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What possibly could feel good about entering a new dark age?

bilbo0s 1y ago
To be fair, it likely will not be a dark age. The reality is that our companies will still be able to hire scientists from foreign universities. There's still Tsinghua. The Germans rolled deep at a Harvard get together I was at and nearly all of them were from TUM or Mannheim. And the brightest was actually out of Ludwig Maximillian. So humanity's capacity to push the boundaries of science forward is safe with or without us. Now, do we want to be a part of the leading edge of that? My answer would be an enthusiastic yes! But it's perfectly right for other people to feel differently.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > The reality is that our companies will still be able to hire scientists from foreign universities. If we let them in. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/05/new-visa-policies-put-america-first-not-china/ https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... "Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong." Or we might arrest them when they come. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/science/russian-scientist-harvard-smuggling-deportation-petrova.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/science/russian-scientist... "Ms. Petrova was detained on Feb. 16, when she returned from a vacation in France carrying samples of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory in Paris at the request of her supervisor at Harvard. She then spent more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, eventually drawing attention from scientists around the world. Her defenders have condemned the government’s pursuit of her as draconian, conveying a chilling message to noncitizen academics." As a result, they're already nopeing out. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01636-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01636-5 "Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere, as organizers respond to researchers’ growing fears over the country’s immigration crackdown."
  - bilbo0s 1y ago
    Mmmmm... ok. You got me there. But to be fair, that's a different problem. And even if we in the US want to institute policies rooted in various ideologies of superiority, (most of which border on imbecillia).. humanity in the rest of the world would still push forward the boundaries of science. That was my material point. But yeah, you make a point that really does kind of demolish my assertion that we would benefit from that global effort.

To be fair, it likely will not be a dark age. The reality is that our companies will still be able to hire scientists from foreign universities. There's still Tsinghua. The Germans rolled deep at a Harvard get together I was at and nearly all of them were from TUM or Mannheim. And the brightest was actually out of Ludwig Maximillian. So humanity's capacity to push the boundaries of science forward is safe with or without us. Now, do we want to be a part of the leading edge of that? My answer would be an enthusiastic yes! But it's perfectly right for other people to feel differently.

ceejayoz 1y ago
> The reality is that our companies will still be able to hire scientists from foreign universities. If we let them in. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/05/new-visa-policies-put-america-first-not-china/ https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... "Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong." Or we might arrest them when they come. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/science/russian-scientist-harvard-smuggling-deportation-petrova.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/science/russian-scientist... "Ms. Petrova was detained on Feb. 16, when she returned from a vacation in France carrying samples of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory in Paris at the request of her supervisor at Harvard. She then spent more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, eventually drawing attention from scientists around the world. Her defenders have condemned the government’s pursuit of her as draconian, conveying a chilling message to noncitizen academics." As a result, they're already nopeing out. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01636-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01636-5 "Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere, as organizers respond to researchers’ growing fears over the country’s immigration crackdown."
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  Mmmmm... ok. You got me there. But to be fair, that's a different problem. And even if we in the US want to institute policies rooted in various ideologies of superiority, (most of which border on imbecillia).. humanity in the rest of the world would still push forward the boundaries of science. That was my material point. But yeah, you make a point that really does kind of demolish my assertion that we would benefit from that global effort.