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WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

scientificamerican.com

631–640 of 676 posts

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insinuating that the administrative state is racist by genetic fallacy while longing for a return to the era of Jim Crow is hypocritical enough for me to disregard his opinion.

The administrative state wasn’t merely created by the same progressives that gave us eugenics. It has its roots in the same dim view of the common man and how much agency they should be given. Woodrow Wilson and other progressives were deeply skeptical of democracy. He wrote about the how the “unphilosophical bulk of mankind” didn’t know what was good for them. And his solution to that was to have the government run…

> same progressives that gave us eugenics

ray, why are you now cosplaying as someone who doesn't believe in racial hierarchies?

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friends on ML/AI hiring committees at top tier university are seeing foreign profs turn away record offers. Same for applied math relevant to material science. I expect you are right at the most specialized end of the spectrum (and certainly industrial labs in those areas), but I wonder if anyone can speak directly to where we are still globally competitive.

It depends. There are two populations, true "Americans" born in the country... and everyone else. The true Americans do not want to leave. If they do, it is about pay/taxes and if you ask them they will generally expect to come back to America eventually. The US remains very competitive for retaining such people. But for bringing elite minds from outside the country? Heck no. Sure, for the right price they will come,…

> The perception of the US by people outside the US is not something America pays much attention to these days. It is suffering

I mean yeah, but some of us are old enough to remember how the consensus was that the world was done with America because of Bush, but then Obama got elected and suddenly it was all forgotten.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#633
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so long as you dont talk to outsiders outsiders like... their immediate family back home?

Yes. Having "foreign contacts" is bad, even family members. If the family was somewhere like china then these would be called "adversarial foreign contacts". Culture has changed in the last ten years. People with grandparents in china are having significant problems when applying for jobs/clearances. https://clearedjobs.net/guides/security-clearance-foreign-co... >> A foreign national spouse who is a citizen of the U…

This is for security clearances, not just any old job, and has been the case for forever. Even Taiwan and Israel are considered suspect.

Even without this mandatory polygraphing and the absurd rules around lifetime drug use are enough to rule these roles out of contention for many.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#634
post #82

Well, america had a good run i guess? Hope china can step up and fill the gap.

[flagged]

> People really need to read their history.

agreed.

but i bet i can make a bunch of confounding factors appear.

from 1800 to 1870 gdp per capita growth rate was about 1.1 percent.

from 1870 to right before great depression growth rate was about 1.6 percent.

from start of great depression until 2022 it was about 1.8 percent.

economy and standards of living have gotten better faster as the state has gotten more bureacratic.

source: Maddison project database, see excel file here: https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/relea...

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may as well argue for bringing back slavery also

The only reason this user won't defend that point is the HN rules. From what I remember, he strongly believes that the majority wants should be respected, so it's not that far-fetched to imagine that they would defend slavery if 51% of the voters wanted that.

it depends greatly on the majority though. e.g. he believes democracy should be suppressed ("crushed") in Muslim- majority nations, etc.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#636
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when they made Islam official religion of Bangladesh in the constitution, what’s your take on that?

My take is that they shed their blood to have their own nation and they're entitled to structure their affairs however they please. It that's also what precipitated my family to leave. Just because Bangladeshis have the right of self determination doesn't mean we have to or want to live in a country with them.

> Just because Bangladeshis have the right of self determination doesn't mean we have to or want to live in a country with them.

why do you believe you and and your family (parents and sibling) belong in the USA?

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#637
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> went to the Supreme Court…racially segregated voting districts How is enforcing the two greatest anti Jim Crow laws (VRA and CRA), somehow, equivalent to returning to Jim Crow itself? > the administrative state I’m trying to understand better, but it just seems like you are very opposed to merit based hiring in government and I don’t understand why. I understand your appeal to history, but what could be a better ap…

> How is enforcing the two greatest anti Jim Crow laws (VRA and CRA), somehow, equivalent to returning to Jim Crow itself? In both cases, republicans were the ones that wanted to enforce the civil rights laws. Democrats were the ones who wanted to violate the civil rights laws by treating people differently based on race. In SFFA they wanted universities to be able to discriminate against applicants based on race, an…

> In both cases, republicans were the ones that wanted to enforce the civil rights laws.

Jeff Sessions in 1981 when he was the DA or ADA from Mobile, telling a judge in a lynching case of a black man that lynching wasn’t necessarily murder, doesn’t fill me with confidence about this take of yours.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#638
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that they shed their blood to have their own nation and they're entitled to structure their affairs however they please. It that's also what precipitated my family to leave. Just because Bangladeshis have the right of self determination doesn't mean we have to or want to live in a country with them.

So you don't consider yourself Bangladeshi anymore?

only when rhetorically convenient i suspect

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#639
post #82

Well, america had a good run i guess? Hope china can step up and fill the gap.

[flagged]

Most countries you would consider "developed" in the world (and then some more) switched to having a professional, non-political civil service in the last 100 years, if they hadn't already had one.

Do you think that this maybe indicates something? Or did your analysis stop at the US border? Is it wise to base policies on a system that has not been used in more than 100 years based on the perception that this was some sort of golden age even if a cursory glance around the world show that no country you want to live in is run like that?

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t read the article. There are two developmental pathways for sexual reproduction: - one produces small mobile gametes - one produces large immobile gametes There can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism in different species ends up on one pathway or the other, there can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism on either pathway develops, and there can be plenty of variation in how…

No biologist is an essentialist for long. Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you ou define sex by the specific definition of gametes. The author is not wrong within that limited scope. But, what really matters is the phenotype of sex, which is not binary, is highly overlapping, and is a complex developmental phenomenon. When people get all up in arms being anti trans,…

> Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you define sex by the specific definition of gametes.

This definition of sex is fundamental. It's the only one that applies across all sexually-reproducing species.

> They are getting up in arms because they don't like it that the expression of sex phenotypes is heterogenous, overlapping, and scary, and that makes their small minds feel funny.

They probably just disagree with the bizarre and false claim, made so often in recent years for reasons of ideology rather than fact, that humans can change sex and that there are medical interventions that supposedly make this possible.

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