Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 877 posts

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

#461

Post by sneak »

kevinventullo wrote: post #424
sneak wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True libertarians are disgusted by authoritarians. A reduction in the size of the US federal government (and its budget) is long overdue. Both of these things can be true. It isn’t anti-intellectual to say that most of what the US federal government does would be better performed by private industry. If understanding is your goal, it may be a useful intellectual exercise to internally steelman the counterargument to…

It isn’t anti-intellectual to say that most of what the US federal government does would be better performed by private industry. The problem is that industry is inherently narrowly focused in short-to-medium term profitability, and cannot be relied on to carry out work which benefits society as a whole, including many conventionally “intellectual” pursuits such as: educating the populace, or fundamental research wit…

Some industries are. Many industries do not. Pharmaceutical companies and aerospace companies are frequently investing in long term projects.

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

#463

Post by belter »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #179
ddahlen wrote: post #38

I have been in and out of the academic world my entire career. I have worked as a programmer/engineer for two universities and a national lab, and worked at a startup founded by some professors. There is huge uncertainty with the people whom I have worked with, nobody seems to be sure what is going to happen, but it feels like it wont be good. Hiring freezes, international graduate students receiving emails to self d…

The irony is that in their supposed effort to "Make America Great Again" they're going to end up accelerating China's rise. We may have decided that basic research is no longer something we want to do, but China's going to continue to forge ahead and leave us in the dust. All thanks to people who have no understanding of how anything works, but only want to tear things down that they don't understand.

"Emmanuel Macron says Donald Trump’s academic crackdown threatens US" - https://www.ft.com/content/923d396f-e852-4744-927a-282cec116...

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

#464

Post by skyyler »

bpodgursky wrote: post #153
alabastervlog wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Security doesn't come out of the general budget.

Who cares? It contributes to the deficit, which is what matters for fiscal policy.

Where did you learn that it contributes to the deficit?

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

#465

Post by anigbrowl »

kelnos wrote: post #451
inverted_flag wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, I guess we'll try to find competent and sane leaders again in 4 years. I don't know? There's not much else we can do at this point if this is the level of irrationality you're dealing with. There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. People really need to start preparing for this reality.

> There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. That's overly alarmist. The one thing the US has going for it when it comes to elections is that they are run by the states, not by the federal government, which insulates them from a lot of possible election meddling. Things like the SAVE Act are incredibly concerning, though. It's unclear if the worst provisions of it are even constitu…

Would you have believed a few months ago that the US government would be trying to strong-arm foreign nations who are nominally allies into compliance with its policy preferences? Here's another recent example of that: https://www.dw.com/en/france-voices-shock-at-us-calls-to-dro...

I have been warning for years (often here on HN) that the US risks tilting into a failed state due to political extremism, and its generally been dismissed as an impossibility - there is no way, people insisted, that an extreme fringe could reshape the American polity because of the Constitutional guardrails, the rock-solid institutions, the societal norms. Well it's happening right in front of us now. Just this week we're seeing the National Science Foundation dismantled, the nonpartisan Librarian of Congress arbitarily fired, the President demurring on TV when asked about his duty to uphold Constitutional guarantees of due process.

You identify a bunch of looming electoral problems yourself. The problem is that it doesn't require a great deal of electoral corruption to sway the outcome. Some states will cheerfully go along with the executive's agenda, those that don't will be denounced as having rigged their own elections. The whole hysteria about illegal immigrants is based on the specious claim that one party is importing them wholesale and somehow converting them into voters to steal elections from conservatives forever. The right has been selling that argument for over 30 years, going back to Newt Gingrich.

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

#466

Post by sitkack »

whycome wrote: post #457
calmbonsai wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preach! It even touched high-schoolers. I got a high school internship on an NSF grant to study ground penetrating radar for landmine detection. It was my first exposure to Maxwell's equations, Unix, networking, and most importantly how real research gets done. I took away lifelong management and research mores, a love of Unix, and ended up getting my degree in EE. These cuts will have huge follow-on costs that we ca…

Yeah but those problems will happen under a democratic president and that will allow republicans to blame them

What makes you think there will be another democratic president to blame?

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

#467

Post by Dakizhu »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #384
UncleOxidant wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that in their supposed effort to "Make America Great Again" they're going to end up accelerating China's rise. We may have decided that basic research is no longer something we want to do, but China's going to continue to forge ahead and leave us in the dust. All thanks to people who have no understanding of how anything works, but only want to tear things down that they don't understand.

It is only ironic if you believe they were speaking in good faith to begin with

No this is what most of their supporters genuinely believe. They think people working in a factory generate more real economic value than people working in offices.

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

#468

Post by Arainach »

moralestapia wrote: post #405
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]

We do know what's going on because they wrote all of this down including their motives and end goals well before the elections.

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

#469

Post by skyyler »

inverted_flag wrote: post #189
bilbo0s wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought HN User burnte was being hyperbolic in the assertions that post put forth. Then I read a few articles. sigh. I mean, I guess we'll try to find competent and sane leaders again in 4 years. I don't know? There's not much else we can do at this point if this is the level of irrationality you're dealing with. I'll add in way of explanation to non-US citizens that in the US, we've always had a fixation on certai…

> I mean, I guess we'll try to find competent and sane leaders again in 4 years. I don't know? There's not much else we can do at this point if this is the level of irrationality you're dealing with. There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. People really need to start preparing for this reality.

If I'm a working class person without much in the way of assets, what does preparing even mean here?

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

#470

Post by Smeevy »

naasking wrote: post #415
Smeevy wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem here is that there isn't just one way in which Donald Trump is unduly influenced by Russia in ways that are difficult to explain. I can understand being skeptical, but there's several independent actions Trump has taken that are all inexplicably sympathetic to Russian interests. Just some quick examples: * Recommending American de-nuclearization while stating that Russia is no longer a threat to A…

> several independent actions Trump has taken that are all inexplicably sympathetic to Russian interests Is it really inexplicable though? Or is it more plausible that you simply don't understand the motives, and probably haven't really tried?

You obviously understand how these actions benefit the country of which Donald Trump is the President.

Why don't you explain it to the rest of the class?

Post reply on HN