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NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

science.org

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#171

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Post, sir, and the mods be damned !

I did.

It is indeed unfortunate that people vote down posts in discussions like these not because they are incorrect, but because they disagree with the facts presented.

More Reddit than HN.

But short of mods tracking down downvoters and having them justify their actions, I don't see how to de-Reddit it.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#172

Last week, staff were briefed on a new process for vetting grant proposals that are found to be out of step with a presidential directive on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI),... In the new structure, even if a revised proposal gets the green light from a division director, a new body whose membership has not been determined will take a fresh look to ensure it conforms to the agency’s new standard for making awa…

DEI in practice is illegal (we don't get to make decisions based on race, or other protected categories of a person's identity). I get trained on this once a year at work. What we do instead is improve the probability that underrepresented people can enter the hiring pipeline, e.g., by investing in schools.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#174
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately a majority of American voters saw what happened in the first Trump term and decided that they wanted more of it, with even fewer controls and restrictions. The OP is correct, Americans collectively own this just as other countries' nationals have owned responsibility for the bad governments they've put into power. If the general response is one of absolving themselves of responsibility there won't be th…

> Unfortunately a majority of American voters saw what happened in the first Trump term and decided that they wanted more of it, with even fewer controls and restrictions. I'm not sure this accurately conveys the situation. American voters have been dissatisfied with the lesser of two evils choice foisted upon them every 4 years for decades. We're 75 years into endless wars. Massive numbers of union high paying jobs…

I'm sorry, but that sounds like an excuse.

Yes, when you have to vote between the lesser of two evils, but one of them is blatantly more evil and incompetent than the other, you're responsible for choosing the more evil and incompetent option and the damage that results.

No system is perfect, and few countries provide morally and politically pure options to vote for in national elections. So an informed and engaged population often needs to vote tactically, understanding that establishments change slowly, and work to elect more effective candidates at local & state level who can work their way up to the national stage.

Voting in the anti-establishment choice just because voters are upset that progress is slow and politics is hard is the stuff of tantrums, and voting adults are supposed to be beyond that.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The focus is robbing the treasury to give tax breaks to the rich.

Trump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] People on the left are going to be caught totally flat-footed if they don't pull their head out of their bubble. Trump is a populist president. He was elected by working class individuals and so far he has shown every intent of following through for them. People on the left don't recognize it because they don't recognize the tools that righ…

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#176
post #24

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Unfortunately, the benefit of democracy isn’t that the people choose well. It’s that they can choose at all.

Compounding the misfortune, it seems people are easily talked into choosing to not have to choose anymore

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#177
A big motivation for the Trump administration seems to be the politicization that happened under the Biden regime. There were many large NSF grants given to fund "education" and they were pretty much focused on people with the preferred racial and gender status. These were also substantial grants that were often 3-10 times bigger than the regular grants given to regular scientists. This created much jealousy as well as other practical problems.

The Science article suggests that there's danger of politicization, but that has been the case for many years.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#179
post #38

I have been in and out of the academic world my entire career. I have worked as a programmer/engineer for two universities and a national lab, and worked at a startup founded by some professors. There is huge uncertainty with the people whom I have worked with, nobody seems to be sure what is going to happen, but it feels like it wont be good. Hiring freezes, international graduate students receiving emails to self d…

The irony is that in their supposed effort to "Make America Great Again" they're going to end up accelerating China's rise. We may have decided that basic research is no longer something we want to do, but China's going to continue to forge ahead and leave us in the dust. All thanks to people who have no understanding of how anything works, but only want to tear things down that they don't understand.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#180
post #38

I have been in and out of the academic world my entire career. I have worked as a programmer/engineer for two universities and a national lab, and worked at a startup founded by some professors. There is huge uncertainty with the people whom I have worked with, nobody seems to be sure what is going to happen, but it feels like it wont be good. Hiring freezes, international graduate students receiving emails to self d…

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