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Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

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Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#161

Post by agentcoops »

diggan wrote: post #58
padjo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. It’s odd to see classic third world dictator antics in the most powerful country in the world, but not at all unexpected given who’s running it.

> but not at all unexpected given who’s running it To be fair, this has felt like the natural consequence of the "maximize capitalism without regarding the downsides" maxim the US seems to have been operated under for a long time. Corporations have been (indirectly) running the country for some decades at this point, it's just way more obvious and in the face now when a "businessman" sits as president.

While I would agree with you generally, in this case we’re talking about decisions that are precisely not desired by either business or investors. Which is to say, I think the American people and institutions are in a much worse place than at the whims of business alone: caught between an evangelical cultural coup and unrestrained capitalism. It’s actually surprising to me that the evangelicals appear to be dominating the concerns of business and investment — I don’t have a great explanation of why it has turned out like this. It leads to such a manifestly contradictory situation in which the government is betting the future on US AI global dominance and yet gutting the institutions that would enable it.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#162

Post by enaaem »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #101
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Europe. It's not even close to being worse than the US on that front. Places like the Fraunhofer Institute and the Max Planck Institute are perpetually well-funded, and are largely unaffected by politics. Good places to do research.

>Fraunhofer Institute and the Max Planck Institute are perpetually well-funded, and are largely unaffected by politics Oh, so I can freely go up against the German government's policies and have my career in academia unaffected and keep my government funding? I lived in Germany and don't remember people or organisations ever being able to break government rules with no consequences (unless they had high friends in po…

Funny thing is that UCLA is getting defunded because some people there were criticising a FOREIGN government.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#163

Post by jkhdigital »

noelwelsh wrote: post #47
m101 wrote: post #13

UCLA has an endowment of 3.8bn$. Whilst I'm sympathetic to their desire to be further government financed for the work they do, I feel like government financing should be made available to those that actually need the money. The attitude that you have access to government funds even if you have the ability to pay yourself needs to change.

Governments typically fund research because 1) it's seen as beneficial for the country, and hence falls under the remit of governments in democratic countries and 2) the uncertainty, time frame, or lack of direct commercialization of research typically means the private sector will not invest in it. Your suggestion is saying that research should be privatised, and shows very little thought about how research works an…

Your Panglossian description of the purpose of publicly-funded research shows very little understanding of reality.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#164

Post by Terr_ »

roenxi wrote: post #130
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, firing statisticians because you don't like their numbers doesn't improve the accuracy of their estimates, but apparently people need to keep learning this lesson.

As far as I'm aware no statisticians have been fired and no suggestion has been made that they should be. McEntarfer is pretty high up in the food chain; she's there to be accountable for performance, not to crunch numbers.

> As far as I'm aware no statisticians have been fired

And nobody at CBS has been arrested, but that doesn't mean corruption isn't happening.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#166

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

ghosty141 wrote: post #142
tzs wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A majority of the voters voted for people other than Trump. Edit: come on people, read things in context. I was responding to someone who was implying that a majority of American voters support this. To support that assertion about any President's policies at a minimum you need that President to have received a majority of the popular vote. When third parties get enough votes that a President gets a plurality but not…

49,8% popular vote, 50,2 is a majority but at that point I would say it’s clearly half the American population that wanted him in power.

They're technically correct (the best kind etc) because they said "voted for people other than Trump" not "voted for Harris".

Voted for Trump: 77.3M

Voted for Harris: 75M

Voted for other candidates: 2.6M

Harris + others = 77.6M, which is greater than Trump's 77.3M

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#167

Post by wisty »

austhrow743 wrote: post #98
mehulashah wrote: post #46

This is a tragedy. Our pre-eminence as a scientific and industrial powerhouse that really began post WWII is now disintegrating because of the actions of a few. The funding being pulled from Terence Tao and his institute without due process is not the start, it's merely one casualty among many that began at the start of this administration. This is like cutting one's nose to spite one's face.

Punishing urban intellectuals for being urban intellectuals appears to be a common theme in a lot of right wing American messaging and the Republican Party won the popular vote. You can’t put this on a few. It’s the genuine desire of the American voter.

They think urban intellectuals have a fair bit of power.

They also think they are not always correct, not always unbiased, and possibly not always honest; and the bias tends to be towards either things that benefit the urban elite, or "luxury beliefs" that have disproportionate costs on other people.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#168

Post by FirmwareBurner »

enaaem wrote: post #162
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fraunhofer Institute and the Max Planck Institute are perpetually well-funded, and are largely unaffected by politics Oh, so I can freely go up against the German government's policies and have my career in academia unaffected and keep my government funding? I lived in Germany and don't remember people or organisations ever being able to break government rules with no consequences (unless they had high friends in po…

Funny thing is that UCLA is getting defunded because some people there were criticising a FOREIGN government.

Go work in German academia and criticize the FOREIGN government of Israel.

I'm sure the German government will react with much more leniency than the US.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#169

Post by tzs »

roenxi wrote: post #106
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source you cite is written by a man with literally zero training in economics or econometrics. He lost his job in 911 and started a blog in the GFC that gained an audience ( https://mishtalk.com/economics/uk-high-school-student-asks-m... ). Good for him. You assert with absolutely no basis in fact or any supporting citation that "there is a pretty easy path to getting better results." The BLS is run by the world'…

> The BLS is run by the world's experts in how to measure what they are measuring. And the commissioner was just sacked and the reason given was because she was incompetent. Goes to show the risks of being in a high performing environment and not having a trivially demonstrable track record of high performance. If a dude with no particular track record can clearly articulate why the numbers are biased then your emplo…

> And the commissioner was just sacked and the reason given was because she was incompetent

The reason given was she purposefully changed the numbers to make Trump look bad. There was of course no evidence given for that.

Re: Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

#170

Post by lawn »

numbers_guy wrote: post #43
francasso wrote: post #31

Maybe it's time to move to Europe or China

There is nowhere to run and hide. Europe is worse than the US on this front. China also demands party loyalty. In a sense this is just the human condition. The ruling faction demands loyalty. Only a very advanced human civilization could move past that and allow criticism of the ruling class. Maybe the US had achieved that for a brief movement in the past or maybe it was just an illusion. EDIT: For people wondering w…

> why I think it's worse in Europe, it's because in Europe the ruling class and the universities are on the same side

Sounds like a feature, not a bug.

> And when I say Europe, I mean UK, France and Germany.

Europe is much larger and more diverse than those three countries. Scandinavia for example consistently top the list in most well-being statistics.

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