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WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

scientificamerican.com

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Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#641

Post by Terr_ »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #613
Terr_ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to define biological sex as only being the gametes Compare to: "If it burns diesel, it's a truck, if it burns gasoline, it's a car. Thus, there are only two kinds with no overlap, easy peasy."

There are plenty of sedans that run diesel, especially in Europe, but even in America.

Correct, perhaps was being too subtle and ran into Poe's Law. [0]

I'm saying that their attempt to reduce a human-categorization question to just-gametes is the same kind of stupid and incomplete as trying to reduce another vehicle-purpose question to gas-vs-diesel.

> “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”

-- H.L. Mencken.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#642

Post by Terr_ »

phs318u wrote: post #591
Terr_ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to define biological sex as only being the gametes Compare to: "If it burns diesel, it's a truck, if it burns gasoline, it's a car. Thus, there are only two kinds with no overlap, easy peasy."

Are humans as simple as cars though? And why does sexuality get represented by the energy source n your analogy? Why doesn’t sexuality get represented by other characteristics? Perhaps because “there’s only two kinds - sedans and pickups” sounds a little silly?

The fictional speaker in quotes is supposed to be saying something silly, yes, and the "easy peasy" is to convey their overconfident naivete.

[More detail in reply to sibling-comment]

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#643

Post by appreciatorBus »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #566
appreciatorBus wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t read the article. There are two developmental pathways for sexual reproduction: - one produces small mobile gametes - one produces large immobile gametes There can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism in different species ends up on one pathway or the other, there can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism on either pathway develops, and there can be plenty of variation in how…

No biologist is an essentialist for long. Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you ou define sex by the specific definition of gametes. The author is not wrong within that limited scope. But, what really matters is the phenotype of sex, which is not binary, is highly overlapping, and is a complex developmental phenomenon. When people get all up in arms being anti trans,…

> makes their small minds feel funny. Because they want to pretend that the world can be categorized into simple boxes that alleviate their anxiety, and gives them a sense of control.

Ah the classics!

“Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid”

If that is literally the only reason you can comprehend that someone doesn’t buy this ideology hook line and sinker, then you are the one with the small mind.

I have spent the last several months learning everything I can, and not just about trans, but about the academic undercurrents like queer theory, and of course about the concept of sex in biology.

Until earlier this year, my assumption was the trans rights was just gay rights 2.0 and that seemed pretty fine to me. I was aware that there was controversy, but I paid a little heed. Like you I assumed anyone who was fighting it was just a small minded bigot. Eventually, the good people would prevail and the world would go on.

But then I started actually listening to what trans activists and queer theorists were saying. And then I started reading from people with a wide variety of thoughts.

I came out the other end pretty much aligned with J. K. Rowling:

Wear whatever clothes you like.

Sleep with whoever will have you.

But sex is real and immutable in humans, and this has real consequences for policy and law that cannot be ignored in pursuit of a utopian fantasies of a world where everything is a spectrum and all categorization is interpreted as oppression.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#644

Post by SubiculumCode »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #643
SubiculumCode wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No biologist is an essentialist for long. Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you ou define sex by the specific definition of gametes. The author is not wrong within that limited scope. But, what really matters is the phenotype of sex, which is not binary, is highly overlapping, and is a complex developmental phenomenon. When people get all up in arms being anti trans,…

> makes their small minds feel funny. Because they want to pretend that the world can be categorized into simple boxes that alleviate their anxiety, and gives them a sense of control. Ah the classics! “Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid” If that is literally the only reason you can comprehend that someone doesn’t buy this ideology hook line and sinker, then you are the one with the small mind. I have spent the…

If you want to talk about science, read scientific academia, not activists or liberal arts majors. Science. You can pick that one part of myb aragraph out but ignore all that I wrote about biology. that is your choice.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#645

Post by fuckinpuppers »

Cancelling a grant at any time goes against the point.

How can anyone realistically plan resources, staff, whatever, if they have no idea it’ll be funded for a month or 20 years? They really want to destroy American ingenuity, science, all of it.

Just a bunch of white nationalist drones existing to keep the engine going is what they want.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#646

Post by ericd »

sandworm101 wrote: post #467
tremon wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so long as you dont talk to outsiders outsiders like... their immediate family back home?

Yes. Having "foreign contacts" is bad, even family members. If the family was somewhere like china then these would be called "adversarial foreign contacts". Culture has changed in the last ten years. People with grandparents in china are having significant problems when applying for jobs/clearances. https://clearedjobs.net/guides/security-clearance-foreign-co... >> A foreign national spouse who is a citizen of the U…

I think it’s less about loyalty to the US and more about the fact that loved ones in adversarial countries are pressure points those countries can push on.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#647

Post by boothby »

fanatic2pope wrote: post #601
boothby wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian on a hiring committee, it's fascinating to talk to Americans who hate the political environment but still don't want to relocate.

What are you hiring for?

Personally, my team is looking for circuit designers and EDA tooling developers (though it looks like the roles have been taken down for some rewording). But the bulk of our tech positions are physicists and software developers.

https://ats.rippling.com/en-CA/d-wave-quantum/jobs?page=0

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#648

Post by pdar4123 »

boothby wrote: post #410
evrydayhustling wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the brutal impact on those already invested in the American research community, this is one more nail in the coffin when it comes to competing for new talent. What researcher in their right mind would move their research and their future to the USA to join this clown rodeo? It is unbelievable to watch my country give up its most unfair (and yet mostly positive) advantage -- a nearly free option on the top tal…

As a Canadian on a hiring committee, it's fascinating to talk to Americans who hate the political environment but still don't want to relocate.

The funding environment in Canada is quite simply abysmal. You don’t need a politician to kill your grant, the money doesn’t exist in the first place. Canada could do so incredibly well if it only would invest in science.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#649

Post by kennywinker »

parineum wrote: post #615
kennywinker wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't adjust the lever of representation without affecting who gets opportunities. For sure they are intertwined. More inclusion = more representation, and vice versa. But you’re saying representation is pointless because people can enter fields they don’t see themselves represented in and I am saying i think representation is a (positive) side effect not the goal. You can argue that it’s pointless all you want…

> But you’re saying representation is pointless because people can enter fields they don’t see themselves represented in and I am saying i think representation is a (positive) side effect not the goal. What I actually think that I haven't said is that "representation" is a self defeating idea that encourages people to view themselves as different. > I agree. Limiting your pool is a bad idea. That’s literally why incl…

> The other half of what you said is logical though, that inclusion probably leads to a more diverse future but at the cost of the present.

I didn’t say that. Idk what comment you read that said that, but it wasn’t mine.

> The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist.

Even if there was a cost to the productivity of the present - a better present isn’t one where we’re the most “productive” or efficient - it’s one where the most people are able to grasp a good and fair life.

> Every single hire is an individual hire.

The dots on the screen form a picture.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#650

Post by appreciatorBus »

phs318u wrote: post #591
Terr_ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to define biological sex as only being the gametes Compare to: "If it burns diesel, it's a truck, if it burns gasoline, it's a car. Thus, there are only two kinds with no overlap, easy peasy."

Are humans as simple as cars though? And why does sexuality get represented by the energy source n your analogy? Why doesn’t sexuality get represented by other characteristics? Perhaps because “there’s only two kinds - sedans and pickups” sounds a little silly?

It’s much more fundamental than that.

A better example would be how many axles a road vehicle can have to be considered a road vehicle.

You might reasonably conclude that the number starts at one and essentially goes to infinity and you’d be right.

But somewhere, deep in academia, some critical theorists are going to get upset that you’ve excluded zero and excluded the all the real numbers. They are going to call this oppression, and they’re going to invent a theory that says “actually vehicle axle identities exist on a spectrum that includes zero and all the real numbers, irrational numbers, etc.” if you give them long enough, they will also tell you if you don’t consider a vehicle whose axle count is an imaginary number, then you are imaginary axle-phobic.

Out here in the real world it’s very obvious that vehicles can’t have half an axle or 4.29 axles.

And the point is not because you want to exclude or oppress any road vehicles, it’s simply that being able to count the number of axles is a useful categorization for humans who work with road vehicles, so it has to be possible to say how many there are in an objective sense, in the real world.

Similarly, knowing which of the two sexes an individual belongs to does not tell you everything about that individual, but it definitely tells you a few things that are very useful in policy, law and custom.

It’s one thing for a man to put an a dress, it’s quite another for us to allow the law to consider that by putting on the dress he is now the weaker sex.

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