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NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

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

#831

Post by ethbr1 »

ggandv wrote: post #797
ethbr1 wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "nothing for decades" isn't true, then parent can use different words. "Least productive" != "nothing" If language collapses into describing a different reality just because of the way someone feels, then communicating is going to be difficult.

Exactly. They raise campaign funds and appear on tv and cross examine industry leaders like Altman and Zuckerberg. Clearly that is not “nothing”. But some worry that is not enough to keep pace with emerging threats and opportunities and that’s given justification for presidents to increasingly fill that gap, to disastrous effect. Some argue that a single strong leader calling the shots via EOs is better than having c…

Something 'taking an Act of Congress' (to indicate that it's difficult and time-consuming) is in the lexicon for a reason. It's been true of the US legislative process for that long.

But!

That isn't to say that after the gears grind, Congress doesn't complete important and essential work, even in toxic times.

The nihilism of a blatently false claim that Congress is doing nothing just feeds into 'so let someone else do it' fervor. Untrue memes can be dangerous.

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

#832

Post by FrustratedMonky »

benzible wrote: post #652
beachy wrote: post #515

Earlier 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…

"Faulty intelligence" accepts that DOGE / Russell Vought / Project 2025 are sincerely concerned with government spending. The evidence says that this is deliberate sabotage of government functions to erode public trust. Consider: Douglas Holtz-Eakin (former Republican CBO director) noted DOGE is specifically "going into agencies they disagree with" for ideological reasons, targeting programs that are a tiny fraction…

"deliberate sabotage of government functions to erode public trust."

Is there any non-dystopian reason to do this? Is the end game really the collapse of the US?

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

#833

Post by anonfordays »

UncleMeat wrote: post #798
int_19h wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wri…

Hiring on merit can increase representation of underrepresented groups. There are also shitloads of decisions one can make that increase representation of underrepresented groups without violating Title 7. You can have better parental leave and part-time work policies. Or you can open an office in a region with different racial demographics. Or you can send recruiters to events like Grace Hopper. The idea that leader…

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

#834

Post by bigbadfeline »

voidspark wrote: post #651
bitmasher9 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upcoming generation will be plenty happy with factory jobs instead of jobs in supercomputing or science.

"The budget request explicitly states it "cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science," while maintaining funding for AI and quantum information sciences at current levels."

> "and programs in low priority areas of science"

One man's low priority is another man's life-saving research.

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

#835

Post by sneak »

saagarjha wrote: post #768
sneak wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Aren't both heavily propped up with government funding?

I don’t believe so, no, but even if they were - isn’t funding private businesses to do research (that have a stake in success) better than the state doing it directly and not caring if it works or is effective or not?

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

#836

Post by UncleMeat »

anonfordays wrote: post #833
UncleMeat wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring on merit can increase representation of underrepresented groups. There are also shitloads of decisions one can make that increase representation of underrepresented groups without violating Title 7. You can have better parental leave and part-time work policies. Or you can open an office in a region with different racial demographics. Or you can send recruiters to events like Grace Hopper. The idea that leader…

[flagged]

For years?

I have seen this in a very small number of places and never with the idea that actual merit is racist but instead that systems that promote a shallow understanding of individual meritocracy can perpetuate inequality.

But this has nothing to do with the fact that the alternative to "meritocracy" in the corporate world is not a sort of affirmative anti-racism but is instead the old-boys club system. Moving from that system to one focused on individual merit will produce greater representation for underrepresented groups.

O'Keefe is a remarkable person to cite here, given his history.

There are cases of corporations violating Title 7. Duh. They violate it by discriminating against black people or women too. But if you want to claim that when people working at corporations hear about goals to increase representation that they just decide to violate Title 7 at scale, you've got some splaining to do.

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

#837

Post by thaumasiotes »

freejazz wrote: post #620
thaumasiotes wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"DEI" is the rebranding of "affirmative action",† which was itself a euphemism for distributing special privileges (most notably jobs, higher education placements, and loan approvals) to members of legally favored racial groups while punishing members of disfavored groups. All of the relevant laws specify that (1) you are not allowed to treat anybody differently based on their race, and (2) if your outcome numbers do…

You think people were getting loan approvals because they were minorities? And that it was also at the cost of "disfavored groups"? Is there anything to back this up? Redlining was a real phenomenon. You might not agree with Coates or his proposed solution, but I've not seen anyone attack the numbers, which speak for themselves. I don't agree with pretty much the entirety of your post but that stuck out.

> You think people were getting loan approvals because they were minorities?

Of course; it is a major focus of governmental affirmative action efforts.

> Is there anything to back this up?

Again, of course.

> Redlining was a real phenomenon.

And? Do you think it was a real phenomenon after the 1960s? School segregation was a real phenomenon too; in your opinion, does that mean that modern schools do not admit applicants because they are favored minorities?

Before deciding whether you approve of a government program, maybe you should learn what it involves.

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

#838

Post by nickpsecurity »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #761
watersb wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ma…

I think their first point is different than just free markets. It was about shifting the locus of control from the government, to the individuals. 1) Instead of having the money taken from you and begging the administration to do what you want, let people decide what they want, and voluntarily collaborate using the tools and organizations they choose. This may be the government or another organization, but the indivi…

You got it right. Republicans want more power in private hands so they decide most things. It's also voluntary as you said.

Thanks for the information about Switzerland's local-first model of taxation. That's really interesting. It might help us over here for the exact reasons you said.

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

#839

Post by anonfordays »

UncleMeat wrote: post #836
anonfordays wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

For years? I have seen this in a very small number of places and never with the idea that actual merit is racist but instead that systems that promote a shallow understanding of individual meritocracy can perpetuate inequality. But this has nothing to do with the fact that the alternative to "meritocracy" in the corporate world is not a sort of affirmative anti-racism but is instead the old-boys club system. Moving f…

>For years?

Over a decade: https://readwrite.com/github-meritocracy-rug/#awesm=~ozpAMM1... and https://www.wired.com/story/github-tech-values/

>I have seen this in a very small number of places...

GitHub is not a small place.

>O'Keefe is a remarkable person to cite here, given his history.

Remarkable because he hasn't been debunked, and IBM's attempts to have the lawsuit thrown out of court have failed. IBM has also tried to scrub the video from YouTube it seems, the Twitter link is the only one I could find.

>But if you want to claim that when people working at corporations hear about goals to increase representation that they just decide to violate Title 7 at scale, you've got some splaining to do.

The various lawsuits, some that have gone to the Supreme Court, have shown this type of discrimination against Whites, Asians, and males has been occurring at scale.

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

#840

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

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…

>The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for murder applications

Fixed that for you

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