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

741–750 of 877 posts

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

#741

Post by watersb »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #503

While I support cuts and reforms, I'm a bit saddened and worried by cuts at NSF. Most of the best work I've shared here was funded by NSF. The private sector largely wasn't doing it. If they did, the deliverables weren't free but sometimes were when NSF funded. I'd hate to see those types of grants go. That said, there is an ideological difference driving this on at least two points (if ignoring DEI etc). One, taxes…

Your argument is well stated, if I understand it, as the power of free markets to make better choices regarding resource allocation than redistribution by government bureaucracy.

If so, then I can disagree.

However the market behaves in the United States, it has failed us.

Compromise with market forces, in the form of "public-private partnership", has only increased the cost of providing fewer government services.

Market forces won't fix healthcare. Won't invest in early a stage tech development or scientific research that might take decades of investment before becoming amenable to market-driven participation.

Market forces most certainly won't provide adequate care for children or elderly.

Every society requires social investment.

But maybe I don't understand your point. Sorry.

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

#742

Post by astrange »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #253
bpodgursky wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very few places an administration can cut costs without touching entitlements. Until voters stop punishing politicians for raising the retirement age or trimming wasteful healthcare spending, they will cut the discretionary budget.

Society isn't going back to old people eating dogfood, a child labor workforce, and people being denied basic healthcare. Adjust to reality and make it work, or the masses will make it work but it won't benefit anyone how we get there.

"The masses" are going to spontaneously organize improved state capacity?

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

#743

Post by nielsbot »

rtkwe wrote: post #252
zkmon wrote: post #5

Why not take up those projects which align with the goals of the government? After all, science is also also about adaptation and survival.

Because 1) science comes up with inconvenient answers (like climate change is real and human caused) and 2) there's a virulent anti-intellectual ideology that's taken over the GOP so harming universities is it's own goal in and of itself.

The pillars of fascist takeover are:

1. destroy free press 2. destroy liberal education 3. destroy the administrative state (watchdogs, rule makers, rule enforcers)

Once that's done, resistance is diminished or destroyed and you can then funnel the wealth of the people to you and your family and your "friends".

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

#744

Post by prox »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #332
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…

Hard to declare that the earth is only 6000 years old with all those science hippies in the way. Gotta set priorities.

It is said jokingly, but wait until you read this, go the goals section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Network_Charismati...

This network is closely aligned with Trump. Paula White did the invocation at the 2016 inauguration.

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

#745

Post by nielsbot »

fallingknife wrote: post #314
beej71 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every DEI program I've ever been involved in has been 100% about selecting people _purely_ on merit. Not race, not gender, not whether or not they're trans. The DEI trainings are about completely ignoring those factors when hiring. I'm curious what they call your trainings on the matter.

Every large company I have ever worked for has had noticeably lower standards for women and minorities (except for Asians of course because fuck them in particular). They will never say it in the trainings because they know it's illegal. They will never tell anyone anything except for "don't discriminate" but then they will incentivize discrimination by things like "diversity goals" (quotas) and setting recruiter bon…

> Of course if they set higher bonuses for hiring white people

Are you saying that (straight) (white) (men) have not had (nor continue to enjoy) unfair advantages in our society? And is that not an injustice?

Saying "racism is bad" is correct but only the first step. Step two is recognizing the accumulated results of long-standing historical (and continuing, frankly) discrimination against minority groups and working to right that injustice.

But would like to hear your perspective.

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

#746

Post by int_19h »

freejazz wrote: post #623
Workaccount2 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned: >People on the left don't recognize it [populism] because they don't recognize the tools that right wing people use to stimulate the working class. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole because it takes years to escape the ideological camp you grew into. But suffice to say, both sides ultimately want the same things and disagree on the route to take to that destination (while telling their base tha…

I'm not sure how your post doesn't fall for exactly what you claim to be criticizing. You do not engage with the substance of anything I said and instead just name call. I'm not talking about the route, I'm talking about the destination. A socialized medical plan is incredibly popular on both sides of the political spectrum and polls well with Trump's supporters. That's not an avenue, that's a destination. I have a f…

The thing about populism is that it doesn't require any plans as such. You can just say things like, "we'll have the best healthcare system in the world, you've never seen healthcare as good as what I'm going to give you, I guarantee it!".

For as long as you have the cult of personality going, anyway. Which is plenty of time to put your men in key positions of power for when your charisma is no longer convincing enough.

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

#747

Post by eli_gottlieb »

godshatter wrote: post #480
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] Great, so he won't need to cut the NSF then?

According to the national debt clock, we're at around 36.8T in debt. I don't know if that's his motivation or not, but we're not starting all this from a balanced budget.

That's not a reason to cut anything in particular, especially something as cheap in raw cost and valuable in ROI, among federal programs, as the NSF.

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

#748

Post by kashunstva »

yupitsme123 wrote: post #706
trhway wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues of speech, hate, deportations are the very visible ones. The less visible is for example changing the nature of US government. The old government bureaucracy which was focused on protecting people - consumer protection, EPA, civil rights, etc. - is being dismantled, and new bureaucracy is being built in place to enforce myriad of new restrictions and dole out import/export/tariff quotas, exceptions, and ot…

The old bureaucracy stopped being progressive long ago. I believe the EPA protects the environment about as much as I believe DOGE is about creating efficiencies. At this point these organizations are just tools for the administration in power to hand out favors and therefore maintain support. The worthwhile work they do is secondary. Trump is simply getting rid of the ones that aided democrats and creating new ones…

> believe the EPA protects the environment about as much as I believe DOGE is about creating efficiencies.

The EPA is (was?) an enormous set of programs encompassing a range of environmental concerns. Undoubtedly some are more effective than others. But to claim without evidence that it is ineffective is disingenuous. I was around in the 60’s and 70’s.

Interestingly, the EPA was established by Richard Nixon, in an age when his party was also about creating things rather than indiscriminately dismantling them.

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

#749

Post by userbinator »

vkou wrote: post #427
asdsadasdasd123 wrote: post #360

Earlier 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.

I'm glad you took the time to point that out, because, as we all know, in the history of the universe, they have never made a non-viz minority hire who also happens to be completely incapable of doing the job. --- When a viz-minority hire sucks, it's clearly DEI's fault, we shout from the rooftops. When a non-minority hire sucks, crickets .

Guess what happened to quality around the time all the DEI stuff started shooting up in popularity around a decade ago? Everyone sees it. Everyone experiences it. No one wanted to talk about it, until things reached a breaking point.

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

#750

Post by sixothree »

sheepscreek wrote: post #453
CamperBob2 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to describe what's happening here You can describe it as a deliberate and very successful attack by America's enemies, because that's what it is.

What’s in it for people like the current Trade and Treasury Secretaries, heck even the V.P? In their previous lives, they seemed levelheaded - yet here we are. Is it just pure selfishness, “if I don’t do it, someone else will” mentality?

The VP seems level-headed? He's a moldable piece of wet clay. How can you even begin to suggest stability would come from this person?
Post reply on HN