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The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

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Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#491

If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective. Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset vo…

It isn’t about budget but about ideology. Firing prosecutors who investigated Trump, firing FBI agents involved in Jan 6th arrests, firing employees for having pronouns in email signatures, going after agencies that spend <.1% of the federal budget just because they have “diversity” or “aid” in the name, using emergency executive power over vague threats like “drugs”. This is a government takeover and purge of anyone who can be considered disloyal to the administration. This may be a surprise to people who have only ever lived under functional first-world governments and the rule of law, but the rest of the world recognizes it as a story that has played out many times before.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#492

They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI, SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI. It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential and critical production system. Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on this. Where are the Democrats on all thi…

Like Democratic elected officials? They lost. They have no power. They don’t control any branch of government. They have as much ability to pass laws as you or I personally do. They have as much ability to hand down a Supreme Court or direct law enforcement as you or I personally do. None. Where are we? Complaining on social media I guess. I’m quite frustrated why my elected officials as well but it is kind of hard t…

And why did they lose?

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#493
post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

Closing USAID is idiotic from a foreign policy perspective. Gives China a huge opportunity to fill the void in countries and grow its global influence. It’s already done so in Africa due to US being so preoccupied with the “war on terror”. Not to mention that aiding developing countries - reduces chances of instability/conflicts/etc which otherwise end up costing much more. Plus it’s about access to raw materials (wh…

A lot of what USAID was spending money on would shock people. Meanwhile, no money left to rebuild parts of the US

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#494

I applaud these guys and the work they're doing. Any bureaucracy, public or private, with access to a guaranteed income stream will grow like a tumor. The entire federal govt needs to be audited and gutted. The time for committees, reports and similar half measures is over.

Not sure why this is being down voted. I don't want my tax money being wasted to no end

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#495

Remember, if you can vote, vote the next time you can. Convince your friends and neighbors to vote, too. Apathy has real consequences.

It sounds like you're assuming that if more people had voted, they would have voted for not-Trump. Is there data backing that up? Is there any indication that the result would have been different?

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#496

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

If you look at the Manhattan project org chart and take people randomly at the top, they're all at least in their 40s. "There are young people on the project" is a thing but at the end of the day things like the Manhattan Project are downstream of the will of an entire behemoth (at least in theory attempting to represent the will of the people), balancing various interests and ethical or moral questions that are usually downstream of some experience.

They also have gone through the military chain of command...

I didn't see Musk's confirmation hearing. OMB's head needs to be Senat confirmed, Musk is giving OMB orders and took over their e-mail addresses. Where's the hearing? Where's the confirmation?

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#497

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L...

Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39

So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#499
post #155
post #3

I don’t know how this will shake out, but I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy. Edit: by the way, this post isn’t off-topic. It is about the activities of the US Digital Service (now known as Doge), and the exploits of young hackers who came up through top tech companies. It has implications for information systems se…

I really don't worry at all for these people. They're adults, even if young, and they've made their choice. Any consequences they suffer will be well deserved. I'm sure Trump will preemptively pardon them at the end of his term anyway. My worry is that these people will never be held accountable for what they're doing. Save your worry for things that actually matter.

Same like Biden and his crew of folks he preemtively pardoned

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#500
post #95
post #73

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

Never appropriate. The actions are entirely unconstitutional. If the US decided to disband USAID it would have to be an act of congress, unelected friends of the president don’t come close to being able to make that call.

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