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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

theguardian.com

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Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#341

Post by mulmen »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #221
denkmoon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly Australia is very welcoming to foreigners until you get about 50km out of the major cities. Our xenophobe political party (One Nation) has had a significant rally in the last few years, to the point where by some measures it is the second largest party.

To be fair, they're still welcoming to foreigners in the bush, just as long as they're white. Rural Australia has many towns that have a strong Italian or Greek heritage (for example). One Nation are flat racist rather than xenophobe, I think. And it's being pushed by our billionaires for some reason. You'd think Gina would want cheap immigrant workers on her mines

The problem with billionaires is that they truly have more money than they need. The only thing left for them to pursue is power. Cheap labor only helps them get more money. Racism on the other hand can be used to justify the destruction of democratic institutions which are a billionaires only competition.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#342

Post by gyomu »

tsunamifury wrote: post #338
gyomu wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese engineers clearly have no problems building specific, technical things; just like Chinese surgeons have no problems carrying out specific, technical surgeries, etc. So how is the language "strictly less technical and specific"? Can you give specific and technical examples?

Mandarin is a courtly language full of back out vagueness and high context construction. This is simply a product of the society. It’s not a judgement of right or wrong it simply just is. Rote Surgery is not a good example compared to say writing a PRD about an unknown feature. I am in no way saying Chinese people cannot do these things. I am saying in mandarin it is less specific and more circumspect ways of getting…

> I’m guessing you don’t really know what your talking about here though and are knee jerking a response.

I'm not sure why you're getting so defensive; I indeed don't speak Chinese, hence why I'm asking a question.

A claim like "Chinese as a language is less technical and specific than English and slows progress" seems pretty grand; and if Chinese people failed to launch satellites in orbit or do brain surgery you could point to that; but they don't seem to be held back by their language when it comes to making specific, technical achievements, so I'm curious to hear actual, concrete details or examples about what makes Chinese a "less technical and specific" language.

It sounds like your answer is "it simply just is, because it's a courtly language" - which is not a very satisfying answer, intellectually speaking.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#343

Post by rayiner »

koito17 wrote: post #340
rayiner wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The importance of immigrant “talent” is clearly overstated. Japan became a powerhouse in the 20th century with virtually no immigration and a significantly smaller population than the US. China is becoming a technological powerhouse with no immigration as well.

Even more importantly, there's just a lot of people in China. New York City's population is approximately 8.8 million; that is the scale of a mid-sized Chinese city. The population exceeds 1 billion, which is difficult to comprehend in terms of scale. The reference I like to use is: 1 million seconds is ~11 days, whereas 1 billion seconds is ~31 years. To put it bluntly, China quite literally doesn't need (nor wants)…

Size isn’t that important either, or else India would be rich and Taiwan wouldn’t be. It’s just not a numbers game.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#344

Post by abeppu »

tsunamifury wrote: post #338
gyomu wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese engineers clearly have no problems building specific, technical things; just like Chinese surgeons have no problems carrying out specific, technical surgeries, etc. So how is the language "strictly less technical and specific"? Can you give specific and technical examples?

Mandarin is a courtly language full of back out vagueness and high context construction. This is simply a product of the society. It’s not a judgement of right or wrong it simply just is. Rote Surgery is not a good example compared to say writing a PRD about an unknown feature. I am in no way saying Chinese people cannot do these things. I am saying in mandarin it is less specific and more circumspect ways of getting…

I don't speak Mandarin but is this not an issue of style rather than the language itself? English can be courtly or poetic or abstruse but that's a matter of the speaker making a bunch of choices. I can't help but think of "Yes Minister" and Humphrey Appleby working quite skillfully to communicate in a way that ensured he would not be understood. Do Mandarin speakers not also have such a range of choices to be clear or not?

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#345

Post by shiroiuma »

lateforwork wrote: post #198
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent? I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China. If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.

China is trying. Around the time the US announced restrictions on the H-1B visa, China announced the K visa for attracting immigrants [1]. At this point in time, I don't think people are lining up to get K visa to go live in China. But if the current trajectory continues in the US, who knows how things will be in 5 years? [1] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-entry-exit-k-visa...

Exactly. And what is the EU doing to attract American talent that doesn't want to live under the Trump regime with his ICE stormtroopers? Nothing really. Meanwhile, highly accomplished people in the US with Chinese ancestry are being wooed to China to do important R&D there.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#346

Post by rokhayakebe »

michaelt wrote: post #228
michaelteter wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that anyone who lives and works here in the US can be accepted as “American”? Are you also implying that in the US anyone is free to speak negatively of “dear leader”? There are a multitude of current examples to the contrary.

> Are you suggesting that anyone who lives and works here in the US can be accepted as “American”? Whether you're born in Moscow and named Sergey Mikhailovich Brin, or born in Pretoria and named Elon Reeve Musk, or born in Hyderabad and named Satya Narayana Nadella, born in Frankfurt and named Peter Andreas Thiel - America has a place for you. Maybe even your own government department. In America a man can find accep…

America had a place for you.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#347

Post by Mars008 »

raffael_de wrote: post #43

What country is it attracting then?

It's hard to tell. The Guardian is UK based, but for some reason the use word 'we'.

But actually China and India may be retracting some of their talents back. Unlikely many go back to EU/UK socialism.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#348

Post by rayiner »

lugu wrote: post #337
rayiner wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a very good education system against the backdrop of challenging sociological factors and mass low-skill immigration. In the PISA exam, white American kids outperform kids in Hong Kong and Korea, as well as western european kids of non-immigrant ancestry. The American education system has major and important challenges, such as how to educate the large share of kids whose parents are economic migrants fro…

You are wrong at so many levels. Your argument is factually incorrect and logically flawed. And you know it.

The facts are in the PISA data collected by the OECD. If you drill down by subpopulation, the majority group in the U.S. goes toe to toe with the majority groups in Asian countries, and beats the majority groups in western european countries: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

National competitiveness and distributional equity don’t go hand in hand. China has made tremendous achievements by focusing investment on key provinces instead of trying to bring everyone up together.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#349

Post by [deleted] »

King-Aaron wrote: post #316
p-e-w wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People already said that 25 years ago when the US started officially torturing prisoners. And 25 years later, highly qualified immigrants are still lining up to move to the US.

Maybe you've missed the things happening in the last year or two, but already most of the world is pivoting to China for stability, and there is presently a sharp and historic decline in US immigration now.

[deleted]

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#350

Post by shiroiuma »

pitched wrote: post #170
School-Cotton wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"White" is not one ethnicity or culture -- a lot of that 70% are French-speaking Quebeckers who surely cannot be considered part of a homogeneous mass with Anglo-Canadians.

I’m upvoting you because you’re 110% right but don’t discount how diverse the US is too, without an obvious divider like that. The New Orleans Cajun are also French immigrants, for example.

No, they're not: they're the ancestors of Canadian refugees who were forcibly expelled from what used to be called "Arcadia".
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