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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#851

Post by zie »

rtkwe wrote: post #831
Manabu-eo wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of that $5 billion in the LA times article was not received by Musk's companies at the time, and I'm not sure if they ever received the full amount as it was contingent on reaching several milestones in the span of 20 years. A big part of those $5 billion was not having to pay sales taxes on possible future Gigafactory production, for example, but that gigafactory never reached the initally planned size AFAIK.

The big question then is did the incentives then get clawed back. The pattern I'm familiar with says probably not; usually the company building the factory doesn't lose much of anything they were given when they fail to meet the milestones.

First, it's usually structured that you meet X target, you get Y incentive. Second, what doesn't get clawed back is true of all companies though. So it's not unique to Tesla in any way.

Some of it is a loan, I know Tesla had a loan from the govt, they paid it back early if I remember correctly.

Plus all of that is in the past. What would be a huge problem is if the federal govt started throwing grant money at Tesla now, while Musk is running around playing in the govt.

All that said, I think it's a terrible state of affairs we find ourselves in, but I mean we voted Trump into power, what did we expect would happen? Rainbows and kittens?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#852

Post by troyvit »

ithkuil wrote: post #510
xp84 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter…

Trump said so many things, so many outlandish things that I think a sizeable percentage of the people who voted for him didn't quite believe he would do. I don't have hard data on that but I did speak with several repubblican voters who dismissed the worries saying that he was just joking to provoke the libs.

He did. I only hope next time that the people who voted for him because of the truthiness of what he said (vs the actual truth) will think twice the next time they vote.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#853

Post by ineptech »

rayiner wrote: post #778
waveBidder wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Congress. the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally shut down entire departments

Precedent holds that Congress has the power to establish executive branch agencies and lay out their jurisdiction and functions. It also holds that, once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated. There’s a constitutional distinction between this power to create/define (legislative) and the power to run (executive). The article doesn’t seem to be about abolishing the NIH and NSF. Inst…

> once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated.

This is the third time I've seen someone pushing this line of thinking on HN in as many days and I'd like to know more about where it's coming from. Can you cite any source that supports it and justifies it?

FWIW, the conventional wisdom is that the independent agencies really are independent, and the president's control over them is exactly what is stipulated in the legislation that created them. If the statute of the Dept of XYZ and says the president can fire its governing board but only on weekends, then he has to wait til Saturday, period end of story. The idea that the president can interfere with the independent agencies because they're part of the executive branch was, AFAICT, invented out of whole cloth in the last couple of years, and has no constitutional support at all. So I'm curious to hear more about what this new theory is and how far it extends. In particular, if the president can decide to cancel NIH grants because the NIH is under the executive branch, what keeps him from raising and lowering interest rates?

edit to add: to be clear, the president does have a great deal of power over most of the independent agencies; in most cases he hires and fires their leaders. But he has that power because Congress specifically granted it, not because the executive branch is his personal fiefdom. If he wants to, say, get a pharmaceutical drug approved, he has to direct HHS to direct the FDA to do that in the usual way, not just decree it. This has little to do with thwarting his power and lots to do with effective and efficient governance.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#854

Post by verzali »

brylie wrote: post #497
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

Americans voted for this and I find it very hard to believe they didn't know what they were voting for. So that's on them.

Personally, I am working on replacing any American made products or services I use myself or through my job. Both as an act of protest and in preparation for the upcoming economic war they plan to wage.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#855

Post by AlexandrB »

hall0ween wrote: post #382
stainablesteel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also highly discriminatory and ideological. Decades of discrimination will lead people to want to come back and tear it down, you reap what you sow.

Could you explain more about the "highly discriminatory and ideological" behavior you've seen? Is it across the board, in the sciences? For example, is a neurosurgery lab at UC Davis working on glioma research either discriminatory and ideologically driven?

Here's a good account of some of it: https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#856

Post by intended »

usefulcat wrote: post #797
intended wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

> The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party. I generally agree, but I also think this was a natural and probably unavoidable result of having many different sources of “news”. Prior to the internet, pretty much all news in the US came from ~5 TV networks and 1 or 2 newspapers (per city). It wasn’t practical for any of those sources to align exclusively with either political party because t…

Well, if you think so, then dont get me wrong about this - do something about it! Read up, diagnose, deconstruct, break this theory.

Unless you know someone else is going to be doing this, or you know this doesnt interest you - then see how far this makes sense to you.

I did my soul searching the day Trump won. I had a 0% chance for that occurence, and my prediction was wrong.

I relooked at everything I believed, because I had made a high confidence prediction on how the world worked, and I had made the wrong call. If this was a massive stock play, I would have been broke.

My revised position made me stop asking why Harris lost, but instead focused on how Trump ran in 2016 in the first place.

I felt it forced me to take my thinking seriously, and my assumptions seriously. Perhaps it matters and will help you too.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#857

Post by dang »

77pt77 wrote: post #351
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of other benefits to the USA attracting high skill talent than just salary: * English language school system so your kids (if you have them) will speak a world language. * Racially and culturally diverse cultures, cuisines, and communities. * Exposure to goods from most of the world, even if marked up. * Availability of international franchises headquartered in other countries in major metros. * A stron…

[flagged]

If you keep posting swipes and flamebait, as in your first sentence here or "shut up forever" at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949095, we're going to have to ban you. We've had to ask you this more than once.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#858

Post by intended »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #792
intended wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

> such a market place Seems there is a market place for truth . Truth has become ware and has price (which is not same as cost). All else follows..

Correct.

One of my other conclusions is that, with gen AI, the old assumptions of truth are gone.

Instead we're at the dawn of something like the fiat money revolution, in analogy terms. Like the value of a idea isnt about how its based on fact, but on the relation between the person sharing it, and the person paying attention to it.

Im hoping someone makes a blog post about this.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#859

Post by dang »

relaxing wrote: post #277
Gabriel54 wrote: post #141

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

You're welcome, of course, to make your substantive points thoughtfully.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#860

Post by dang »

nonethewiser wrote: post #765
Gabriel54 wrote: post #141

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

[flagged]

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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