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"Homotopical macrocosms for higher category theory" identified as woke DEI grant
- beeforpork 2y agoIt is either an ad hominem attack, and the attackers probably did not even care that the grant is about maths. Or a simplistic filter in Excel was used to determine 'woke', and there is 'homo' in the title of the project.
- sshine 2y ago> IN PARALLEL, THE PI HAS CONCRETE PLANS TO CONTINUE HER EXPOSITORY AND OUTREACH WORK WHICH INCLUDE A NEW BOOK (ELEMENTS OF INFINITY-CATEGORY THEORY, JOINT WITH VERITY), LECTURES DIRECTED AT THE GENERAL PUBLIC, SURVEY ARTICLES PREPARED FOR A VARIETY OF AUDIENCES, AND EFFORTS TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO ADVANCED MATHEMATICS, SUCH AS HER SERVICE ON THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION ADVISORY BOARD AT THE BANFF INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH STATION. Guilty by association. The stunt is to censor these words, since even irrelevant mention of them will trigger a dumb filter. It doesn't matter if the research is on the topic of DEI; if those words are mentioned, it's a slippery slope into wokedom, which is VERBOTEN.
- nicbou 2y agoThis is an invitation to saturate the field with those words.
- rbanffy 2y agoAnd to seek convoluted ways to describe actual work around words the trolls understand.
- eastbound 2y ago[flagged]
- StefanBatory 2y agoWhat is "wokism". edit: > rather than keep a science that concluded it was ok to perform scientific experimentation on children to a Nazi level. ah okay, don't bother to reply, no point. I missed that "point" when I asked.
- tomlockwood 2y agoThis is just "reds under the bed" bullshit again. Reconsider.
- cycomanic 2y ago> The problem is wokists try to penetrate everything. It’s basically mission impossible to remove them. Ah yes "they are everywhere" > Is it over-heavy-handed? Yes. e been a thing in the first place? No. So being inclusive and introducing new people who have not been exposed to e.g. advanced mathematics is a bad thing? > Personally, I’d prefer we rebuild 10 years of research from scratch, rather than keep a science that concluded it was ok to perform scientific experimentation on children to a Nazi level. What are you even talking about? I guess we are now in the phase where people just make sh*t up, but don't pretend you care about children, we have seen how you all defended Gaetz an actual pedophile.
- zb3 2y ago> So being inclusive and introducing new people who have not been exposed to e.g. advanced mathematics is a bad thing? Your definition of "being inclusive" is controversial and voters (including me) don't agree with that. Besides, "DEI advisory board" should not exist, we shouldn't fund that.
- bambax 2y agoThe fact that the title starts with "homo" probably doesn't help in the newly established Land of the Obtuse Bigots™.
- LudwigNagasena 2y agoWhy didn’t she put something about working at a soup kitchen into her grant proposal? I guess because working at a soup kitchen doesn’t in any way qualify her for a grant. But she did put information about “services” at a DEI board, probably because that information can help get her a grant. What would you think if most approved grants started with “I am a rich white man”? Surely that wouldn’t be the exact reason why the grant was given. But why would that even be in a grant proposal? What if many approved grants contained “I preside over a board of Aryan math”? Would that be totally fine and not slippery?
- pjc50 2y agoAh, the mathematical field of false equivalence classes.
- LudwigNagasena 2y agoThat’s called a comparison, an intuition pump, an invitation to entertain an opposite view. The parent comment said it was an “irrelevant mention”. I simply tried to articulate why it cannot be considered so. Do you actually agree that DEI mention is immaterial to the grant proposal? If so, it can be easily removed, but some people, like the other person who replied to me, seem to think it’s actually a good thing and it’s not immaterial and grants should be distributed based on such criteria. It’s the same old trite progression of “it doesn’t exist” -> “it doesn’t matter” -> “it’s actually a good thing”. Every. Single. Time.
- superb_dev 2y agoOf course this helps her proposal, but not because the mere mention of DEI gets it a rubber stamp. It’s part of her credentials to show that she’s taken an active role in expanding access to these advanced fields. It shows she’s part of the community and cares about the field she’s in. Working in a soup kitchen and being a rich white man as counter examples don’t work to prove your point because duh they aren’t related to math.
- LudwigNagasena 2y ago
- nxobject 2y agoThe "database" released by Ted Cruz is particularly egregious about it – you can toss a dart at any row, read the reward description, and bet on whether the topic is actually "DEI". My favorite one is Award #2303483: "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: USING A COMBINED BASIN ANALYSIS, ISOTOPIC, AND MODELING APPROACH TO RECONSTRUCT THE LGM THROUGH EARLY HOLOCENE HYDROCLIMATE FOR GLACIAL LAKE MOJAVE." My second favourite is Award #2227091 "CAREER: VERSATILE WEARABLE ROBOTS FOR REHABILITATION OF CHILDREN WITH GAIT DISABILITIES". Think of the children! https://www.commerce.senate.gov/index.cfm https://www.commerce.senate.gov/index.cfm? a=files.serve&File_id=94060590-F32F-4944-8810-300E6766B1D6
- timeon 2y agoThis reminds me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik These people have concept of meritocracy like "free speech absolutists" about free speech: just vibes.
- James_K 2y agoIt's really interesting to see America doing the same stuff as Weimar Germany. The institute for sexology was destroyed in 1933, so by my counting you've got about a year until you get your Führer.
- Drofus 2y ago[flagged]
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoWhat really bugs me as an onlooker is that I thought the constitution specified gun ownership precisely to prevent tyrannical governments (e.g. the English) and yet now there appears to be developing exactly that.
- James_K 2y agoNot really. The idea of the constitution is that the US government is elected and therefore can't be tyrannical. The purpose of the 2nd amendment is almost certainly to maintain a force for the defence of the country against invasion. It's entirely obsolete now that America has a standing army.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoWell, there's also the concept of owning guns to protect your liberty and there does seem to be a fair amount of liberty encroaching decisions going on (free speech seems to be taking a hammering).
- andrewstuart 2y agoSounds like an AI could kinda mangle that title into some sort of critical homo theory and bang your government funding is gone. Research doesn’t seem like something that will be valued much into the future.
- 9dev 2y agoTo me it sounds like Elon entered „homo“ into the list of forbidden keywords and went off to other tasks. Hanlon‘s Razor and all that.
- pjc50 2y agoAt the moment it's simply weird discriminatory cutting of grants by internet trolls, but it's quite likely that all Federal research funding will vanish at the next budget. Leaving that to China to catch up.
- vkou 2y agoThe firehose of money won't go away, but you can bet dollars to donuts that it will be redirected right towards a spoils system, where the administration's friends and supporters will be reaping the rewards of victory. And it won't even be coy about it.
- nxobject 2y agoSadly unsurprising, given the witch-hunt nature of recent cuts – Emily Riehl's been a big source of mentorship and inspiration for women in mathematics, and she's been pretty vocal about it. The point is to make a show of stamping out "DEI" for a headline, and to hope that no one looks too closely at the details.
- andrewstuart 2y agoThere’s an unbelievable opportunity for other countries to pick up world class U.S researchers. The next four years all countries need to do is offer the research funding and citizenship and university positions and entirely new industries and centers of knowledge could be created.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoWould it be possible for the U.S. to clamp down on emigration too? Maybe threaten high tariffs against countries that take in U.S. citizens.
- pjc50 2y agoThat would be truly exceptional, but: the US already is the only country that makes its citizens pay taxes when they're not resident at all. (Lots will make you pay taxes if you're partially resident) They could quite easily take out anti-dual-taxation agreements and try to make US overseas nationals pay two sets of tax. The existing regulations giving the US global jurisdiction over KYC/AML for Americans can also make it hard for Americans to get bank accounts overseas; that could easily be escalated.
- andrewstuart 2y agoWhy would they want to?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoDoes "they" mean the concerned citizens or the U.S. administration? The administration would likely want to prevent talent from escaping to a more enlightened country. Talented citizens may want to emigrate if they believe that they will be persecuted because of their skin colour or gender etc.
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoI can only dream of the EU snatching top talent from the US and kick starting a competetive European tech sector. Cloud computing, AI etc. Now would be a great time to take the initiative.
- bloopernova 2y ago"first they came for" has become "first they fired". The utter indifference is very distressing.
- basementcat 2y agoI think it is true that a subset of HN readers don't want to see stories about politics. This subset may intersect with another subset that is happy to see the things described in these stories happen.
- pjc50 2y agoWhat I'm going to call the "anti woke mind virus" has captured a lot of people: they're happy to burn down anything because they're annoyed about "woke", often based on a single misrepresented incident.
- basementcat 2y agoPart of it is many technically inclined people may have trust, respect and admiration for other technically inclined people, especially those who are famous and appear to be successful from an entrepreneurial perspective. When some of these famous people start expressing extreme political views and "awkward" hand gestures, it moves the Overton window to a point that these previously objectionable perspectives now appear to be reasonable. It wouldn't be a stretch for them to then express concern and react passionately when they see others criticize their "heroes".
- GJim 2y ago> technically inclined people may have trust, respect and admiration for other technically inclined people, especially those who are famous and appear to be successful from an entrepreneurial perspective. You appear to be writing those words entirely from an American (specifically a Silicon Valley) mindset, which is hardly surprising on this forum. I can assure you, there is no such unconditional love expressed for such people on this side of the pond. Indeed, the fawning of some Americans over the likes of Musk is rather baffling.
- DonHopkins 2y agoThey're going to outlaw Lisp because it's homoiconic, is associated with the greek letter lambda, and talks with a queer accent.
- dsign 2y agoIt could be argued that people who voted for Trump were in the "not college" spectrum[^1], and thus, they would approve of both the anti-woke and anti-science move. In fact, I would be as bold as saying that most who voted for Trump (a billionaire of dubious conduct, convicted of all sort of crimes) were not billionaires themselves, and thus displayed a certain kind of lack of reasoning and empathy for themselves. In any case, that majority won, and they get to strengthen themselves and to make the world more to their image. Expect interesting times ahead. [^1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2024/11/08/men-and-white-people-vote-differently-based-education https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elec...
- Vaslo 2y agoEven more incredible is the amount of educated people who voted for Kamala in your link. It makes me question what “education” is these days if they put their votes behind someone who is so poor at communicating that her handles had to control everything. Certainly less interesting times with Trump than the alternative, thank goodness.
- perching_aix 2y agoHomomorphic encryption up next.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> Homomorphic encryption up next. This might actually be a welcome side effect for those in power: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
- defrost 2y agoNo Homo... No Morphisms .., No One to Many, and absolutely No Injections.
- sureglymop 2y agoUnsurprising. I downloaded the linked excel file and this is the description of the first project link I clicked on: > "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: CISE-MSI: DP: CPS: CYBER RESILIENT 5G ENABLED VIRTUAL POWER SYSTEM FOR GROWING POWER DEMAND" I feel like they just go by keywords like covid, 5g, gender, women, climate change etc....
- pjc50 2y agoWait, they put 5G on the banned list? Are they going to scrap the fifth-gen fighter aircraft too?
- nxobject 2y agoIt's depressing that they didn't even bother to read the actual grant they were targeting.
- pintxo 2y agoVery generous of you to assume they have the mental ability to do that.
- somenameforme 2y agoIt's not based on titles. Here [1] is the proposal. It included "Furthermore, by employing and mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM, this project will aim at bridging the gap in institutions across the US. It will train the next generation of scholars from minority serving universities and marginalized communities in the fields of cybersecurity, utilization of renewable resources, and machine learning to address the pressing problems of this age." Previously DEI adherence weighed into which proposals were awarded funding. They no longer do. It's unclear exactly how this is working but suspect they're flagging grants where either the entire point was DEI, or where the project was unrelated to DEI but the DEI stuff pushed it into the acceptable range (and/or drove the grant amount higher than necessary for the underlying science), and cancelling them. [1] - https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2219701&HistoricalAwards=false https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2219701&His...
- moomin 2y agoThe way it’s being done is profoundly unserious, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is politicians interfering with what it’s acceptable to think and study.
- galfarragem 2y agoContrarian view: One "false-positive" example that a simplistic and sloppy "ctrl+F" caught is being highlighted to unfairly criticize a political proposal (in this particular case, dismissing DEI extremisms). This is old as the world.
- pjc50 2y agoOf course, the whole anti-DEI movement is based on finding one extreme example and then using it to delete entire government departments and fields of study.
- galfarragem 2y agoIn the end we just discord in one function: what to do in case of doubt? Cut or keep. Recent examples (Milei, Bukele) seem to favor the "cut" option.
- Vaslo 2y agoSo this is ok then? Sounds like you approve of the anti-DEI approach.
- trenchgun 2y agoWhat is an appropriate false positive rate for canceling already approved research funding based on political motivations on a mass scale?
- galfarragem 2y agoI'm sure this particular example will be gladly rolled-back. This "aggressive" stategy is working wonders in several quadrants. I recall Milei and Bukele.
- lostmsu 2y agoWhat do you think it is?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoHow could it be classified as "unfair criticism" if the political proposal has made a very specific mistake in this instance? Should we not criticise a mistake simply because they are to be considered infallible or should we point it out so that they can learn and correct it? (Assuming that they are acting in good faith)
- rich_sasha 2y ago[flagged]
- muddi900 2y agoIt is clear that people flagging these posts have a ulterior agenda. While the other posts have plausible deniability cover for being "political", this is as relevant to hacker news as anything.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoI believe that Dang does make an attempt to unflag some of these kinds of topics, but there's also the issue that the discussions can become highly politicised too which is not the stated purpose of HN.
- pera 2y agoYup I have emailed dang a few times regarding wrongly flagged submissions and he has always unflagged them.
- mandmandam 2y agoIndeed, higher category theory is a veritable minefield of political rabbit holes. And who could possibly trust HN denizens, those notoriously toxic and tech-ignorant people, to sensibly discuss such things as a tech oligarch delivering Nazi salutes at an inauguration [0, 1]. Or the same man (wealthiest known on Earth) being given physical access to the US treasury [2]. Or warnings from five former treasury secretaries in the NYT about the danger this poses to Democracy [3], the EFF bringing lawsuits over this (unflagged after many hours)[4], or the ability to even discuss all the false flags which we have been riddled with for the last month [5, 6]. This last month has been a real eye opener. Even Paul Graham and Garry Tan have been cheerleading for DOGE, and it's fucking disturbing that we're not allowed to discuss it on any active thread. 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42772995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42772995 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42773778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42773778 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42929121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42929121 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43009174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43009174 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020091 5 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42900560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42900560 6 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42781604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42781604
- internet_points 2y agohttps://mastodon.social/@knutson_brain@sfba.social/114000564696234364 https://mastodon.social/@knutson_brain@sfba.social/114000564... > NSF actually required investigators to highlight outreach to diverse audiences in their grant applications. ( #catch22 ) So it used to be that you had stretch to include whatever little bits of DEI-connection you had in your grant applications (what's the DEI-equivalent of greenwashing?), and now the tables have turned and they're being punished for it. So much waste.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> So it used to be that you had stretch to include whatever little bits of DEI-connection you had in your grant applications (what's the DEI-equivalent of greenwashing?), and now the tables have turned and they're being punished for it. Lesson learned: as a founding agency, you should never create incentives to introduce politics into research proposals. Instead, you should incentivize to keep politics out of them as much as possible. Otherwise, as you can see here, drama starts to kindle as soon as the prevailing political "wind direction" changes.
- muddi900 2y agoBut what is political now? Isn't climate science a political issue in the US.
- aleph_minus_one 2y agoSince I don't live in the USA, I don't have a feeling for the current political climate [pun intended] there, so take the following remark with a grain of salt. But if I go by my gut feeling, I'd say that there is a difference between wanting to understand by what and how much the climate is influenced by various factors (as unpolitical as possible in this academic discipline) vs having a political stance which policy measures to take based on these insights (e.g. - do nothing and tolerate the possible risks - lobby for strongly reducing CO2 emissions - lobby for doing geoengineering to stop the climate change ). My feeling is that at least some climate scientists want to be both researchers and "politicians" for their academic discipline.
- pera 2y agoI still don't understand the meaning of "woke", for example here is one of the grants that are in Ted Cruz database: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_2414922_4900/ https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_2414922_4900/ > STABLE HOMOTOPY THEORY IN ALGEBRA, TOPOLOGY, AND GEOMETRY -STABLE HOMOTOPY THEORY WAS DEVELOPED [...] > TO ADDRESS INEQUALITY AT THE K-12 LEVEL, THE PI WILL DEVELOP AND MANAGE A PROGRAM PAIRING UNDERGRADUATES FROM HIS HOME INSTITUTION WITH STUDENTS FROM LOCAL AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS FOR ONLINE TUTORING. THIS PROGRAM WOULD CIRCUMVENT CERTAIN BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION, SUCH AS LACK OF ACCESS TO TRANSPORTATION AND FACILITIES, WHICH ARE COMMON IN TRADITIONAL OUTREACH Is this really deemed as "neo-Marxist" "far-left" "nonsense" by Trumpists? Is this the same "wokeness" that Paul Graham was referring to in his latest essay?
- actionfromafar 2y agoThe answer is probably unfortunately, "it's whatever you want it to be, just be on my side". Not defining these things is a feature, not a bug.
- wwalexander 2y agoWhy has this post been flagged? Category theory is extremely relevant to programming and this post has plenty of points and comments. Any thoughts dang?
- jacknews 2y ago"She probably got in trouble for the following passage: .. HER SERVICE ON THE EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION ADVISORY BOARD.." Are you sure it wasn't just for having 'homo-' in the title, that would be too funny .. if it wasn't a travesty.
- wakawaka28 2y agoLet's see, "Homotypical" sounds gay and there's some mention of DEI in the grant. It seems that some AI just flagged this, and the block will eventually be reversed (because it's not actually about anything "woke"). I don't even think a layman would mistake this for a "woke" grant, and I expect it to potentially be reversed. On the other hand, what exactly is the application of this abstruse stuff? Is it worth the investment? Lots of research is actually useless.