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A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

president.mit.edu

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Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#141

Post by r2_pilot »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #123
busterarm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're suggesting our systems should be less democratic, then? Maybe opposing points of view should pick better candidates that will actually win elections. That's how it works, right?

Maybe it’s time to split the country? We are so polarized with very different visions about the future and what is needed to reach and increase prosperity. Let Mississippi be Mississippi with Texas and Florida, let California find its own way with New York and Washington. Democracy is fine, but we are just too divided and either side thinks the other side is dragging all of us down, and refuse to believe it’s because…

Don't consign us here in Mississippi, voting in every election, to not be represented in a democratic society. It's hard enough living here without getting dogpiled by external people who never visit and think that just because our "representatives" are a certain way that everyone here is like them, instead of the messier reality that power structures here are misaligned with the actual population's collective will.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#142

Post by willis936 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #31

What a Rorschach blot. Comments range from AI to immigration to doomsday results for USA. The admins statement in TFA speaks more to financial policy and grant declines. Unfunded students are much less likely to accept an admission. That's just a fact of life.

I was recently shown a grad office door covered with home grown memes. There was a printout of a disassociating cartoon teddy bear taped on top in the center with the caption "unfortunately the vibe continues to deteriorate".

People might pick their preferred explanation, but there is little doubt that [things in the world] are successfully demoralizing academics.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#143

Post by slg »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99
slg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historians looking back at this era are going to struggle to understand why we made the decisions we did.

Eh, do we struggle with Caligula? He’s seen as he was—a joke. I imagine this era will be seen similarly unless we manage to capstone the era with nukes.

An emperor choosing a bad heir is much easier to explain than the general population of a democracy choosing this.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#144

Post by loeg »

ceejayoz wrote: post #111
busterarm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're suggesting our systems should be less democratic, then? Maybe opposing points of view should pick better candidates that will actually win elections. That's how it works, right?

> So you're suggesting our systems should be less democratic, then? Well, what should a democratic society do when that democracy votes to overthrow it and do fascism?

No one voted to "overthrow" democracy and do "fascism," cut the hyperbole.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#145

Post by 1-more »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the brain drain people leaving their home countries to make money in the US?

> people leaving their home countries to make money in the US? To study and work, yes. We learned the trick when the Nazis chased off their scientists, doubled down on it by capturing Nazi scientists, and then developed it into a multi-decade advantage throughout the Cold War and the 1990s. Looking back, we started fucking it up with the Iraq War and financial crisis (see: A123 bankruptcy giving China its EV industry…

Highly recommend The Man from the Future biography of John von Neumann. We got The Martians for a steal because Europe was too hostile to minorities and we got the Manhattan Project and computers out of the deal. Never gonna have a brain drain arbitrage opportunity like that again.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#146

Post by blobbers »

hibikir wrote: post #103
softwaredoug wrote: post #28

The real problem is we make it too hard for international researchers to stay here. These high end student visas should have strong paths to permanent residence - maybe even an expectation

This was a relatively widespread opinion 20 years ago. I had Roy Blunt, Republican senator from Missouri at the time, come to talk to us, telling us that he thought a science Ph.D should come with a green card stapled to it. But the politics of immigration never let small bills through, as people wanted bigger ones, and the bigger ones always had things that would risk filibusters. And we all know that the current US…

It's sad that our government can't pass a bill without it being a katamari ball.

One thing, discuss, vote.

No "hey if we give you this, you give us this." just simple "do most of us agree on this?" level politics.

That's real democracy, not the crap we have today.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#147

Post by jrflo »

Besides the people in this thread bemoaning the state of research funding, international students, etc. (all of which are valid), a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with academia. Probably 80% of the recent PhD grads I know are looking to leave academia, despite the fact that they went into it to pursue a career in academia. The median science PhD takes 6 years now, and is grueling work for terrible pay, all for difficult job prospects given the current market. MIT recently became one of the first universities to get a grad student union to try and combat the increasingly exploitative nature of academia. I can see how undergrads may look at how AI can do most of their homework assignments, and see how miserable grad students are, and decide that they don't want to continue down that path.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#148

Post by ceejayoz »

loeg wrote: post #144
ceejayoz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're suggesting our systems should be less democratic, then? Well, what should a democratic society do when that democracy votes to overthrow it and do fascism?

No one voted to "overthrow" democracy and do "fascism," cut the hyperbole.

Stop freaking out at thought experiments.

I'm asking what should happen in such a scenario. Should a democratic society be able to vote to nuke their least favorite city? Should they be able to vote for slavery? Should they be able to vote to legalize raping kids?

What should a democratic populace not be able to inflict upon the less powerful segments of society?

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#149

Post by nkoren »

busterarm wrote: post #93
andix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people decided that this sucks and have spoken. Dear god, make America stupid again!

So you're suggesting our systems should be less democratic, then? Maybe opposing points of view should pick better candidates that will actually win elections. That's how it works, right?

There are many ways that America could be more democratic, and simultaneously produce less stupid results:

1. Eliminate / work around the electoral college system, which makes it so that people in the most diverse, educated, and economically-productive parts of the country have dramatically less voting power than a small minority of people who live in more homogeneous, less educated, and less economically-productive areas. This would significantly change the messaging needed to win.

2. Eliminate first-pass-the-post voting, which encourage candidates with extreme views, eliminate anything other than (largely false) political binaries, make it possible to win elections while receiving a minority of the votes, and make it so that the only viable strategy is to vote for the lesser evil rather than somebody you actually want.

3. Get the money out of politics. Make untraceably-funded super-PACs illegal.

4. Gerrymandering should be super fucking illegal.

Other places do this. They're more democratic than the US, and while they still frequently elect stupid politicians, none of those are as bottom-of-the-barrel as what the US is able to scrape together.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#150

Post by kgwxd »

If you're stuck in the US for practical reason, it might be time to start pretending to be dumb. When there's no more immigrants to threaten with deportation, if they don't help the government build the machines of control, they will start forcing anyone with a hint of intelligence to do the work.
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