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NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

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

#311

Post by cmontella »

wang_li wrote: post #208
tachim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are implying a few things here; that it is the responsibility of others to fund your success and that there were not, or will not be, alternative means of such funding. Yes, the government funds research, the benefit of which accrues to all of society. There is no credible alternative to government funding for public research; the scales are not the same. Private funding of basic research (internal R&D budgets)…

When you speak in abstracts and generic terms about the value of government funding research, you are saying nothing meaningful in terms of knowing whether the government should spend more or less on research. If the OP's specific research was into The Changing Mating Habits of the Delta Smelt Due to Habitat Destruction, then probably it was money that could far better spent paying tuition for, say, medical students…

> If the OP's specific research was into The Changing Mating Habits of the Delta Smelt Due to Habit Destruction, then probably it was money that could far better spent paying tuition for, say, medical students or even just letting tax payers keep their money and spend it in a way that directly benefits their family, their community, and themselves.

The problem is it's very hard to know ahead of time which research directions will yield fruit. If we knew how to only fund good research, then science funding would be very easy. Unfortunately, that's not the case -- oftentimes things that are sure bets fail, and things that are rejected as "not promising" result in a breakthrough. So we have to fund a lot of stuff, some of which is not obviously going to yield a great ROI.

On the one hand, yes, funding science the way we do results in a lot of "wasted" funding. There are tons of inefficiencies. On the other hand, the way we fund science has been wildly successful in terms of the benefits we have reaped. Look around you, you can see them everywhere in every sector.

The danger is we pull back funding to things that are "sure bets" and they turn out to be duds while we miss out on other less sure opportunities. That would be a loss for everyone involved.

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

#312

Post by jjtheblunt »

zhivota wrote: post #309
jjtheblunt wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You could be right... I'm just going off of what I've seen in the other departments they touched. Let's hope at least this program would be left untouched. https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/reu There are tons more though, this is only the tip of the iceberg of what the NSF funds of course.

agreed, and yeah reorg makes more sense, but we'll see.

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

#313

Post by netsharc »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #300
zhivota wrote: post #295

I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant. The first one was on supercomputing, writing proof of concept code for a new supercomputing operating system (ZeptoOS). The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for military applications (at a time when this was not commoditized at all, we…

[flagged]

How is it possible that you still see the chance that the actions are being done in "good faith"? In my opinion you'd have to construct a lot of "visual barriers" in order to not see the "full picture" of what kind of people the current regime is made of, and what their motivations would be...

You'd have to be looking away, because looking at it would mean admitting you've been wrong.

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

#314

Post by fallingknife »

beej71 wrote: post #298
762236 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every DEI program I've ever been involved in has been 100% about selecting people _purely_ on merit. Not race, not gender, not whether or not they're trans. The DEI trainings are about completely ignoring those factors when hiring. I'm curious what they call your trainings on the matter.

Every large company I have ever worked for has had noticeably lower standards for women and minorities (except for Asians of course because fuck them in particular). They will never say it in the trainings because they know it's illegal. They will never tell anyone anything except for "don't discriminate" but then they will incentivize discrimination by things like "diversity goals" (quotas) and setting recruiter bonuses higher when they bring in favored "victim" groups. Of course if they set higher bonuses for hiring white people the courts would immediately smack them down for discrimination, but it's apparently "legal" as long as - 1. it's implicit, 2. you deny it exists, and 3. it favors a group that the liberals approve of.

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

#315

Post by jjtheblunt »

netsharc wrote: post #313
jjtheblunt wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How is it possible that you still see the chance that the actions are being done in "good faith"? In my opinion you'd have to construct a lot of "visual barriers" in order to not see the "full picture" of what kind of people the current regime is made of, and what their motivations would be... You'd have to be looking away, because looking at it would mean admitting you've been wrong.

[flagged]

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

#316

Post by freejazz »

762236 wrote: post #172
ourmandave wrote: post #35

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.

Sorry, what's the difference between the former and the latter? My whole understanding of DEI is perfectly described by the thing you said is illegal. Otherwise, you did not describe what "DEI" is, so I hope you can understand my confusion.

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

#317

Post by netsharc »

borski wrote: post #228
coliveira wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going with the great conspiracy of GOP as Russian assets, you should also add Elon Musk and the other tech robber barons as Russian assets as well.

Some witting, some not. I am not convinced all of DOGE are actual Russian assets. That would be too conspiratorial. But that they’re all compromised? That’s much more likely. We know for a fact that at least a couple are pwned.

Musk seems to just have "small dick energy", or in proper words, a very fragile ego. And he seems to hate the "woke left" for "poisoning" one of his kids' minds that came out as trans. And like a 12 year old, his ego told him that anything the left is for, he'll be against...

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

#318

Post by baggy_trough »

fallingknife wrote: post #314
beej71 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every DEI program I've ever been involved in has been 100% about selecting people _purely_ on merit. Not race, not gender, not whether or not they're trans. The DEI trainings are about completely ignoring those factors when hiring. I'm curious what they call your trainings on the matter.

Every large company I have ever worked for has had noticeably lower standards for women and minorities (except for Asians of course because fuck them in particular). They will never say it in the trainings because they know it's illegal. They will never tell anyone anything except for "don't discriminate" but then they will incentivize discrimination by things like "diversity goals" (quotas) and setting recruiter bon…

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.

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

#319

Post by freejazz »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #202
UncleOxidant wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"If it's not ideologically aligned it won't get funded." As I show elsewhere in this thread, the previous administration forced applicants to include irrelevant DEI language in grant applications.

I think if Trump just wanted people to swear loyalty statements instead of cutting all the funding, shutting all these departments, cancelling research, etc., they'd be unhappy but still fine with the fact that the research goes on...

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

#320

Post by lokhura »

pinko wrote: post #254
xhkkffbf wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nonsense. NSF awards are all public. If you could actually give enough examples of these "extremely large" awards to constitute 55% of the NSF budget you would have.

Here you go https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092... It's not 55%, it's more like 25% of the budget.
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