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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

#451

Post by gizzlon »

oytis wrote: post #445
gizzlon wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I's still a long way towards fascism for USA to actually lose its attractiveness Hard disagree. They are on a road to totalitarianism. Unless there's a quite violent change of course, it's just going to get much worse. Have you not seen the president and his people go after: Political opponents, Attorneys, Leaders and workers in the government who dare to disagree, Immigrants and tourists with the wrong opinions, J…

This is all bad, but the real test will be the next presidential elections and, to a lesser extent, midterms. If you can vote a dictator out, it's not a real dictatorship. And again, I'm not really seeing Europe staying democratic for long after the fall of the USA

> but the real test will be the next presidential elections and, to a lesser extent, midterm

Sorry, but that is just extremely naive. Just look at how this usually works. Or look at what the orange fuckhead tried the last time. Now, repeat, but with much more power and influence in all the right places, from government to big tech.

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

#452

Post by jjav »

jjmarr wrote: post #284
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.

Chinese is too difficult of a language. I have spent 5 years learning it part-time and have gotten to a level I can understand 30% of a TV show and 20% of a newspaper. Unfortunately it's two different languages and both are unlike almost anywhere else. The spoken language is tonal and the consonants don't easily match English. If I have a heavy English accent, I just don't speak Chinese instead of sounding like a for…

> Meanwhile the written language has almost no correlation with the spoken language.

So identical to French then!

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

#453

Post by ozgrakkurt »

newfriend wrote: post #182

For an American startup/technology forum, this place is remarkably anti-America, anti-capitalism, anti-AI, anti-crypto.

I don’t think many educated and working class people are pro- those things at this time

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

#454

Post by noirscape »

gyomu wrote: post #322
tsunamifury wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in with the Chinese now for two years in technical fields. I have a strict requirement that they learn English as it is a more technical and specific language and less prone to the use of metaphorical weasel words that slow progress. I have openly stated that it is a strictly less technical language and often draws teams in to vague specifications and much more verbose language to find specificity. I ha…

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?

It's not related to Chinese in specific, but in civilian air traffic, the lingua franca is specifically English[0]. The reason for this is because other languages leave too much room for interpretation. One incident not mentioned in that page that's worth bringing up is Korean Air Flight 801; the crew recognized an issue with the instruments quite a bit before the crash, but because the flight crew essentially was too polite in notifying the captain of the issue, the captain instead asserted authority with incomplete information, leading to the plane crashing[1].

Language specificity and cultural encoding in those languages can have a pretty major impact on its clarity, especially in critical situation. Speaking a secondary language instead can avoid that sort of thing simply because being a non-native speaker, you'll be a good deal more blunt in that language.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_English

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801

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

#455

Post by alborzb »

shiroiuma wrote: post #350
pitched wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Incase anyone else is a wikipedia searcher like me, want to point out there's no 'R' in the historic colony.

Acadia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia

Wanted to save other people time searching it up too

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

#456

Post by pantalaimon »

materielle wrote: post #298
jojomodding wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on if the Chinese can get over foreigners messing up the tones all the time. English has the advantage that it already had a lot of different ways of pronouncing it before becoming the world language, so the expectations for how perfect people's pronunciation should be was lower.

That’s just not true though. Sure English doesn’t have tones, but there are other tricky parts of the language. Additionally, Russian is another “difficult” language, but all the satellite nations had no problem picking it up. The real reason people learn English isn’t because it’s easy. It’s because they need to. As someone who is married to an immigrant, it’s not easy for them. They’ve just worked really hard over…

> Russian is another “difficult” language, but all the satellite nations had no problem picking it up.

Russian is not more difficult than English and a lot of the satellite states were speaking other Slavic languages. If you already speak Spanish, it's less difficult to pick up Italian too.

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

#458

Post by pantalaimon »

alex43578 wrote: post #416
materielle wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just not true though. Sure English doesn’t have tones, but there are other tricky parts of the language. Additionally, Russian is another “difficult” language, but all the satellite nations had no problem picking it up. The real reason people learn English isn’t because it’s easy. It’s because they need to. As someone who is married to an immigrant, it’s not easy for them. They’ve just worked really hard over…

There’s also the fact that a huge portion of foreign immigrants to the US don’t and won’t learn English, but can still operate just fine (or even have the system cater to them - press 1 for Spanish). Look at the uproar over requiring commercial drivers to be able to read road signs in English.

The US also did annex large parts of what used to be Mexico in the 19th century, so you don't even technically have so be an immigrant to speak Spanish

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

#459

Post by mschuster91 »

tsoukase wrote: post #419
lateforwork wrote: post #112

In all important areas such as clean energy, fusion energy, biotechnology and AI the Chinese government is heavily investing in and pushing Chinese companies to lead the world. China Is Outspending the U.S. to Achieve the ‘Holy Grail’ of Clean Energy: Fusion See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-e... America's lead in biotechnology is slipping, while China has made synthetic biology a nation…

China doesn't want as a prime goal to become world leader. They just want to expand their infrastructure, science, production, everything for their own prosperity. If there is no other competitor left, then world leadership will be a by product. They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal (see military presence, coups and secret diplomatic deals in foreign countries that the US was doing after WWII in order t…

> They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal

Oh hell yes they do. Chinese overfishing is wreaking havoc across the planet [1], not just near Asia, but the reach of Chinese fishing fleets goes as far as Africa and South America. In the case of Africa, this has been one of the contributing causes for people to flee to Europe.

Then you got the stealing. America certainly isn't innocent either when it comes to IP theft, but China takes that on yet another level.

And finally, you got artificial subsidies. Solar, batteries, cars - the CCP is engaged in insane pricing wars backed by practically infinite funds. They already managed to "outcompete" most solar production and are on their best way to screw up our automotive industries as well.

> They do want to expand their productive capacity by financing projects in foreign countries, but in a business-as-usual way not in a I-am-the-boss way.

Nope. They are just as vile loan sharks as the IMF, some say they go even further [2].

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/chinas-rampant-illegal-fishing-enda...

[2] https://www.news24.com/business/china-puts-aggressive-terms-...

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

#460

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

viking123 wrote: post #397
jimbokun wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This suggests that our executive branch has fallen under the influence of foreign agents through blackmail or coercion of some sort. Whereas the simpler and more obvious explanation is that the US President shares the general outlook and values of America’s enemies and thus naturally acts in their interests without persuasion needed.

[flagged]

All monocausal explanations are wrong. (Except for this one, obviously ;) )
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