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MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

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Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#41

Post by red-iron-pine »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #30
MrGilbert wrote: post #6

I cannot help but wonder how many decades it will take the U.S. to recover from the damage that the current administration is causing, both economically and in trust on a global scale. While in no way comparable, as a German, that topic feels familiar non the less - and to this day, it's a long and rocky road.

The US got to its preeminent position because the rest of the world screwed things up badly, and the US played a key role in rescuing it. Hopefully we never again see a global conflict on the scale of WW2, so hopefully the US never again is in a position to gain the rewards from rescuing the world.

the US got it it's preeminent position because it was a resource and manufacturing powerhouse that was unrivaled in the world at the time. it was already overtaking the aging British and French empires when the WW's happened, and both of those wars gutted everything.

it'd be like if WW3 happened now and every other major country got nuked except China.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#42

Post by xphos »

nis0s wrote: post #14

I hate that it happened because of a political reason, and many topics affected were unnecessarily targeted, but it’s 1000% true that many labs were overfunded, and accumulated resources which were essentially spent on ego bullshit. There need to be more cuts and selective funding of research labs, in general. Sadly, funding R1 does not guarantee that you’re going to get anything meaningful from that research as a no…

I disagree any of the bloat you are talking about exists because puffying paper numbers is basically required to justify your work. Its because they were distrusted extensively so they have to ritually say their work is useful. Also I think its very challenging because most extra committees and stuff exist because people complained about how streamlined science use to be. Those committees exist because science got wrongfully accused of wasting money in the 80/90s with the golden fleece awards among other things, where republican's claimed someone's basic science research was a total waste of government money. Ironically many of the things that won a golden fleece ended up saving the country billions if not trillions of dollars overtime.

I think the major struggle with basic research is there is no way to conduct it in which results are guarenteed. If you could do that you wouldn't need basic research. But there are a ton of questions whose outcomes are not really valuable at all but you simply don't know. On net science dispite those many useless questions answered still is extremely net posititve because some of those apparently meaningless questions ended up being the right question to drive research to useful good answers.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#43

Post by bryanlarsen »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #41
bryanlarsen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US got to its preeminent position because the rest of the world screwed things up badly, and the US played a key role in rescuing it. Hopefully we never again see a global conflict on the scale of WW2, so hopefully the US never again is in a position to gain the rewards from rescuing the world.

the US got it it's preeminent position because it was a resource and manufacturing powerhouse that was unrivaled in the world at the time. it was already overtaking the aging British and French empires when the WW's happened, and both of those wars gutted everything. it'd be like if WW3 happened now and every other major country got nuked except China.

Yes, that's a good analogy. China's position as the world's manufacturing powerhouse isn't unassailable at the moment, but it certainly would be if wars devastated its competitors.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#44

Post by rexpop »

bestouff wrote: post #12
MrGilbert wrote: post #6

I cannot help but wonder how many decades it will take the U.S. to recover from the damage that the current administration is causing, both economically and in trust on a global scale. While in no way comparable, as a German, that topic feels familiar non the less - and to this day, it's a long and rocky road.

I'm not even sure the Nazi regime was that much anti-science.

The fascist "suicidal state" fundamentally rejects reason, rationality, and civil progress.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#45

Post by jalapenoj »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #19
MrGilbert wrote: post #6

I cannot help but wonder how many decades it will take the U.S. to recover from the damage that the current administration is causing, both economically and in trust on a global scale. While in no way comparable, as a German, that topic feels familiar non the less - and to this day, it's a long and rocky road.

Much of the damage is irreparable. Organizations that no longer exist have lost workers, other stakeholders, resources, and trust permanently.. and in cases like USAID and healthcare, people have suffered permanent injuries or died. These clueless assholes don't care about or understand the implications of the damage they've caused... they're gangs of criminals rapists and pillagers scorching the earth and leaving ch…

[flagged]

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#46

Post by eudamoniac »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #21

Again, I don't understand why this post is flagged. Don't hackers care about science? Isn't this newsworthy?

I didn't flag it, but I almost did. I am typically not in the habit of reading any articles that start with this kind of eye rolling invective, with every verb tortured through a sentiment thesaurus:

MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science - When a political movement believes that ignorance is strength

With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science...Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved...Put all of this together, and much U.S. scientific research is set to come to a screeching halt...This new assault on U.S. science...

"War" "ignorance" "terrible news" "killing" "strangling" "screeching" "assault". I just don't read shit like this. Report the facts and stop trying so clumsily to tell me how to feel about them.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#47

Post by jfengel »

rolph wrote: post #32
tim333 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they could elect someone normal next time around?

the big problem we have is we really dont nominate candidates publicly, there is a process the party goes through vetting nominees. when the public voting occurs there is a line up of some familiar and some a case of who is that from where? recently it has been, "really? is that the best candidate that party has to proffer? they both did it, now what?"

Outsiders can and do win in the primaries. Trump is the most prominent example. He was not a familiar regular, and nobody in the party leadership wanted him.

He won the primary, and went on to win the Presidency. The party leadership came around to support him, and the new leadership is vetted by him rather than the other way around.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#48

Post by jfengel »

M95D wrote: post #37
rolph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the big problem we have is we really dont nominate candidates publicly, there is a process the party goes through vetting nominees. when the public voting occurs there is a line up of some familiar and some a case of who is that from where? recently it has been, "really? is that the best candidate that party has to proffer? they both did it, now what?"

No, that's not a/the problem. You had the chance to vote independent - Bernie. You didn't.

He did have to leave his independent status and join the Democratic party in order to participate in the primaries. But that was just a formality; he filled out a form.

Some people did vote for him. Just nowhere near a majority. A lot of people resented that, and stayed home rather than vote for the primary winner. So she lost, and the rest is very literally history.

Re: MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

#49

Post by jfengel »

bestouff wrote: post #12
MrGilbert wrote: post #6

I cannot help but wonder how many decades it will take the U.S. to recover from the damage that the current administration is causing, both economically and in trust on a global scale. While in no way comparable, as a German, that topic feels familiar non the less - and to this day, it's a long and rocky road.

I'm not even sure the Nazi regime was that much anti-science.

They kinda were. Both relativity and quantum mechanics were dubbed "Jewish science", which made it a lot harder for them to progress in those fields.
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