I don't really think China is luring too many U.S. scientists... Most of the scientists I know pretty much ignore research out of China, because a large portion of it is just not replicable (and / or lies).
China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
171–180 of 204 posts
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there is also a bit of xenophobia against foreigners that they have to sort out. It manifests in weird ways, like not being able to give foreigner employees options in local companies. Keep in mind that the number of foreigners in China is about the same as the number of foreigners in Tokyo.
Why do they have to sort it out? I presume that financial equivalents to options are allowed, but that China forbids foreigners controlling non-cash capital in China, since that complicates the Communist's Party's exercise of authoritarian power over the operation of the nation.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#173How limiting do scientists in China find the Great Firewall?
Zero. Because they use VPNs. In fact, most companies in China provide VPNs for their employees. No kidding.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true of most scientists from non-English-speaking countries. By the by, there's a market for proofreading those translations (e.g. ThinkScience for the Japanese-to-English market). You won't learn Chinese, but if you're learning Chinese, it might be a good way to see how the Chinese make mistakes going back to English.
as one of the few native english speakers in my grad lab this was definitely a job of mine.
Were you learning Chinese?
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#175As a former researcher I am not surprised to see another nation capitalizing on the counter-productive politicization of US science. I used to be a researcher and writing proposals suddenly started taking up much more time around 2010 to 2013 because each grant became much smaller. Each grant also became more specific in what science you were expected to produce, which essentially made us all contractors for NSF plus…
>We should ask ourselves if we want to be equal on a sinking ship or make life better by allowing everyone to compete as individuals regardless of which identity you think they belong to.
I think, there's a very solid cause behind it. Most of "competing individually" is essentially making different decisions and benefiting/losing from the consequences. Except over the past few decades our society has automated/protocolized those decisions away. We follow rules and documented best practices (or just let a database search figure out the right thing for us) much more than we have to improvise. So the society is looking for alternative planes for people to compete and ironically, due to our sense of compassion, the competition shifted to demonstrating that you suffer more than your peers. I'm afraid, this is also responsible for declining willingness of westerners to make families/raise kids.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's regular-ish grammar helps. It has simple conguation rules and almost no declensions. Its irregular pronunciation rules do not, but in practice they only make the speaker sound foreign, and do not make them unintelligible. If English isn't an easy language, what is? Is there any language that is universally easy?
Esperanto[1] is an attempt at this, but I am not aware of any significant adoption. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
While it's not "widely adopted" in comparison to other languages in the world, it's still the most successful constructed language in the world. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
I think that our collective understanding of how constructed languages could influence study is very lacking, but could probably take some hints from our experience with computer programming languages. Some languages could have grammars that lend themselves more easily to technical writing while others lend themselves to casual conversation. Historically, this took the form of having technical writing in Latin in English-speaking countries.
History also shows us that a world with "domain-specific human languages" might be a little too idealistic. Our minds cannot simply download the latest linter for Latin/Esperanto/English to keep the language consistent. However, the rise of the dictionary, and spellchecking/grammar software could be what prevents us from repeating history.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
How on earth do you not know to google? And in what situation do you think it's acceptable to keep asking people to post easily found links? You can easily find stuff about western gene-editing research and plans, just not a 'me first' for babies: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608350/first-human-embryo... China's cameras? Well, the US is the surveillance champion of the world. Maybe search "snowden". And unlike…
> And unlike China, it also violates my privacy as a European. I'm happy to agree that U.S. surveillance activities violate your privacy, but I'm not sure you should say "unlike China" in this context.
Well, China doesn't get support for European governments, (unlike e.g. the US) to put their surveillance equipment in here, they weren't caught red handed spying on our top politicians (unlike the US), and while they could very well be targeting Chinese targets or people of interest, I'm 100% certain they don't mass track everyone in Europe.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#178As a former researcher I am not surprised to see another nation capitalizing on the counter-productive politicization of US science. I used to be a researcher and writing proposals suddenly started taking up much more time around 2010 to 2013 because each grant became much smaller. Each grant also became more specific in what science you were expected to produce, which essentially made us all contractors for NSF plus…
I don't think biology explains away the gender gap.
Just hinting that biology might explain some of the variation is becoming taboo.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can explain where your astonishing comes form(maybe off topic): there are something to do with how China built the nation yet not quite visible to westerners. There are many factors. One important factor which amplifies other factors is related to big number theory: quantity is translated into quality. Average Chinese are not quite different from other nationals.(Let's put down controversial conclusion for now) . H…
And also the competition to get into good school etc. Basically a student life doesn't start at 18, 16, or 12, but 2years old, if not one and half (interviews for kindergarten). Constant ranking, placement exams, number of school hours etc makes western education pathetic. At the end of P1, Chinese kids are supposed to read something like 800 Chinese words, write 60% of them (if my memory serves me well), in France/S…
Meanwhile in China, people are bashing the education system hard as well, saying it "Teaching to the test" (a Wikipedia term [0]), "Serving political purpose" and "Like a factory".
In my opinion, a successful education system is the one which can produce people who are capable of learn new knowledge my themselves, resolve problems by themselves and create new things by themselves.
So maybe, reading 800 Chinese words in a very young age is impressive, but there is more important things to do.
Re: China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because of the difficult writing system (thousands of characters to memorize, rather than a mere 26), Mandarin is unlikely to replace English as a world language.
i don't know about this. how much worse, really, are hanzi (which do have a loose structure to them, it's not just brute memorization) than the deranged English spelling system? if there's anyone who learned both as additional languages I would be interested in hearing.
It's bad enough that educated Chinese native speakers can't write common words like "sneeze" without the assistance of a computer: