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Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

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Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#261

Post by dang »

dakr wrote: post #199
naasking wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Astronomy. What benefits do you expect to see from the kinds astronomy that require this sort of funding? Sure, knowing things can be nice but this ignores opportunity costs, eg. would practical knowledge like fusion research be further along if talent weren't focused on impractical knowledge? > Physics. Not strictly true, see quantum computing for instance, lasers, semiconductors and so on. There are some types of…

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#262

Post by dang »

naasking wrote: post #212
dakr wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done a great deal of it in this thread. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#263

Post by anigbrowl »

piva00 wrote: post #177
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the exec, the courts, and a majority of congress I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree. I mean sure, we are well outside the strict scope of Constitution, but that ship left generations ago.

The new wave of authoritarianism uses the bureaucracy and state machine against itself. They've learnt from the past, there's no Night of the Long Knives, or the burning of the Reichstag, that's too overt. Look at Orbán, Erdogan, and similar new authoritarians, the coup is a slow grinding of every facet of democracy: grind the press, grind the judiciary, throw a new law into the mix made up by your cronies in the par…

This book is a great (albeit drily written/translated) analysis of how an authoritarian state operated in practice on the day-to-day level, in contrast to the spectacular political turning points you mention. It documents the dull but important methodology of fiscal management, financial engineering, how the nazies restructured the existing bureaucracy to suit their own ends, and the legal and technical means they used to expropriate wealth from political enemies, out-groups, and eventually the subjects in annexed or conquered territories.

It's not an enjoyable read in either subject matter or style, but provides invaluable insights into the mechanics of authoritarian rule behind the iconic renditions of oppression in snappy uniforms.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805087260/hitlersbenefici...

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#264

Post by lostmsu »

Onawa wrote: post #26
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFUDPqVmTg Sabine highlights the problem with scientific funding in this video and it should be required watching before posting on this thread. Reform is needed. Some good will be tossed with a lot of bad. Its a cycle, a pendulum, and it will eventually tip to excess again sometime in the future. For now... fixing what is broken ought to be the priority.

Counterpoint, please consider watching Professor Dave discuss the issues with Sabine's talking points. While there are certainly problems within science, Sabine has the most nihilistic view of the field. https://youtu.be/nJjPH3TQif0

I got to the point where he says the email she made a video about is probably her own making and stopped. It is a >1.5h response to a 10-minute video, and at minute 7 (of 1.5h) he proceeds to basically call her a liar in a fundamental way without having any strong evidence for it. Mind you the first 7 minutes were spent claiming she put forall quantifiers where she just implied strong prevalence and telling how much better the guy is for the society than her. From these things I would say you'd waste your time watching this unless you want to practice fishing for fallacies. The 3 I mentioned so far are: the leaky bucket fallacy (weak evidence for liar claim), straw man (arbitrary adding forall), and ad hominem (attack character instead of presenting argument).

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#265

Post by anigbrowl »

hackyhacky wrote: post #217
WillPostForFood wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that different than the author of this article. Is she a neutral scientist acting in the best interest of science? No, she is a Biden political appointee: Nelson was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Is she even a highly qualified? She has a Ph.D., but in what? Nelson earned a Bachelor of Science…

Being appointed by a former president makes her unqualified to comment on the subject how? If you want to disagree with her commentary, do so on its merits. Dismissing her arguments because of who is making them is ad hominem fallacy. You're using a person's associations as an excuse to avoid engaging with their ideas.

Technically it's a genetic fallacy /nitpick

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#266

Post by mike_hearn »

voxl wrote: post #255
mike_hearn wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists have gone on record with admissions they deliberately lied in order to manipulate the public. Example: "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," Fauci said. "Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85." That's happened several times. Include…

Why did you deliberately leave out the whole quote? "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent ... Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, "I can nudge this up a bit," so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here .... We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is…

The rest of the quote makes no difference. He originally presented these numbers as based on science. Later, he admitted he actually made them up based on opinion poll results. Not science and not even "science best guesses", but numbers chosen to always be a bit higher than what most people said they felt comfortable with in order to create social pressure. It was pure social engineering, with no connection to science.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#267

Post by beej71 »

jsbg wrote: post #196
thisisit wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you think it's bleak that one's research now has to be profitable rather than being subsidized by people paying taxes? I honestly don't understand why people don't get this - Government is not supposed to be "profitable". The whole reason to collect taxes is for good of the society. It sounds like your view is that rural towns, which are already in crisis, should be left to rot away because it isn't "profitable". T…

> The whole reason to collect taxes is for good of the society. There are infinitely many things that are marginally good for society and finitely many resources to accomplish them. Spending on irreplicable research has an opportunity cost that most taxpayers wouldn’t choose. Framing it as empathy to forcibly take their income and subsidize lofty science is ironic.

Another way to look at this is that a country that only spends research money on profitable ventures is going to lose to a country that spends exploratory research money. I, for one, willingly give my cash. You don't get breakthroughs by being timid with this.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#268

Post by anigbrowl »

User23 wrote: post #76

Scientists commit to politics. Election happens. Election has consequences. Shocker. To be fair conservatives warned about this for decades but nobody listened. The only possible response to this propaganda piece are nodding along religiously or revulsion and disgust at the sheer intellectual dishonesty of it. This kind of superficial performative nonsense is a big part of why the replication crisis is as bad as it i…

scientists whose careers were damaged or destroyed by this person

Please provide some examples of how you think this person destroyed anyone's career.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#269

Post by voxl »

mike_hearn wrote: post #266
voxl wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you deliberately leave out the whole quote? "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent ... Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, "I can nudge this up a bit," so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here .... We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is…

The rest of the quote makes no difference. He originally presented these numbers as based on science. Later, he admitted he actually made them up based on opinion poll results. Not science and not even "science best guesses", but numbers chosen to always be a bit higher than what most people said they felt comfortable with in order to create social pressure. It was pure social engineering, with no connection to scien…

I'm genuinely curious as I'm starting to believe HN as a whole entertains anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

Do you believe any of these statements?

1. Vaccines cause autism

2. Vaccines are not safe and effective (or that this statement belies the realities)

3. Herd immunity is not more important than individual choice

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#270

Post by beej71 »

jsbg wrote: post #159
vunderba wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the space race help usher in consumer technology such as CAT scanners, GPS, digital imaging, etc.?

How do you know those scientists and engineers would have contributed less to society had they been employed based on supply and demand instead of central planning?

Short-term versus long-term gains. Businesses have the short term covered, but they're rarely going in on high-risk/low-reward (monetarily) research.

So supply and demand can get stuck at these local maxima. Central planning can think longer term. Maybe it doesn't pay off, but sometimes it does. And when it does, it can shake us free of that maximum.

This works, and is why Bell Labs and its peers existed. For reasons I don't fully understand, they stopped doing this, largely. Maybe because it's difficult to quantify those long-term gains.

Finally, those scientists get to choose where they are employed. So if the private sector wants them to do this work, they can hire them.

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