None of this would have happened without the support of Silicon Valley billionaires.
NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
731–740 of 877 posts
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#732Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's not any different than it has been. Good point. Exactly like when the Biden administration decided to cancel all grants to Harvard University because they didn't allow a government takeover of the university. Oh, wait, that didn't happen.
My dad is a university researcher. During the Biden administration he was forced to add completely unscientific DEI language to his grants if he wanted to get them funded. You just don't know about it because the media you watch doesn't report on that because they support it. So yeah, the whole Harvard thing is more of the same.
This is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. Here is the chapter and verse for what can count as "Broader Impacts" for NSF grants:
> Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); improved STEM education and educator development at any level; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology; improved well-being of individuals in society; development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce; increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others; improved national security; increased economic competitiveness of the U.S.; use of science and technology to inform public policy; and enhanced infrastructure for research and education. These examples of societally relevant outcomes should not be considered either comprehensive or prescriptive. Proposers may include appropriate outcomes not covered by these examples.
https://www.nsf.gov/policies/pappg/24-1/ch-2-proposal-prepar...
Only the first is "DEI" in any form, and you can (and I have) successfully get funded using any of them.
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#733Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just said a lot of things that are easily disproven. >war being waged in an unknown place It's Ukraine. They've been an ally in a strategic location for decades. Just because you can't find it on a map doesn't mean I can't. >for an unknown reason They were invaded by Russia. >But funding the dictator Zelensky so that he can capture people who do not want to fight for him and send them to certain death in storm tr…
>They've been an ally in a strategic location for decades. Ally in what? Typical gaslighting. Before the invasion, no one could find Ukraine on a map and no one considered it an ally (if they even knew it existed). To such extent that many Ukrainians in the USA before 2014, when introducing themselves, often said they were from Russia - just to avoid having to explain what is Ukraine. >They were invaded by Russia. Ye…
>> They were invaded by Russia.
> Yes. But what is the war being fought for?
Someone breaks into your home. Kills family members. They're still coming in.
You tell your kids to get behind you. Then you turn to face the invader.
That's what this war is being fought for.
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#734Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the American experience that decisions are made at the executive level based on faulty intelligence, while people working at the coal face such as yourself have a much better understanding of what's really going on. Case in point the Vietnam war, which cost thousands of lives because decisions were based on statistics from the field which had been heavily manipulated as they percolated upwards. Right now, just a…
thats not entirely accurate. a great conterexample was the mark XIV torpedo during world war two. it was faulty and the workers at the bureau of navy ordinance couldnt get their heads out of their asses to fix the problem. meanwhile sailors were dying. admirals and captains kept trying to fix the problem until finally one admiral (king iirc) got so pissed off he shoved the changes through and reformed the bureau of o…
A great counterexample indeed. Top down hustle getting things moving.
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#735Earlier quoted context omitted.
Government funding of research. We were talking about the NSF after all, not free markets versus central planning. On that though, I read somewhere that the hierarchical committee-led operation of the funding agencies is the same way communist systems dole out money for everything else too. Not sure if they were being completely serious.
Doesn’t that pretty much describe every corporate hierarchy as well? It isn’t communist, it’s the nature of any large organization.
So your argument is that nothing is communism? The fact that it's a single large organization allocating resources is rather key to the whole point. That the same organizational structure doing it is interesting to me anyway. I suspected this line of thinking is too triggering for some people though.
A corporation is not an economic system, just a tiny participant of one. And I'd rather describe their decision making as hierarchical yes, but by middle managers implementing the agendas of higher ups, not necessarily by committees. When they operate by committee they tend to be at their worst...
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#736Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every DEI program I've been involved in has had target quotas which put pressure on hiring managers to reach those quotas, but still "hire on merit". And then they hire a viz minority engineer who thinks translating a js file to python means renaming the file extension.
You are either lying about hard-number racial/gender quotas or you were working for companies that were flagrantly breaking the law. Did you whistle blow? You see, it doesn't add up, because usually when a company breaks the law so blatantly, it does so in crafty, shady ways intended to make more money, not in an attempt to create diversity that does nothing for the bottom line while also threatening the very existen…
When this kind of thing happens - and it absolutely does - it's never put in writing. The company training is always going to say what the law requires it to say.
But let's say that the top management in your org have made a public commitment to "increase representation of underrepresented groups". The managers in that org are then required, by company policy, to have their own goals be "aligned" with it, so they write something similar. What do you think then happens when it comes to interviews and hiring decisions?
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#737Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They’ve been doing nothing for decades. Here's a list of the 250+ pieces of nothing that the 118th Congress passed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_Un... If you're going to reach for hyperbole, at least make it defensible.
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That's clearly not accurate. Congress has passed continuing resolutions in some years but they've also passed budgets. E.g in 2024, they passed this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366 .
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll add the people that promoted it often said that amongst themselves while more publicly just talking about "diversity." They usually believed in imtersectionality, redistribution of wealth/power, etc. Their fix is systematic discrimination against specific groups to redistribute power to achieve the outcomes. And, if other groups become dominant, they still favor them over white people. We've seen that these ideo…
> I'll add the people that promoted it often said that amongst themselves while more publicly just talking about "diversity." They usually believed in imtersectionality, redistribution of wealth/power, etc. Their fix is systematic discrimination against specific groups to redistribute power to achieve the outcomes. And, if other groups become dominant, they still favor them over white people. You say this without any…
Your argument boils down to "no true Scotsman".
I have personally heard managers discussing the candidates' backgrounds in the context where it was clear that some were preferred over others, because their managers wanted to see them "demonstrate some commitment". Now what? Are you going to tell me that I misheard, or that my experience is somehow invalid?
This administration is a cesspit of vile fascist scum, and that's a mild way to put it. But one of the major reasons why they were able to ride the resentment wave into power is because of people like you blatantly denying that water is wet.
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can consider "DEI" as unfair racial discrimination even if you don't consider yourself a conservative. It's not the case that you have to agree with everything "your" side says, and disagree with everything coming from "their" side.
If you think that then you misunderstand what DEI really means. Conservatives assume black people can never be smart and therefor hiring standards must fall for DEI programs to happen. The reality is that there are more smart black and white people capable of doing your job than you are capable of hiring. So maybe consider taking the black woman who is just as qualified so your department is no longer so lily white a…
You have just described what most people would consider unfair racial discrimination, since it involves picking one of the two equally qualified candidates based solely on their race. You also did that in language that is both mocking and dismissive ("lily white").
And then you wonder why it was so easy for conservatives to rile up the MAGA mob against the intellectuals and radicalize them into full-fledged fascism.
Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
#740Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are welcome changes, as the practice of DEI (not it's idealization) is actively discriminatory and intolerant of dissenting views. Let competence be the only metric.
If competence were the only metric (or even a metric that this administration actually cared for) 90% of the appointees of this administration would not have been hired.
It's not an either-or. This administration can have the average IQ of a bdelloid rotifer, but that doesn't mean that every single ideological position of all the people they are mad at is valid.