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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#451

Post by [deleted] »

goatlover wrote: post #406
jakeinspace wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, Trump voters didn't exactly vote for this, at least not many. Identify politics and owning the libs, sure, but I'd say that a minority of his voters wanted to totally dismantle the administrative state - or if they thought that sounded good, they may not have been aware the repercussions of that on their lives. Second, we all have a right to bitch about what seems like a new America being formed. If things go…

Well voters have two-four years to vote this out of office if they don't like the results. History says the Republicans will likely fail to keep power, and it will be the Democrats turn again to set the ship right, or whatever.

[deleted]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#452

Post by taurknaut »

bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

> i think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

if you're going to boil down our "success", if you must call it that, to a root cause, it has a lot more to do with our insatiable greed and lack of respect for, well, anything. The talent is just a small detail in the narrative of America and that narrative is driven far more by capital than it is by interesting people.

The talent narrative makes for excellent propaganda, though, neatly whitewashing a violent and hateful culture.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#453

Post by jl6 »

It seems like some new doctors have arrived and diagnosed the patient with terminal cancer. Being new, they have no experience of surgery so are hacking out the tumor with a blunt instrument, excising good tissue and bad. Some hope the surgeons will improve their skill over time. Some say the patient won’t survive. Some say the patient wouldn’t have survived if they did nothing. Some say the patient never had cancer in the first place.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#454

Post by einrealist »

justanotheratom wrote: post #266
einrealist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process is the problem. There is no oversight and accountability for Musk and his "DOGE". That's pure poison to Democracy and to a functioning society. Musk is neither competent nor efficient. He looks at line items and makes stuff up. He destroys a hundred useful things to destroy a bad one. Details don't matter to him. Its the same con man mentality that feeds off the works of his workforce. People who think he…

Can you give specific examples to back up your comments about Musk? I am quite gullible otherwise.

- He claimed the US funded bio-weapons when they found payments for gain of function research.

- Calling payments to non-profit organizations fraudulent on a whim.

- The sweeping condemnation of what USAID was doing.

- His call for a blanket drop of regulations.

Either he knows better or he is totally lost in his sauce. Hard to say what's worse for where he is right now.

I believe, he does not care. He only cares about his conception of the world and how AI and Mars are more important than those tiny tiny human problems. Society has to serve him and his god complex. He was told to find his subsidies and tax cuts by himself. That's what he is doing.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#455

Post by zerocrates »

dmagee wrote: post #59

There seems to be a lot of negativity from the HN crowd about this. But, the reality is that your fellow Americans voted for this. If you don'y like it, you're going to have to convince people that it's a bad idea. Getting worked up about Trump or Musk or SV bros isn't getting us anywhere.

Hard to say what people voted for. Any winning candidate's coalition is going to be not unified on lots of issues, but Trump's especially. Project 2025 and many of its specific policies pulled out separately all polled like total garbage, so Trump simply lied and said he'd never heard of it and wasn't doing it, and the media dutifully reported the denial. So what did the people who voted for him vote for?

His dizzying array of contradictory statements, lies, and flip-flops have always made him someone where people, his supporters in particular, see the Trump they want to see. Isolationist or imperialist, the man who would ban TikTok or its savior, pro/anti vaccine, really pick just about anything.

There was a popular sentiment in his first term that Trump seemed to believe whoever had talked to him last on any issue, but he manages to have that same effect on other people, too.

Going back to the concept of the will of the voters, Trump won Muslim-heavy Dearborn, MI on the back of people voting to protest Biden/Harris's approach to Gaza. He just announced side-by-side with Netanyahu that he wants to totally depopulate Gaza and have the US take it over and rebuild it as a resort, and throw in the West Bank too while you're at it. Is that what those people voted for?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#456

Post by hoseja »

BrenBarn wrote: post #374
kortilla wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not lottery mentality and thinking that it’s equivalent is why Europe isn’t innovating. If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off. You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success.

> You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success. It's fine to want that and to attract those kind of people. What you don't want is to attract people who want to do that in order to make a lot of money .

What you really, really, REALLY REALLY don't want is to attract people who want to do it for free. Money is at least honest.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#457

Post by [deleted] »

avs733 wrote: post #315
Gabriel54 wrote: post #141

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

I have written a version of this twice and deleted but just can't let this statement stand unopposed. This is, almost inherently at this point, a rant and my last contribution to this thread. This simply is not the case, I know it is something that you and many others believe is that case but you are being lied to by actual racists. I say that as a white man working in STEM academia. Academia had a long history and t…

[deleted]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#458

Post by cbracketdash »

einrealist wrote: post #144
electriclove wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contend that there existed too much incompetence across what the government has been funding. I’m looking forward to a ‘change’ for more competence, efficiency, innovation, accountability, etc

The process is the problem. There is no oversight and accountability for Musk and his "DOGE". That's pure poison to Democracy and to a functioning society. Musk is neither competent nor efficient. He looks at line items and makes stuff up. He destroys a hundred useful things to destroy a bad one. Details don't matter to him. Its the same con man mentality that feeds off the works of his workforce. People who think he…

It's easy to dismiss eccentric people as conmen. But you have to consider, he has been at least partially instrumental in at least 2 impossible companies: electric cars and rockets.

Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes !

An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as possible. When things break, re-add those necessary parts.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#459

Post by oglop »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #141

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

[flagged]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#460

Post by bubblethink »

tstactplsignore wrote: post #392
Gabriel54 wrote: post #141

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

This is simply a delusion detached from reality. I am a white man in STEM academia. I've never been discriminated against once. None of my white male colleagues have either. They are all successful in academia. And my colleagues who aren't white men are in no way inferior. Just let us vote and ask if we feel discriminated against or oppressed because of DEI. We'll vote no. It's simply a delusion that DEI is some unme…

It's an ideological disaster. Viewing this through a white v/s black lens is itself too simplistic. Look at the Harvard affirmative action lawsuit. Asians are in fact and provably being discriminated against. This is also the case in immigration policy. DEI/affirmative action policies were created by the executive and are being undone by the executive.

>Just let us vote and ask if we feel discriminated against or oppressed because of DEI.

A majority of the electorate did vote for ending this.

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