. Dismissing her arguments because of who is making them is ad hominem fallacy. You're using a person's associations as an excuse to avoid engaging with their ideas.

That's the exact argument that I was responding to! The parent post's claim that the current President's lawyer is unqualified, because? Surely you looked into the arguments, and judge them without bias, and didn't jump to a conclusion based on his associations . They are both political appointees, you like one and don't like the other is just political bias.

> The parent post's claim that the current President's lawyer is unqualified, because?

Because so far every appointee by Trump has been, objectively, less qualified than the people they replace?

There's no bias in that, it's just looking at credentials. We have people in public health who have never worked in healthcare. We have people leading the DOD where their only battle thus far has been alcoholism. We have a surgeon general who can't even practice medicine. I mean... what pattern are we noticing here?

Are we just supposed to play stupid forever, in pursuit of some "fairness"? We're not blind, we're not deaf, we can understand what's going on.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#280

Post by const_cast » Tue, May 13, 2025, 11:44 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #260

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DEI is not illegal racial discrimination. It's literally the solution to centuries of racial discrimination.

Discriminating job candidates by race, regardless of the intention, is racial discrimination.

That's not what DEI is. You might be referring to Affirmative action.