6 ms·

Which really tells you more about the state of mind of people asking that question. What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, o

Which really tells you more about the state of mind of people asking that question. What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, or the nature of the physical reality they live in (and yes, by "being curious" I mean "being willing to put a tax dollar amount to them")?

wins32767 4mo ago
That's foolish. There is certainly an amount of money on funding research that is unreasonable! Determining where that line should rest is an inherently political question. Determining who should get funding for that is also a political question. The latter question was able to be papered over for many years because the scientific community generally contained roughly equal members of both parties. Since that isn't true any longer now "science" is getting treated like interest group just like all the other groups within the country. It's definitely going to hurt the country in the long run, but acting like this wasn't going to happen eventually when the university system purged itself of moderates and conservatives is foolish and obscures the part of the problem that came from the universities themselves.
- khalic 4mo ago
  lol, are you implying science is dying because, you believe, less and less scientists are “conservative”. Do you have any notion of how ridiculous that sounds?
  - wins32767 4mo ago
    I'm not implying I'm stating that if you depending on the tax base of the entire country to pay your bills you need to ensure that you cultivate the support of both parties.
    - khalic 4mo ago
      This is a fictitious scenario invented to make the conservatives the victims… when they are the ones in power, killing the science. No amount of mental gymnastics trumps that fact
      - wins32767 4mo ago
        How about a reframe: When they are the ones in power, cutting funding to organizations that support their political opponents and goals they don't support. I'll be the first to say this is a bad thing AND that they're going about it stupidly. But I'm also saying that this is an inevitable consequence of the failure to manage your stakeholders over a period of decades.
        khalic 4mo ago
        Better framing indeed, I agree. Not sure this was a predictable outcome though, the sheer stupidity of defunding existing science projects based on politics is mind boggling. How do you hedge against capricious self sabotage like this?
        jibal 4mo ago
        Read this guy's other comments, like > Richard Muller have come in to disprove the mainstream consensus He's a dishonest con through and through.
    - preg_match 4mo ago
      But one of the parties is explicitly anti-science. Are you seeing the problem? The reason there’s no conservatives in science, or startlingly little conservatives in education as a whole, is because they’re incompatible ideologies. It’s like asking why there aren’t more polar bears in the rain forest.
    - Windchaser 4mo ago
      > you need to ensure that you cultivate the support of both parties I'm not sure that that's possible. If someone is motivated by religion or finance to believe something that's simply not true, and your scientific evidence contradicts them, there's a fundamental misalignment. They won't support you, because the real-world evidence contradicts their beliefs, and you're bringing more real-world evidence. On issues of climate change, evolution, age of the universe, etc., the hard science just straight up disagrees with conservatives. I don't see a way around that.
  - tbrownaw 4mo ago
    If you know only your own position, you know little of even that.
- LadyCailin 4mo ago
  I’m not convinced academia purged itself, at least not in any way that they should be ashamed of. Reality has a liberal bias, and my extremely conservative uncle at one point mentioned how he didn’t want his kids to go to college, because college turns kids atheist. Actually, learning things opens your mind, and so the standard conservative positions come off looking pretty stupid after critical examination, so conservativism (i.e. dogmatism) and learning are inherently at odds. Falsifying or omitting things just to suit the feelings of conservatives is wrong, even if the alternative is to “purge them” from academia by making their stupidity unwelcome.
  - wins32767 4mo ago
    Do you have any idea how smug this sounds to about half the people that need to pay for the scientific funding? I'm not a Republican, but even I'm turned off by this sort of attitude.
    - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
      Wouldn't want to research anything that might make someone question their beliefs. What you are saying doesn't sound like any kind of science I'm familiar with.
      - jibal 4mo ago
        The guy claims that Richard Muller disproved the mainstream consensus of climate science. I don't think his claim of not being a Republican is credible.
    - LadyCailin 4mo ago
      I stopped caring about hurting the feelings of conservatives when they started intentionally fucking over everyone just to make liberals mad. Catering to their stupidity is called appeasement, and just ask the Europeans how that works out.
      - titzer 4mo ago
- wins32767 4mo ago
  Like this from the article: > When Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD), first got to the NIH 12 years ago, she wanted to increase research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoods closer to toxic sites such as factories and highways, without sidewalks and amenities. “It’s a challenging field to quantify, but we’re getting to a place in science where we can start asking these questions,” Norton says. Now the topic is verboten in U.S. grants. “That whole line of research has been shut off and censored because some people find the words ‘structural racism’ offensive.” If you're a Republican, why should you want to fund people who dump on your view of the world with your taxes? Why do scientists feel free to talk this way about half the people who pay their salaries? It's just dumb to act politically and then get mad when people on the other side treat you as a political actor. My last gig was at a startup that worked on SDoH issues for people on Medicaid and you know what we did when the administration changed? We started emphasizing values that would resonate with the new funders and dropped the SDoH framing. Still helping the same people, doing the same work, just talking about it in their language. It makes me think a lot of people aren't in this to do good science or help people who need it, but want their team to win more than they want good outcomes.
  - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
    The better question is: Why is it that when republicans hear the word "racism" they immediately think people are talking about them? Are they afraid of what research on racism will show?
    - rurp 4mo ago
      No that's a more partisan one, and is exactly the sort of thing OP was arguing against. If you want broad based support for research funding you will necessarily need support from a lot of people you personally find distasteful. You can either try to appeal to people across the spectrum and keep bipartisan support, or label half the country racist and deal with the resulting backlash. As someone who hates the current administration and thinks it's doing untold harm to our future, I'm disappointed by how many people in the sciences chose option two.
littlekey 4mo ago
>What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence A person who struggles to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, for one.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
  What a sleight of hand to suggest that science funding gathered from taxes is impacting the ability for poorer Americans to afford their food. No wonder politicization of science funding is so successful on the right: it’s so rhetorically intoxicating.
  - jiggawatts 4mo ago
    Meanwhile a substantial fraction of science research goes into improving the efficiency of farming, which pushes down food prices. I just watched a video about how inept politicians caused a food crisis in Sri Lanka because they thought they knew better than scientists, chemists, and farmers: https://youtu.be/1S2wwbX_p_E https://youtu.be/1S2wwbX_p_E
  - smileysteve 4mo ago
    It's especially interesting because prior to the time of the election, the administration approved food funding to states that GOP run states rejected.
  - littlekey 4mo ago
    Yeah, that's the point I was making; not that those people shouldn't be interested in science funding, but that when you're in that position you're going to end up voting for whoever promises you lower taxes etc. (regardless of whether those promises end up being just hot air).
- xmprt 4mo ago
  I agree. But that's what functioning government is supposed to be for. You don't build centuries long institutions by focusing on day to day concerns. Sure putting food on the table is important, but also a lot of that food comes from decades of research on agriculture and how to breed genetically diverse yet resilient crops. Today's standards are yesterday's luxuries which were the day before's scientific breakthroughs. And the idea that science is what's breaking the bank when it's barely a rounding error in the US budget is laughable. It's hard to get exact numbers for all R&D funding vs how much we spent on the Iran war but my estimates put just the single Iran war at anywhere from 20-50% and the goals for the Iran war are even more abstract and arguably make things much worse for average Americans on a day to day basis.
nikanj 4mo ago
A person who’s been told all the people doing the science look down on them. Partially true, too, based on how I’ve heard people talk about ”dumb redneck trump voters”
- bigyabai 4mo ago
  That's a form of collective punishment that rewards their stigma. It would be like revoking tax breaks for farmers because you dislike rural American voters.
  - mcmoor 4mo ago
    I've actually heard suggestions to do that, at least.
  - lovich 4mo ago
    I’m pretty for revoking tax breaks and subsidies from farmers since they tend to always complain about welfare queens while they have their hand out. They can individually have them back if they can publicly state they are receiving support from the state. Don’t even need to say if it’s good or bad, just acknowledge the reality.
- NeutralCrane 4mo ago
  I spent nearly a decade disgusted with Trump but being contrarian by insisting that it was understandable why voters might support it, even if I felt they were wrong. At this point, there’s no defending it. Anyone who supports this incarnation of the Republican Party is as stupid and backwards as they’ve been castigated.
  - nikanj 4mo ago
    But they should still give you money to run your studies?
    - Windchaser 4mo ago
      Well, yes, they should be not-backwards. If you cut funding for helpful science on the basis of ignorant claims, you're acting backwards. If you act backwards, you may get called backwards. You should still change, become not-backwards, and fund science.
gcanyon 4mo ago
> What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence A person who is certain they already know the answer.
justin66 4mo ago
> What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, or the nature of the physical reality they live in (and yes, by "being curious" I mean "being willing to put a tax dollar amount to them")? Creationists.

wins32767 4mo ago

That's foolish. There is certainly an amount of money on funding research that is unreasonable! Determining where that line should rest is an inherently political question. Determining who should get funding for that is also a political question. The latter question was able to be papered over for many years because the scientific community generally contained roughly equal members of both parties. Since that isn't true any longer now "science" is getting treated like interest group just like all the other groups within the country. It's definitely going to hurt the country in the long run, but acting like this wasn't going to happen eventually when the university system purged itself of moderates and conservatives is foolish and obscures the part of the problem that came from the universities themselves.

khalic 4mo ago
lol, are you implying science is dying because, you believe, less and less scientists are “conservative”. Do you have any notion of how ridiculous that sounds?
- wins32767 4mo ago
  I'm not implying I'm stating that if you depending on the tax base of the entire country to pay your bills you need to ensure that you cultivate the support of both parties.
  - khalic 4mo ago
    This is a fictitious scenario invented to make the conservatives the victims… when they are the ones in power, killing the science. No amount of mental gymnastics trumps that fact
    - wins32767 4mo ago
      How about a reframe: When they are the ones in power, cutting funding to organizations that support their political opponents and goals they don't support. I'll be the first to say this is a bad thing AND that they're going about it stupidly. But I'm also saying that this is an inevitable consequence of the failure to manage your stakeholders over a period of decades.
      - khalic 4mo ago
        Better framing indeed, I agree. Not sure this was a predictable outcome though, the sheer stupidity of defunding existing science projects based on politics is mind boggling. How do you hedge against capricious self sabotage like this?
        jibal 4mo ago
        Read this guy's other comments, like > Richard Muller have come in to disprove the mainstream consensus He's a dishonest con through and through.
  - preg_match 4mo ago
    But one of the parties is explicitly anti-science. Are you seeing the problem? The reason there’s no conservatives in science, or startlingly little conservatives in education as a whole, is because they’re incompatible ideologies. It’s like asking why there aren’t more polar bears in the rain forest.
  - Windchaser 4mo ago
    > you need to ensure that you cultivate the support of both parties I'm not sure that that's possible. If someone is motivated by religion or finance to believe something that's simply not true, and your scientific evidence contradicts them, there's a fundamental misalignment. They won't support you, because the real-world evidence contradicts their beliefs, and you're bringing more real-world evidence. On issues of climate change, evolution, age of the universe, etc., the hard science just straight up disagrees with conservatives. I don't see a way around that.
- tbrownaw 4mo ago
  If you know only your own position, you know little of even that.
LadyCailin 4mo ago
I’m not convinced academia purged itself, at least not in any way that they should be ashamed of. Reality has a liberal bias, and my extremely conservative uncle at one point mentioned how he didn’t want his kids to go to college, because college turns kids atheist. Actually, learning things opens your mind, and so the standard conservative positions come off looking pretty stupid after critical examination, so conservativism (i.e. dogmatism) and learning are inherently at odds. Falsifying or omitting things just to suit the feelings of conservatives is wrong, even if the alternative is to “purge them” from academia by making their stupidity unwelcome.
- wins32767 4mo ago
  Do you have any idea how smug this sounds to about half the people that need to pay for the scientific funding? I'm not a Republican, but even I'm turned off by this sort of attitude.
  - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
    Wouldn't want to research anything that might make someone question their beliefs. What you are saying doesn't sound like any kind of science I'm familiar with.
    - jibal 4mo ago
      The guy claims that Richard Muller disproved the mainstream consensus of climate science. I don't think his claim of not being a Republican is credible.
  - LadyCailin 4mo ago
    I stopped caring about hurting the feelings of conservatives when they started intentionally fucking over everyone just to make liberals mad. Catering to their stupidity is called appeasement, and just ask the Europeans how that works out.
    - titzer 4mo ago
wins32767 4mo ago
Like this from the article: > When Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD), first got to the NIH 12 years ago, she wanted to increase research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoods closer to toxic sites such as factories and highways, without sidewalks and amenities. “It’s a challenging field to quantify, but we’re getting to a place in science where we can start asking these questions,” Norton says. Now the topic is verboten in U.S. grants. “That whole line of research has been shut off and censored because some people find the words ‘structural racism’ offensive.” If you're a Republican, why should you want to fund people who dump on your view of the world with your taxes? Why do scientists feel free to talk this way about half the people who pay their salaries? It's just dumb to act politically and then get mad when people on the other side treat you as a political actor. My last gig was at a startup that worked on SDoH issues for people on Medicaid and you know what we did when the administration changed? We started emphasizing values that would resonate with the new funders and dropped the SDoH framing. Still helping the same people, doing the same work, just talking about it in their language. It makes me think a lot of people aren't in this to do good science or help people who need it, but want their team to win more than they want good outcomes.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
  The better question is: Why is it that when republicans hear the word "racism" they immediately think people are talking about them? Are they afraid of what research on racism will show?
  - rurp 4mo ago
    No that's a more partisan one, and is exactly the sort of thing OP was arguing against. If you want broad based support for research funding you will necessarily need support from a lot of people you personally find distasteful. You can either try to appeal to people across the spectrum and keep bipartisan support, or label half the country racist and deal with the resulting backlash. As someone who hates the current administration and thinks it's doing untold harm to our future, I'm disappointed by how many people in the sciences chose option two.

littlekey 4mo ago

>What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence A person who struggles to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, for one.

datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
What a sleight of hand to suggest that science funding gathered from taxes is impacting the ability for poorer Americans to afford their food. No wonder politicization of science funding is so successful on the right: it’s so rhetorically intoxicating.
- jiggawatts 4mo ago
  Meanwhile a substantial fraction of science research goes into improving the efficiency of farming, which pushes down food prices. I just watched a video about how inept politicians caused a food crisis in Sri Lanka because they thought they knew better than scientists, chemists, and farmers: https://youtu.be/1S2wwbX_p_E https://youtu.be/1S2wwbX_p_E
- smileysteve 4mo ago
  It's especially interesting because prior to the time of the election, the administration approved food funding to states that GOP run states rejected.
- littlekey 4mo ago
  Yeah, that's the point I was making; not that those people shouldn't be interested in science funding, but that when you're in that position you're going to end up voting for whoever promises you lower taxes etc. (regardless of whether those promises end up being just hot air).
xmprt 4mo ago
I agree. But that's what functioning government is supposed to be for. You don't build centuries long institutions by focusing on day to day concerns. Sure putting food on the table is important, but also a lot of that food comes from decades of research on agriculture and how to breed genetically diverse yet resilient crops. Today's standards are yesterday's luxuries which were the day before's scientific breakthroughs. And the idea that science is what's breaking the bank when it's barely a rounding error in the US budget is laughable. It's hard to get exact numbers for all R&D funding vs how much we spent on the Iran war but my estimates put just the single Iran war at anywhere from 20-50% and the goals for the Iran war are even more abstract and arguably make things much worse for average Americans on a day to day basis.

nikanj 4mo ago

A person who’s been told all the people doing the science look down on them. Partially true, too, based on how I’ve heard people talk about ”dumb redneck trump voters”

bigyabai 4mo ago
That's a form of collective punishment that rewards their stigma. It would be like revoking tax breaks for farmers because you dislike rural American voters.
- mcmoor 4mo ago
  I've actually heard suggestions to do that, at least.
- lovich 4mo ago
  I’m pretty for revoking tax breaks and subsidies from farmers since they tend to always complain about welfare queens while they have their hand out. They can individually have them back if they can publicly state they are receiving support from the state. Don’t even need to say if it’s good or bad, just acknowledge the reality.
NeutralCrane 4mo ago
I spent nearly a decade disgusted with Trump but being contrarian by insisting that it was understandable why voters might support it, even if I felt they were wrong. At this point, there’s no defending it. Anyone who supports this incarnation of the Republican Party is as stupid and backwards as they’ve been castigated.
- nikanj 4mo ago
  But they should still give you money to run your studies?
  - Windchaser 4mo ago
    Well, yes, they should be not-backwards. If you cut funding for helpful science on the basis of ignorant claims, you're acting backwards. If you act backwards, you may get called backwards. You should still change, become not-backwards, and fund science.

gcanyon 4mo ago

> What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence A person who is certain they already know the answer.

justin66 4mo ago

> What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, or the nature of the physical reality they live in (and yes, by "being curious" I mean "being willing to put a tax dollar amount to them")? Creationists.