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Regarding the Compact

president.mit.edu

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Re: Regarding the Compact

#181

Post by laidoffamazon »

pastel8739 wrote: post #156
laidoffamazon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I went to an elite school and have friends that make much less even than $150k. They're doing so by choice to do PhDs or go into public service. They (as in, the ones in quantitative majors and many even outside of it) _also_ had the choice to make several multiples of what I made by working at Jane Street or HRT or Citadel or now OpenAI and Anthropic. I didn't have the choice. Nobody is selecting me for anything,…

You are simply wrong. Mechanical engineering majors, as an example of the most common non-CS major, don’t have any such high-paying opportunities until at least after a PhD (and even then they are lower than you are saying). Many make less than $100k out of college. Even CS majors have a hard time getting an interview at those top-paying companies.

Wait, are you saying Course 6 is still the most common major? And thus still has the most direct path to making $500k a year out of undergrad?

Of course, MechE's frequently also work at these companies or in finance too...

Re: Regarding the Compact

#182

Post by pandaman »

robotresearcher wrote: post #178
pandaman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's some department in the US government, which plans all the important research such as children looking at Facebook food ads or whether lonely rats crave cocaine more than happy rats [1] and the scientists compete for these? And it's not the scientists writing these up themselves and then asking government to finance the proposed research? 1. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-REP...

It’s a mixture of both top down priorities from government and bottom up opportunities from scientists. I suspect you know this and are being sarcastic because that’s cool. But I’ll describe it anyway. The NSF, DARPA, DOE, NASA, etc etc have research program offices that set priorities. For example let’s have a DARPA program that pushes new stealth materials, or an NSF program on quantum computing (possibly partly mo…

For example, let's take cocaine rats, which is a real research paid by my tax dollars. Is it some kind of big government vision that created this? Can you locate a Call for Proposal that spawned this? How does it benefit me as a citizen and a taxpayer?

Re: Regarding the Compact

#183

Post by dekhn »

AvAn12 wrote: post #155
dekhn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an Obama "Dear Colleague" letter (actually, 3 of them) that I think at least partially qualify as unilateral and ideologically motivated. Yes, every new administration can attempt to impose their will on institutions of higher learning (so long as the administration has some sort of leverage, like funding or legal threats). The wise administrations limit their imposition, preferring to allow academia to enj…

Don't think Obama or Biden threatened to withhold federal funds. Big difference.

That's precisely what the letters said: that federal funding was contingent on following the policy outlined in the letter. Here is one of the letters: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/dea...

Re: Regarding the Compact

#184

Post by robotresearcher »

pandaman wrote: post #182
robotresearcher wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a mixture of both top down priorities from government and bottom up opportunities from scientists. I suspect you know this and are being sarcastic because that’s cool. But I’ll describe it anyway. The NSF, DARPA, DOE, NASA, etc etc have research program offices that set priorities. For example let’s have a DARPA program that pushes new stealth materials, or an NSF program on quantum computing (possibly partly mo…

For example, let's take cocaine rats, which is a real research paid by my tax dollars. Is it some kind of big government vision that created this? Can you locate a Call for Proposal that spawned this? How does it benefit me as a citizen and a taxpayer?

You can’t see any way that an improved understanding of happiness and/or drug use could help people? You don’t see any way that the government, on behalf of the People, would want to understand wellbeing and/or drug abuse better?

It’s not about the fucking rats. You KNOW this. Everyone knows this. The ‘cocaine rats durrrr’ type argument is not in good faith. I simply don’t believe people are that dumb.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#185

Post by pandaman »

robotresearcher wrote: post #184
pandaman wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, let's take cocaine rats, which is a real research paid by my tax dollars. Is it some kind of big government vision that created this? Can you locate a Call for Proposal that spawned this? How does it benefit me as a citizen and a taxpayer?

You can’t see any way that an improved understanding of happiness and/or drug use could help people? You don’t see any way that the government, on behalf of the People, would want to understand wellbeing and/or drug abuse better? It’s not about the fucking rats. You KNOW this. Everyone knows this. The ‘cocaine rats durrrr’ type argument is not in good faith. I simply don’t believe people are that dumb.

>You can’t see any way that an improved understanding of happiness and/or drug use could help people?

I can't see how is this research helping anyone other than the researchers themselves. Also I can't see the Call for Proposal for that, I figure there was not any, as I expected.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#186

Post by robotresearcher »

pandaman wrote: post #185
robotresearcher wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t see any way that an improved understanding of happiness and/or drug use could help people? You don’t see any way that the government, on behalf of the People, would want to understand wellbeing and/or drug abuse better? It’s not about the fucking rats. You KNOW this. Everyone knows this. The ‘cocaine rats durrrr’ type argument is not in good faith. I simply don’t believe people are that dumb.

>You can’t see any way that an improved understanding of happiness and/or drug use could help people? I can't see how is this research helping anyone other than the researchers themselves. Also I can't see the Call for Proposal for that, I figure there was not any, as I expected.

I am revising my belief.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#187

Post by bigyabai »

nis0s wrote: post #85
achandlerwhite wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To you and me they are not, but to this administration I wouldn't be surprised if they were considered as such.

This administration is letting Qatar build an airbase on US soil. I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say, or what others say about them.

> I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say

I agree, if only because the thing you just said is entirely incorrect. Qatar is not building an airbase on US soil, they are building facilities on a US-owned airbase. This happens every year from the NATO partners like Turkey who have been doing this for decades.

Please do your own research, don't just cite Twitter/X on this crap.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#188

Post by joshuamorton »

desselc wrote: post #167
joshuamorton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces. Correct, but this is not MIT's policy today, responding to your edit, I do not believe your understanding of title IX is correct, See [0]. >I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really n…

Regarding Title IX, there are still cases working their way through the courts, so we will have to see. I would be very surprised if colleges letting males enjoy women's locker rooms, and therefore not providing women any single-sex place to change, isn't ruled as being sex discrimination. Keep in mind this issue is about privacy and dignity and safety for women, not about giving men whatever they want whenever they…

While you may have whatever feeling about any issue, legally this isn't about "privacy and safety and dignity for women", it's about discrimination. And it's extremely difficult to contort shared facilities into "discrimination".

Re: Regarding the Compact

#189

Post by wat10000 »

hollerith wrote: post #175
wat10000 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a power grab that makes the university effectively subordinate to the federal government. The most important part is the end: if the university violates the agreement, they not only lose funding, they also have to give back what they received the previous year. Such a clawback would be devastating, much worse than merely denying funding going forward. And who determines whether there's a violation? The Departmen…

The power grab started decades ago when a distinct minority of the US started to take over our universities by preferentially hiring and promoting those who share their ideology. Trump is an attempt by the voters (most of whom do not share the ideology) to undo the power grab.

Funny how this doesn’t actually address what I said.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#190

Post by bmandale »

desselc wrote: post #170
bmandale wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respecting boundaries means not concerning yourself with the genitals of a person merely trying to use the bathroom. You cannot enforce a policy regarding someone's sex without inspecting their genitals. How is that respecting of their boundaries? How does that lead to a person feeling safer in the bathroom?

Why are you people who insist on male incursion of female spaces so obsessed with "genital inspection"? No-one is asking for this strawman. Your assumption seems to be that if no-one physically stops these men, they can and will do what they like, with impunity, and that there's no chance of them simply respecting women's boundaries. Is that what you mean?

>Your assumption seems to be that if no-one physically stops these men, they can and will do what they like, with impunity

That seems like a reliable assumption to me. Your assumptions seems to be that if you make a "rule" concerning who can go into which bathroom based on a hidden characteristic, no one will take it upon themselves to enforce this rule, and thus to make frequently wrong guesses regarding this hidden characteristic. That seems like a poor assumption.

>and that there's no chance of them simply respecting women's boundaries

Different people have different boundaries. Different people have different standards as for who should be sorted into which bathrooms. One person's arbitrary standards cannot dominate everyone else's lives. Instead, rules must be made based on reason and fairness, as I demonstrated above.

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