22 ms·
>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and mo
by beloch 8mo ago
>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired."
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Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoNot everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free. China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader. Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in China, but you will never be accepted as Chinese. The US was quite unique (together with Canada, Australia etc.) that it was able and willing to accept you as an American even with a funny accent, as long as you wanted to be one.
- dheera 8mo ago> Not everything is about money. It is when researchers can't make enough money to eat and live, which is an actual reality in the US right now. Researchers at top institutions often make less than Uber drivers. There are other countries where you can live on less and the government isn't dipping their hands into your pockets every 5 seconds.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoSome people will switch careers, but I do doubt that in an economy with very low unemployment amongst qualified people, any actual scientist will literally starve and become homeless.
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- dylan604 8mo ago> The US was quite unique Well, based on the current admin and supporters, only part of the US was unique
- inglor_cz 8mo agoThat is a trivial observation. A nation of such size can hardly be a hive mind with totally homogeneous politics.
- Bukhmanizer 8mo agoYou’re right best reserve such observations for small nations like China
- dylan604 8mo agoYeah. And? So? When the part of the country that was less unique took power, they immediately did what everyone else that was not unique did and became unwelcoming of foreigners. I guess to you other countries that the US is becoming more like would also not be of a hive mind by having people that are welcoming of foreigners. Where's your hive mind comment about that part of the original comment?
- dougfelt 8mo agoYet China is 3 times as big and you are quite comfortable treating it this way
- bluGill 8mo agoThat has always been true, and for everywhere. However very few countries are anywhere near as accepting for foreigners as the US as a whole despite the many who are not. Canada is just as accepting from what I can tell - I don't know enough about Australia to know. Most other countries are far worse - though many will not admit it just how bad their country is.
- denkmoon 8mo agoSadly Australia is very welcoming to foreigners until you get about 50km out of the major cities. Our xenophobe political party (One Nation) has had a significant rally in the last few years, to the point where by some measures it is the second largest party.
- mulmen 8mo ago> China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader. I mean we are literally putting people in concentration camps right now. Kinda hard to take the moral high ground at the moment. Scientists are fleeing the United States for their safety, just like they did from 1930s Germany.
- ethanwillis 8mo agoDon't get it twisted. While what is happening is not right, explain to me what happens when there is criticism of China from within China on their treatment of Uyghurs.
- mulmen 8mo agoThe existence of concentration camps in China does not disprove their existence in the United States.
- woodpanel 8mo ago[flagged]
- tombert 8mo agoI’m not sure who told you that the Nazis only killed German citizens, considering that they famously invaded Poland (a sovereign nation at the time) and started executing Jews there. I also don’t know who told you that they’re only putting illegal migrants in Alligator Alcatraz. It’s not hard to find examples of people who had legal visas being rounded up because of the Trump administration’s idiotic quota policy.
- paulddraper 8mo agoAnd you don't see a difference between detaining visitors versus invading other nations? They are quite literally opposites.
- cyanydeez 8mo agoAmerica is hostile to science and technology. I'm not sure how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better vaccines."
- eleventyseven 8mo ago> I'm not sure how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better vaccines." Because people understand that people don't get to choose their government or culture and that everyone deserves better healthcare. Every child who is at risk from the rise of anti-vax 100% deserves better vaccines and ought to bear 0% responsibility for what the adults do.
- ohyoutravel 8mo agoLots of folks vote against better healthcare. Perhaps they “deserve” better healthcare regardless as they’re human, but perhaps they deserve the outcomes they specifically voted for. Otherwise it feels a little paternalistic.
- eleventyseven 8mo ago[flagged]
- Sohcahtoa82 8mo agoWhat if I feel terrible for the children, but feel a smug delight over watching their parents mourn the loss that they could have easily prevented?
- eleventyseven 8mo agoThen you are a psychopath. I truly feel sorry for you.
- mikestorrent 8mo agoWell, perhaps it is time for large, ethnically-homogenous countries that are on the ascent to adopt diversity policies of the sort that the US was approaching before the "vibe shift"
- pitched 8mo agoCanada is largely still homogeneous but still welcoming to immigrants and very close to the US. Rather than China totally changing cultures, I think it’s more likely that US-based companies will have large satellite offices in middle powers.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- School-Cotton 8mo agoCanada is not ethnically or culturally homogeneous at all.
- pitched 8mo agoCanada is 70% white where the US is close to 50%. That 20% puts them far above the majority line though. Not at all homogeneous, just much more so than the US.
- School-Cotton 8mo ago"White" is not one ethnicity or culture -- a lot of that 70% are French-speaking Quebeckers who surely cannot be considered part of a homogeneous mass with Anglo-Canadians.
- pitched 8mo agoI’m upvoting you because you’re 110% right but don’t discount how diverse the US is too, without an obvious divider like that. The New Orleans Cajun are also French immigrants, for example.
- michaelteter 8mo agoAre you suggesting that anyone who lives and works here in the US can be accepted as “American”? Are you also implying that in the US anyone is free to speak negatively of “dear leader”? There are a multitude of current examples to the contrary.
- rahkiin 8mo agoThe comment used the past tense in every sentence
- misnome 8mo ago> used to be
- mystraline 8mo agoBorn here. And yeah, used to. Past tense. Not any more with der fuhrer.
- paulddraper 8mo ago> There are a multitude of current examples to the contrary. I see negative opinions of government officials constantly. It's basically all I see whenever I have the misfortune of turning on the TV.
- warkdarrior 8mo agoHave you tried OAN or Fox News?
- paulddraper 8mo agoMany many such negative opinions. The only difference between channels is which government official is criticized.
- michaelt 8mo ago> Are you suggesting that anyone who lives and works here in the US can be accepted as “American”? Whether you're born in Moscow and named Sergey Mikhailovich Brin, or born in Pretoria and named Elon Reeve Musk, or born in Hyderabad and named Satya Narayana Nadella, born in Frankfurt and named Peter Andreas Thiel - America has a place for you. Maybe even your own government department. In America a man can find acceptance regardless of the circumstances of his birth, and irrespective of race, creed and colour, so long as he has a billion dollars.
- Cyph0n 8mo agoJust to add one more point that makes the US attractive to global talent: citizenship. In particular: 1) citizenship at birth and 2) viable path to citizenship via green card. Of course, both of these are in the crosshairs for “revision”.
- direwolf20 8mo agoIt's much easier to get citizenship almost anywhere else in the world than to get it in the USA by green card.
- Cyph0n 8mo agoUh not really? As a comparison, it is almost impossible to naturalize if you decide to work in the two cited examples (China and KSA). Also, the green card process very much depends on your nationality.
- deaux 8mo agoName 5 wealthy countries (let's say top 30 HDI) where this holds outside of the EU.
- inglor_cz 8mo agoPlenty of developed countries limit the easy way to their citizenship to ius sanguinus, and if you aren't a descendant of a previous national, you have to pass stringent language and culture tests. I don't think you would find a Lithuanian or Finnish language test quite so easy.
- tencentshill 8mo agoWe are talking about exceptionally talented individuals, who do in fact have an express path to citizenship.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago> The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free. Yeah, it used to be the that the US only committed ethnic cleansing against people that were here first, not foreigners, and was so welcoming to foreigners that it would expend resources to have them shipped here as property.
- hunterpayne 8mo agoWe used to teach a nuanced, honest version of history too. Apparently that doesn't happen anymore.
- deaux 8mo ago> The US was quite unique (together with Canada, Australia etc.) that it was able and willing to accept you as an American even with a funny accent, as long as you wanted to be one. Very select parts of the US. Would've thought that the last 9 years taught you that for huge swathes of it, this was never true.
- eunos 8mo agoUS State Department already asked for social media accounts. Chinese visa applications dont.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ljsprague 8mo agoThey sound like very loyal people who I would love to have as my compatriots.
- Natfan 8mo agothey can't be your compatriots if you imprison them, nor if they've to death due to working without any funding, also know as "pay"
- Natfan 8mo agos/they've to death/they've starved to death/
- kettlecorn 8mo agoMany of the world's most intelligent and caring people are loyal to values over tribe.
- ljsprague 8mo agoValues don't reproduce; tribes do.
- ImPostingOnHN 8mo agotribes don't reproduce; people do.
- AnimalMuppet 8mo agoTribes reproduce as the people who make up the tribe reproduce. Values reproduce as the people who hold them reproduce, plus as others adopt those values, minus as those who hold those values drop them. But the US was supposed to be a country where values mattered more than tribe. "We hold these truths to be self evident", and all that, and if you accepted the values, you belonged. That was an imperfect ideal, but it was the ideal until rather recently. I'm not sure to what degree it still is.
- e40 8mo agoMeanwhile, China has "genius camps" for young people, to skim off the cream of the cream of the crop, so they can go on to do amazing things for their country. It blows my mind what we've done in the last year, to damage our ability to compete on the world stage.
- jazz9k 8mo ago[flagged]
- daveguy 8mo agoI mean, they're both authoritarian right now. But at least one of them doesn't think science is woke. So....
- juniperus 8mo agoif you actually think China would even entertain the idea of funding some of the scientific research conducted in the US over the past few decades, you have a fantasy view of what is going on outside the US. That political controversy wouldn't even arise because it's such a nonstarter that it could never even become a controversy.
- daveguy 8mo agoPast being the key point. Because, right now it's all Dumpty all the time, until we boot his weak tools and fools November. I'm confident we are stronger than that two bit corrupt fraud, and will get back to where science funding is a priority. Hopefully our state of affairs is much more temporary than what China is subjected to. But there's absolutely no question whether the dunce parade in the US is anti science.
- voxl 8mo agoDon't be an ass. Someone can be an ethically bad person and still do things that you can learn and benefit from. Moreover, saying China is doing good at research does not somehow mean you support their government.
- ei8ths 8mo agohave you seen our school systems, k12. Its terrible and in dire need of a revamp. No child left behind really screwed kids over that want to learn. We cant just let kids pass because of feelings. Made schools better, have alternative paths for kids that are not excelling like some of their peers and find school hard to sit through.
- jmcgough 8mo agoIt's really not about this - it's that for decades we've been able to draw top global talent to the US. We've cut research funding so heavy that we can't even support post docs who are American citizens now. My friends are going to Europe, Canada, Hong Kong.
- rayiner 8mo agoHow important can that be? America’s only real competitor technologically is China. And they’ve had essentially no immigration of “top talent.”
- dboreham 8mo agoChina has 3X more people, and America has a relatively terrible education system, so they have to import talented people who were educated elsewhere.
- rayiner 8mo agoAmerica has a very good education system against the backdrop of challenging sociological factors and mass low-skill immigration. In the PISA exam, white American kids outperform kids in Hong Kong and Korea, as well as western european kids of non-immigrant ancestry. The American education system has major and important challenges, such as how to educate the large share of kids whose parents are economic migrants from non-English speaking countries. But those challenges aren’t relevant to the question of whether the U.S. can produce sufficient highly educated people domestically. China, meanwhile, doesn’t even participate in PISA outside four wealthy provinces.
- crystal_revenge 8mo ago> Scientists go where science is funded. DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic pay quite well for research and have better "labs" than most places on Earth. I don't believe they're struggling to hire either. This article is using a relatively outdated definition, functionally speaking, of "research institute". Traditional research institutions, especially academia, have been declining for decades and current funding problems are just another one of many problems thrown into the mix. I remember well a world where most serious research happened in universities and was publicly funded. I personally think that was a better world, but that is not the world we live in today and I don't see us going back. Even China's most impressive research is not coming from publicly controlled research institutes or universities but from VCs and large corporations. To be fair, the time of open public science was a relatively brief in it's long history.
- renjimen 8mo agoFor every scientific discipline that is well represented across modern corporate labs there are a dozen that are not. Most "serious" research is not directly connected to making money.