101–110 of 218 posts
Related paulg tweet: https://x.com/paulg/status/1951996478555357530 "The Trump administration has suspended the funding of Terence Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA."
The replies to his tweet are a cesspool. Why do people still use Twitter?
If European leadership has even half a brain cell this could be the catalyst for enormous growth in European science. But they’d need to act fast.
yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions.
yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government, that had people you may or may not disagree with having some influence on things, this Trump Reign system is personalised autocracy.
yes, actually, it is bad if the government's sole agenda is "implement dumb ideas from dumb people" and "fuck the left/non-whites/immigrants/scientists".
it's especially dumb to be so unaware of why the world is so good now. it's not luck, it's centuries of hard work by our ancestors. why don't 50% of children simply die? because of medical research, healthcare, food subsidies, etc etc etc. why does the internet exist? because the US government funded a dumb thing for a while then a lot of other people and countries spent a lot of money and effort to make it this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not because they trusted their scientists to be able to do it though. They used the plans stolen form the US instead.
Well then maybe it is easier to let someone else do the heavy lifting first
That is the case with so much of what is happening now. If these things are possible, the system was already broken.
I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science. Sure private donors have interest driven motives too but it would be diffuse across many areas not concentrated like a political party’s interests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money makes them vulnerable. They didn’t get to where they are without playing a conformance game. That limits the degree to which they can object to anything.
Money should make them less vulnerable. They can lose their job, be blacklisted, whatever, and still be fine. Not like the ordinary person where this would mean homelessness. If they’re vulnerable, it’s the psychological need to keep adding to their pile of money that does it.
Keep in mind that “money” is not some sort of concrete thing like a pile of gold - it’s dependent on factors like the value of companies. The wealthier someone in the US is, the more their wealth depends on their ultimate cooperation with the prevailing powers.