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China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

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Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#251

Post by EpicEng »

lmpostor wrote: post #249
Someguywhatever wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change This is not a manifestation of stupidity, I think it is motivated by distrust of authorities. Essentially: "If I agree that X is true, what will you do next?". If I don't trust what you will do, well then X cannot be allowed to be true. Since I need rhetori…

>This is not a manifestation of stupidity, I think it is motivated by distrust of authorities. I'm not seeing how those things are mutually exclusive.

I don't think the GP was saying that they are, only that stupidity is not the driving force. They even said as much at the end:

>Sure there are probably stupid people that don't understand but they are not driving so to speak.

For example, we're all aware of Einstein's flub wrt quantum mechanics, a mistake that was grounded in his religious beliefs. I think you'd have a hard time arguing he was a stupid man.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#252

Post by TulliusCicero »

baybal2 wrote: post #250
eastWestMath wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, I mean, I’m a graduate student at a pretty good Canadian school and this hasn’t been my experience with the Chinese undergrads I teach or grad students I’ve worked with. I’m not saying they’re weak or anything, I just haven’t really seen anything to suggest they’ve been through a much more rigorous education program.

Have you considered the possibility that ones who study overseas are there because their exam scores simply made them ineligible to attend a university back home?

If anything I'd expect the opposite. US universities are more prestigious, you'd expect stronger students to be the ones who end up there (at least at better schools), because they'd have a much better chance of being admitted.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#253

Post by JackFr »

rsj_hn wrote: post #160
mrb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« English will remain the defacto global Lingua Franca of science. » Just like Latin remained the defacto lingua franca of science? :-)

Latin was the Lingua Franca of science until the 17th Century, or 1300 years after the collapse of the Roman Empire (Sorry Byzantium), so if that's not evidence for the stickiness of languages, I'm not sure what else you'd need. Wait for 1000 years after the North America, India, Western European civilizations collapse, and we'll see what international language scientists are using -- there's a good chance it will st…

> Latin was the Lingua Franca of science until the 17th Century, or 1300 years after the collapse of the Roman Empire

That Latin persisted for 1300 hundred years after the fall of Rome has more to do with the Roman Church than the Roman Empire. European universities were essentially religious institutions until the renaissance.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#254

Post by TulliusCicero »

pyrale wrote: post #152
goblekitepe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process of English becoming the global language has taken over 150 years. Massive cultural and economic forces have been at play to make English global. It's not a simple thing, and what will likely happen is language balkanization for a significant period of time before any seismic shift from English to Chinese which is unlikely to happen for a number of reasons regardless.

Over 150 years? It is a far fetched claim that the influence of english started in the 1870's. I would say it started 50-60 years ago at most.

The influence started with the rise of the British Empire. Obviously English wasn't dominant at that point the way it is now, but still internationally influential.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#255

Post by JackFr »

gutnor wrote: post #188
msaharia wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply won't happen. 1. US isn't the only country which publishes in English. The entire Western hemisphere does. Not to mention India, already the most populous English-speaking country in the world, and has barely scratched the surface when it comes to English literacy. 2. Science needs interaction to thrive. Publishing textbooks in Mandarin is a very different ballgame than cutting edge research papers. I don…

Also 3. China does not want Mandarin to become a Lingua Franca in anything. Let's remember that China is a strongly nationalistic, protectionist, autocratic and most importantly successful country. Keeping Chinese for the Chinese give them enormous control leverage economically for their local market but also in entertainment, culture and more generally information. I can see China simply promoting English in every f…

One of the additional appeals of English, is that no one cares if you do it poorly. I have seen foreign born CTO's of billion dollar American companies who have difficulty with subject verb agreement -- and no one cares. In general, we're not uptight about loan words and shifting usage, accents are so common, as long as you're intelligible it's not a big deal.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#256

Post by squozzer »

throwaway713 wrote: post #36

The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on sci…

There's another side to this that isn't discussed and that is - at least for me - the easier and more lucrative path was to take my bachelor's degree in physics and get a corporate job.

My GRE / GPA wasn't going to get me into Princeton anyway.

But the road to a PhD in Physics in 1994 was basically 1) Probably 8 years of study + teaching assistant work and 2) a quality dissertation.

That gets you in the CV pile for the next phase.

The actual career of being a physicist includes 1) multi-year post-doc(s); 2) University job, which would have been associate professor then, adjunct professor now; 3) "Publish or perish"; 4) Hustling grants; 5) Managing TAs and RAs.

For peanuts (unless those grants are fat money) compared to a corporate job.

For foreigners, the difference between academia / corporate work probably isn't as stark economically.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#257

Post by nafizh »

projektir wrote: post #109
throwaway713 wrote: post #36

The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on sci…

Or maybe the US should actually look at its own citizens for once. It seems every time the US has a problem, they try to solve it by importing people.

There are huge amounts of fellowships and scholarships available for US citizens to go into grad school. If they don't want to go in whose fault is that. Admittedly, most of them come out with huge debt from undergrad, so I understand the decision to get jobs immediately.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#258

Post by eddieplan9 »

baybal2 wrote: post #196
oh-kumudo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US certainly has a cultural problem, out of all major countries out there, US has a weird position where a significant population denies evolution/climate change, and turned those topics into highly political charged issues. Also the US education system prior to college takes an another interesting aim to cultivate students' confidence, not by equipping them with logical training, but circumventing hard subjects like…

>Maybe it's time for US to let it down its own myth about American exceptionalism, and revisit the true cause of its current lead in global research: large influx of foreign talents, first from Europe, then Soviet Russia and now China/India. US was lucky to have this constant grab of the best minds from the rest of the world, but sadly, or maybe not, I can't see this would continue. That actually is US weakness, US a…

You cannot be further away from truth if you think the Chinese higher education nowadays follows the communist bloc model. I did my undergraduate at one of the best universities in China, and to comment on your point:

> 1. Doctoral level studies are SUPER TOUGH

It's common knowledge that in China, graduate school admission follows government policy mandates. Government says we need more top-tier talent, and this is translated to having more PhDs, and then to admitting more people into doctoral programs. It's not uncommon to have one professor advising 20+ PhD students at the same time. The students often are just cheap labor at university labs, and sometimes even work as free childcare for the professors. I am not kidding.

The schools then set an explicit bar for graduation: publish N papers in SCI-indexed journals. Imagine if your company has a rule that says you need to close N tickets with M upvotes to claim your paycheck. Guess what will happen.

> 3. Lion share of people are totally fine with 2 year technical school programs.

Only those who score below the national cutoff score in the National College Entrance Exam go to technical programs. It's not by choice! There is a reason there are a lot of for-profit "private universities" in China these days: because you can pay to get into a private university and avoid technical school programs.

People want to avoid technical school programs so much that the most lucrative part of running a high school is actually prepping high school graduates who "failed" the NCEE for retaking the exam next year.

> 4. Plentiful supply of tech school talents feed the industry, and keep educated labour cheap.

The strength of manufacturing has nothing to do with tech school talent. It's simply because there a lot of people in China (4x the US population), and generally the Chinese workers have great work ethics thanks to whatever is leftover of traditional Chinese culture. The society is fairly ordered, and kids all follow the sanctioned path. No backpacking-in-Europe-for-a-year. No opioid crisis. Everybody is laser focused on career advancement and making money, and everybody has a sense of urgency.

> 5. This allows university level studies to be what they were supposed to be originally: academic research, and not doing degree milling.

Talk to anyone who graduated from a Chinese university. Seriously, anyone.

> 6. The industry and academia are don't go very far apart despite there being an iron wall in between academic and practical tertiary education.

This is quite true, because it's rare for academic folks to work on fundamental research. In the current incentive setup, doing hard fundamental research is just stupid. You need to get to that N publications quick!

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#259

Post by baybal2 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #252
baybal2 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the possibility that ones who study overseas are there because their exam scores simply made them ineligible to attend a university back home?

If anything I'd expect the opposite. US universities are more prestigious, you'd expect stronger students to be the ones who end up there (at least at better schools), because they'd have a much better chance of being admitted.

Prestigious they may be, but their entry requirements are laughable by Chinese standard, and, most importantly, most are fine just taking money.

There still is a reactionary part of Chinese society that is super obsessed with matters of class and status, or at least they are much more than Americans for sure.

Not having your child getting into a university can be seen as a social stigma, and parent of such child will be socially ostracised.

For such, having a child getting a place in US college for money with 100% certainty, is better than him/her taking risks with state exam back home.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#260

Post by TulliusCicero »

baybal2 wrote: post #259
TulliusCicero wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything I'd expect the opposite. US universities are more prestigious, you'd expect stronger students to be the ones who end up there (at least at better schools), because they'd have a much better chance of being admitted.

Prestigious they may be, but their entry requirements are laughable by Chinese standard, and, most importantly, most are fine just taking money. There still is a reactionary part of Chinese society that is super obsessed with matters of class and status, or at least they are much more than Americans for sure. Not having your child getting into a university can be seen as a social stigma, and parent of such child will…

While it's true that many are eager to accept foreign students willing to pay more, the more prestigious schools still require good grades and test scores.
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