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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

theguardian.com

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Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#331

Post by runako »

xiphias2 wrote: post #79

USA is still one of the top countries for scientists. Just as an example Europe had a few years of exporting the best GLP-1 drugs (finally something in which Europe was leader in science), Eli Lily quickly took it over. In software San Francisco is still the top for AI research: even when Peter Steinberger didn't know what he will do with OpenClaw, it was clear to him that the only place to move to was USA. Terrence…

> even when Peter Steinberger didn't know what he will do with OpenClaw, it was clear to him that the only place to move to was USA

We don't know how much OpenAI offered him, but I would bet big that it was enough to get most people to relocate across country lines. [To level-set: we know Meta was offering $100m pay packages to researchers who had not already released something like OpenClaw.]

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#332

Post by drnick1 »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #285
p-e-w wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a global reputational problem that will take decades to fix. The US has a global reputational advantage that will take decades to fall behind China, regardless of what any US administration does. Nobody sane is going to believe rhetoric claiming that the US is somehow worse than a country that keeps 1.5 million people in concentration camps, and where people work 70 hours per week, no matter how many times…

> The US has a global reputational advantage that will take decades to fall behind China, regardless of what any US administration does. As a former academic at a top US university, no, the US no longer has that strong reputation. 10 years ago, if you were someone, you wanted to come to the US. The best students in the world came and stayed. Things are radically different now. Much of the best talent no longer comes…

> As a former academic at a top US university, no, the US no longer has that strong reputation.

I find that hard to believe. Applications to top U.S. colleges and graduate schools are at an all-time high and acceptance rates keep falling.

No one that has an Ivy League offer or even a state school like UCLA or Michigan would go to Canada or Europe, except perhaps for Oxford and Cambridge.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#333

Post by fc417fc802 »

almosthere wrote: post #273
shiroiuma wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is kind of crazy that a lot of those moves that are so massively successful is a social media and other actions to specifically destabilize the US. And it was only possible to do BECAUSE we're so open. In China you can't get past the firewall and you can't migrate there without being on watch lists and very easily removed in a way that would make ICE look like an Ice Cream parlor.

I sort of agree with this but also keep in mind that (at least until tiktok) the social media companies doing the destabilization were all entirely home grown. And they actively pursued harmful practices. So rather than blaming outside actors I think we need to confront the fact that what we actually have is an underlying gross political failure directly leading to a lack of effective regulation.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#334

Post by mmooss »

xiphias2 wrote: post #79

USA is still one of the top countries for scientists. Just as an example Europe had a few years of exporting the best GLP-1 drugs (finally something in which Europe was leader in science), Eli Lily quickly took it over. In software San Francisco is still the top for AI research: even when Peter Steinberger didn't know what he will do with OpenClaw, it was clear to him that the only place to move to was USA. Terrence…

> Terrence Tao was a good example of what happens when an exceptionally smart person stops getting funded by an American University: not moving to another country, but got VC money and created a new company.

That is the intent of these government policies: Shift power and resources to powerful, wealthy private individuals (and their companies). Is Tao doing research?

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#335

Post by wat10000 »

torstenvl wrote: post #233
direwolf20 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, I think a much more effective way to destroy the US would be to send armed gangs through the streets and have them kidnap people from their houses at random. That would cause far more destruction than merely telling people you were doing that without actually doing it.

[flagged]

How are they not? They’re definitely armed, so only the “gang” part is questionable. Wikipedia says:

“A gang is a group or society of associates, friends, or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectively, in illegal, and possibly violent, behavior, with such behavior often constituting a form of organized crime.”

I’d say that fits some law enforcement pretty well.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#336

Post by radioactivist »

tensor wrote: post #27
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even s…

This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has sudden…

While I echo some of your points, [1] is bad example (as a Canadian).

Research money in Canada is harder to come by; a basic research grant is roughly ~5x-10x lower than a comparable American grant (students are cheaper here, so its not completely proportional, but equipment, travel, etc doesn't scale).

The example for money for poaching international researchers also comes with the asterisk that while they found ~$2B for this, they also are cutting the base funding of the federal granting agencies by a few percent at the same time, atop of that funding being anemic for decades at this point. A big "fuck you" to the Canadian research community in my opinion.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#337

Post by lugu »

rayiner wrote: post #254
dboreham wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has 3X more people, and America has a relatively terrible education system, so they have to import talented people who were educated elsewhere.

America has a very good education system against the backdrop of challenging sociological factors and mass low-skill immigration. In the PISA exam, white American kids outperform kids in Hong Kong and Korea, as well as western european kids of non-immigrant ancestry. The American education system has major and important challenges, such as how to educate the large share of kids whose parents are economic migrants fro…

You are wrong at so many levels. Your argument is factually incorrect and logically flawed. And you know it.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#338

Post by tsunamifury »

gyomu wrote: post #322
tsunamifury wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in with the Chinese now for two years in technical fields. I have a strict requirement that they learn English as it is a more technical and specific language and less prone to the use of metaphorical weasel words that slow progress. I have openly stated that it is a strictly less technical language and often draws teams in to vague specifications and much more verbose language to find specificity. I ha…

Chinese engineers clearly have no problems building specific, technical things; just like Chinese surgeons have no problems carrying out specific, technical surgeries, etc. So how is the language "strictly less technical and specific"? Can you give specific and technical examples?

Mandarin is a courtly language full of back out vagueness and high context construction. This is simply a product of the society. It’s not a judgement of right or wrong it simply just is.

Rote Surgery is not a good example compared to say writing a PRD about an unknown feature.

I am in no way saying Chinese people cannot do these things. I am saying in mandarin it is less specific and more circumspect ways of getting there.

I’m guessing you don’t really know what your talking about here though and are knee jerking a response.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#339

Post by fc417fc802 »

api wrote: post #278
globalnode wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more pressure in rural areas to conform in the sense that people know people that can make your time more difficult if you don't. If you get blacklisted in the bush gl finding any work and that's a survival issue. In the city you can walk around anon most of the time and people are more used to others being different. Dump a new high rise of foreigners that don't speak the local language in a metro area and n…

The dilution factor is something I hadn’t thought about. Dump a few hundred foreigners in a town of 5000 and that’s very noticeable and some people will find it jarring. Dump ten thousand foreigners in a metro of three million and nobody will notice. The point about conformism and exile cost is good too. Cities present endless options for social circles and employment. Little towns not so much.

To expand on this, consider the historic importance of culture for improving survival odds and thus conformism as a natural consequence. So it makes sense that people in smaller groups would exhibit associated tendencies, and also that people who exhibit those tendencies would tend to gravitate towards smaller groups.

Somewhat related recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989124

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#340

Post by koito17 »

rayiner wrote: post #261
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent? I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China. If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.

The importance of immigrant “talent” is clearly overstated. Japan became a powerhouse in the 20th century with virtually no immigration and a significantly smaller population than the US. China is becoming a technological powerhouse with no immigration as well.

Even more importantly, there's just a lot of people in China. New York City's population is approximately 8.8 million; that is the scale of a mid-sized Chinese city. The population exceeds 1 billion, which is difficult to comprehend in terms of scale. The reference I like to use is: 1 million seconds is ~11 days, whereas 1 billion seconds is ~31 years.

To put it bluntly, China quite literally doesn't need (nor wants) the average software dev on HN. The immigrants they would likely want are those with expertise in much harder technical disciplines (semiconductor R&D etc.)

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