embedding-shape
> When the shutdown ended in mid-November, Reynolds's team
had just two weeks to get on budget. It failed. The plan
the group submitted would cost too much and take too long.
"Our last hope was that NASA headquarters would understand
what had gone on and give us some leeway," Reynolds says.
NASA did not. After nearly 10 years of work, AXIS was
dead.If the scientists haven't left science behind after
an experience like this, probably nothing will. What an
absolute kick in the nuts to have a decade of your life
erased because someone did a keyword search for science
projects to stop, in the name of saving money, while at
the same time wasting even more money on other things.I
think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the
humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with
a more positive perspective than I'm able to here.
|
> gignico
We all should feel sad and angry. That said, this was
never about saving money. This is about keeping
scientists under tight control by the government, in
order to suppress research on climate change and other
controversial topics. If the government can cut your
grant at any time without notice or appeal you will
think twice before publishing results that go against
their ideology, or even before publishing a criticism
on Twitter. This is true especially if you are not
tenured, which accounts for the majority of the
academic world.
|
> > IsTom
I just want to vent: climate change is not a
controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic
for people making a lot of money.
|
> > > Eddy_Viscosity2
The controversy is over whether we should
learn more about it and take appropriate
actions, or ignore it. This fundamental
disagreement makes it a controversial
topic.Reminds me of the when all the catholic
priests were molesting kids and being moved
around instead of outed and prosecuted. This
was also a controversial topic too for the
same reasons. Some people wanted to take
action, while other (more powerful) people
wanted to ignore it.
|
> > > > defrost
In the US, sure.In Australia we
established a Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual
Abuse, looked at all the schools and
institutions regardless of creed (and, it
turned out, the Christian Brothers were
the clear worst of the worst - although
few came away unscathed) and then put a
senior Vatican Cardinal on trial.TBH it's
been a lot harder to get the worst carbon
offenders under close scrutiny in a very
public eye.
|
> > > > > jordanb
Check out the timing. The sex abuse
scandal broke in the US in the late
90s/early 2000s and the fight went on
here for many years before it spread
to the rest of the church.The church
in Rome was blowing it off as an
American problem for many years.That
Australian commission was established
in 2012. The battle had already been
going on for well over a decade in the
US.If you want to see how things were
going early on you can look at things
like Sinéad O'Connor stuff from
1992:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin
%C3%A9ad_O'Connor_on_Saturd...
|
> > > > > > defrost
The Australian Commission wasn't
the first effort in a known
problem ongoing since first
landing, it was the peak response
in Australia after many decades of
battle ... has there been a
national effort of a similar scope
in the US ?
|
> > > > > SiempreViernes
As a leading exporter of coal
Australia isn't really a good example
of a serious climate actor.
|
> > > > > > defrost
Australia's a good example of a
country that sells out its
resources for a pittance NSR in
exchange.We can talk about Indian
coal companies (Thermal), global
steel demand (Metallurgical), US
natural gas extractors, etc.Still,
at least we have the vast areas
untouched by modern man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh
9IkUUgaww
|
> > > > brookst
It's true. In the US reality itself has
become controversial. Maybe the oligarchs'
lies are just as valid as objective
reality? Who can say!
|
> > > > kakacik
I see no controversy there, yes we should
take some very strong action since we
literally crap where we live and we only
have 1 self-contained room for it all, the
debate (not controversy) should be about
which steps are most efficient, while not
ruining the economy albeit some acceptable
setback is probably unavoidable.So no to
dumb fuckery EU did with biofuels (for
which vast rainforests in ie Borneo had to
be cut down forever), no destruction of
local automotive industry while rest of
the world couldn't care less. And Yes to
many other, saner activities, of which
some are done, in some places.
|
> > > gignico
Indeed! Not scientifically controversial at
all, but politically controversial,
unfortunately.
|
> > > > foxglacier
Yes, the controversy is political because
it's about controlling people. There's
never a right answer to political problems
because they're at the edge of deciding
what the objectives should even be and how
the good and bad outcomes should be
distributed among people. Didn't you ever
look at history and think "those silly
people 100s or 1000s of years ago made a
mistake and ruined everything"? Those
people were no different from you - they
believed their political beliefs were the
right ones. There will be beliefs you hold
which future historians will look at as
mistakes too.
|
> > > > mothballed
So scientists are getting a reality check.
Even scientists have customers, in their
case the government. In the private sector
a customer can change their mind, even
often for a retarded reason, and suddenly
decide to stop employing your services.
Turns out that happens in government to.
We're all employed at the convenience and
service of our customers, if they change
their mind, ultimately that's their
decision that can be made at any moment at
which point the most practical next move
(assuming the customer is unwilling to
change their mind) is to either find
another customer or offer a different
service.Probably a good opportunity for
them to stop and reflect that they're not
from a special caste or class, and gravity
/ global warming / all the rest effect
them and the plebs all the same and that
includes their exposure to the labor
market. Their pleas that it is somehow
special when it happens to them falls on
deaf ears considering the government
funded or employed scientists who have any
expertise or position to comment on
economics (like Milton Friedman) would
preach with their loudest voice from the
ivory tower that the plebs duke it out in
Darwinistic free-market competition.
|
> > > > > Windchaser
I think this misses the mark. The
outrage or sadness is not primarily
over "I'm going to lose my job", but
the harsh reality that much of your
country is not that interested in
scientific reality and realizing that
your country actually is solidly on
the decline.If I had to choose, I'd
rather I lost my job for some reason,
but my country is passionate about
science and curiosity and
understanding, compared to living in a
country where I kept my job but the
culture was inimical to science.
|
> > > adornKey
It is best to say that it is a religious
topic. Everybody has strong opinions about it,
but nobody has ever bothered to look into any
details of atmosphere physics.Everybody thinks
he knows everything about the subject, but
nobody ever checked anything. If people go
into the details of some absorption spectrum
they risk to get cancelled.It's religion - and
a strong one. With dogmas, taboos and holy
authorities.
|
> > > > phs318u
> nobody has ever bothered to look into
any details of atmosphere physics.I'm
sorry but this is demonstrably wrong as
the simplest search of reputable
scientific journals would show.
|
> > > > pastel8739
You're clearly referring to something
specific, what is it?
|
> > > > > adornKey
This will go too far, but if you want
to understand things, maybe HITRAN
Database is interesting for you.
There've been detailed calculations
what is going on with absorption. How
the absorption spectrums of relevant
gases look like is a start. The next
question is to check how much
potential a gas has (how much energy
is available in that spectrum?).
HITRAN is an extensive database for
the relevant lines. The results are
interesting and a bit surprising...But
all this has been explained and
cancelled again and again... It's no
good topic in any religious
environment where nobody has bothered
to get basic knowledge about the
physics before.
|
> > > > > > lakhim
make the argument explicitly.
Here, I'll do it for you: doubling
co2 levels should only lead to a
1c increase in temperature (~3w/m2
extra forcing).That ignores all
the other things that happen
besides co2 forcing alone.
|
> > > > > mothballed
One example is that whenever patents
expire on some refrigerants somehow
magically at that same exact moment
Dupont or other chemical IP behemoth
magically find a new one safe for the
ozone, the science magically all
aligns at that moment, and congress
finds the time to change the law
before one iota of generic industry
can squeeze out.I think the generic
idea of the science and global warming
is real but there is a whole industry
around gaming the conclusions and
gamifying what concern pops up when to
magically align with whatever the guy
with the most influence and
self-dealing is hawking at that time.
|
> > > > lakhim
dude make an argument or dont, this kind
of half assed "I know something but the
man won't let me talk about it" is
annoying and useless.
|
> > > > tovej
It's only a religious topic to climate
change denialists.
|
> > > > > t0bia_s
By your rethoric, do you consider
yourself as climate alarmist?Maybe try
to be honest to yourslef first and
then you'll understand, why it is
really just about opinions that vary.
No need to labeling opposition.
|
> > > > > > tovej
So you're labelling me a climate
alarmist before I have made a
single statements about the
climate crisis?I have also not
used any rhetoric that wasn't
first introduced by the parent, so
you also have no evidence of my
rhetoric.Do you see how that is a
dogmatic (some might call it
religious) response?To the point:
the evidence is overwhelming, and
there is nothing alarmist about
reacting rationally to it. Anyone
denying human-caused climate
change is also doing so in the
face of this overwhelming
evidence, so the label is rather
accurate. I would happily label
climate deniers with any
negatively charged label you can
think of: simpletons,
propagandists, accelerationists,
fundamentalists, reactionaries,
fascists, useful idiots. Depends a
little on what their role is which
label sits best, but they all
apply.
|
> > > 999900000999
In theory it can also be beneficial to
historical cold countries like Russia and
Canada.It's entirely possible Russia will find
itself with a pacific warm water port.Perhaps
tons of tundra frost will become fertile farm
land.Of course this is at the costs of
billions of climate refugees having to migrate
as well as a bunch of other side effects
|
> > > scrollop
And these same people likely fund "reports"
and "news" with misinformation to make it
confusing for the average person.
|
> > KolibriFly
Even if you leave intent aside, the effect is the
same: it teaches researchers that funding is
conditional on staying within an invisible and
shifting political boundary
|
> oersted
Oh scientists are leaving science in droves,
certainly. Often becoming sales-people for deep-tech
companies, which is rather sad.This is the most recent
shock, and probably the biggest one, but academia has
been becoming toxically metrics-driven, authoritative
and political for a long while, weirdly more than in
industry.It has nothing to do with scientists of
course, they are the last ones that would want this.
It's a never-ending squeeze from the top.And also the
fact that so many students were pushed to study pure
sciences, which is great in principle, but some of
these degrees only prepare you to stay in university
as an academic, and there's only so much budget for
that.
|
> > nextos
True, also very precarious and unstable. It is now
common not to get a long-term contract until your
40s.Given the massive pay gap with industry and
scarce funding, it's natural lots of innovation
has shifted to industrial labs.
|
> dmd
One of the researchers in my department had a study
canceled because something they did "engendered a
robust hemodynamic response".Whoops, keyword match.
|
> KolibriFly
And scientists are often exactly the kind of people
who will try to keep going anyway
|
> roysting
There is a far deeper problem, a systemic and
foundational one; and unfortunately the whole system
and all its components are all so vetted to the
current rotten and distorted system that no amount of
good intentions or personal dedication or will can
overcome it. Unfortunately for us all we are at the
precipice of a chasm and the forces of nature are upon
us.
|
> inigyou
Such is life in fascism. This is why we used to try to
avoid fascism. It sucks.Not only is it destructive,
it's randomly destructive, nothing is sacred, there's
no stability at all. Why would you invest or take out
a mortgage if dear leader could destroy your life for
no reason at any moment? It's like living in space
where a random piece of debris could puncture any
point on your hull at any moment and there's nothing
you can do about it.
|
> MemoryHoleHQ
Well, unfortunately, this is completely normal in
science and it happened, basically forever.Scientific
projects, especially the massive ones, go through
several cycles, and they get completely stopped or
even canceled during their life, and then later,
sometimes decades later, they do restart.This happened
with the LHC, ISS, James Webb telescope, the Hubble
telescope, ITER, etc, etc, etcNow, I know that in
certain circles is very common these days, to go
around pretending that the likes of many current
decisions never happened until now and that whoever is
governing the USA is doing something unheard of and
absolutely terrible that nobody else would even think
of. But it's not, this is something normal (I'm not
saying it's good, but it is quite normal in science).
|
> > qnpnpmqppnp
Quoting the article:> Applying for highly
competitive grants with limited funding is what
scientists have always had to do to carry out the
science-a flawed process with few alternatives.
But arbitrary cancellations and delayed
disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying
them on the basis of politics-prohibiting, for
instance, grants that include language referencing
diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)-was unheard
of until now.
|
Schlagbohrer
My friends from grad school who went on to become
professors tell me that not only did their grant funding
dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring
many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since
the students came from foreign countries and faced new
visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the
people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions
continue to not support their researchers, workers, and
communities. It's the death of research in the usa.
|
> stainablesteel
there's a lot of americans who want to get into those
graduate programs but are discriminated against in
favor of foreigners
|
> > btrettel
As a US citizen with a PhD, I didn't experience
any clear discrimination in favor of foreign
students during grad school.I think the main
reason so few US citizens get PhDs is because PhD
"student" (they're actually workers) positions pay
so poorly. Make PhD student positions have
non-poverty wages and you'll see a lot more
interest from US citizens.On the flip side, I
think foreign students experienced a lot of
abusive conditions that I could more easily say no
to because I didn't have a visa that required me
to work at the university. I've seen some of that
first hand. I don't mean to imply that there would
be no cost to me saying no, just that I wouldn't
have to leave the country if I said no.
|
> > chneu
Not really true but white Americans love to say
that. Americans are the biggest bullies and and
victims.
|
Rebuff5007
> whether there are black holes at a redshift of 10 or not
is not a partisan issue.Anything that depends on a basic
understanding of the scientific process, and resulting
scientific facts is absolutely a partisan issue right now.
|
> nkrisc
Science is partisan because "reality has a well-known
liberal bias", to quote Stephen Colbert.
|
> > johnp314
Science is partisan, at least the 'science' being
addressed in this article, because the funding for
this science comes from a finite source and there
are competing demands placed on this finite
source. As any competent scientist knows, taking
something from a finite source leaves less in the
source. There are differing ideas and beliefs,
some partisan (including those of the esteemed Mr.
Colbert), on how best to divide up this finite
source.
|
> > > Rebuff5007
Science being partisan right now has nothing
to do with funding. It has to do with the
disdain that the people currently in power
have to live in a shared reality with the rest
of the poulation.Theres a monumental leap from
saying "lets not invest in climate change
because thats not a good use of tax dollars"
to "lets not invest in climate change because
its a hoax."
|
> > > > innagadadavida
Any "investment" here directly translates
to more human activity that will make
climate change worse not better. It is
hypocritical to have these climate
conferences and fly there burning jet
fuel.
The need of the hour is to drastically
reduce the GDP - we need to rewind the
clock 50years. But this will never happen
because folks will lose jobs and
scientists will lose their funding.
|
> > > > > Draiken
Definitely. We should ignore it and
it'll go away by not going into these
damn climate conferences. There are so
many of them!
|
> > > giladvdn
Exactly. One side prefers being miserly on
science while spending lavishly on needless
wars.
|
> > > rzwitserloot
In normal times, what you say is obviously
true.But specifically at this moment in time
what you've written is total hogwash.
Currently the US is spending money as if it's,
specifically, an infinite resource.Hence, this
kaibosh on science funding can only be
explained because the powers that be want it
dead and gone.Do with that info what you will.
The various flavours of
conspiracy-theory-leaning ideas on wanting to
'scare the scientist community away from
commenting on political affairs' seem like the
most likely explanation to me despite how
petty and crazy that sounds.If you are a
scientist, get out.Either out of science, or
away from US-centric research systems.
|
> > > > inigyou
Currently, in the US, money is an infinite
resource. One need only look at the
world's latest one point five
trillionaire.Where is the money coming
from to support that valuation? And why is
it being spent to maintain that
valuation?Part of it is accounting tricks
(sell 5% of a company for $20, and you're
worth $400 with only $20 changing hands)
but there's also genuinely a massive
unexplained amount of money in existence
in the US financial system, that should
have caused massive inflation by now but
somehow hasn't. Maybe it's only a matter
of time, or maybe due to class
segregation, it's stable like this and
will never come down the ladder to affect
grocery prices?
|
> > > > > fn-mote
> Currently, in the US, money is an
infinite resource. [...]Try harder to
engage in dialog. Basic economic
theory contradicts your claim. You
need a much stronger logical argument
to have any credibility.
|
> > > > > > inigyou
Um, "basic economic theory" would
include the processes that create
money and the limits on them,
which can be disabled, and what
happens if the limits are disabled
|
> > > > > > mothballed
the US can trivially and renewably
acquire infinite money (in USD).
It is an infinite resource.Wealth
on the other hand....
|
> > > hackyhacky
> there are competing demands placed on this
finite sourceThe US national debt has gone up
by 2 trillion under the current
administration. They are spending money they
don't have at a faster rate than any time in
history.Whatever else you can say about the
cuts to science, you can't say they're due to
"competing demands." They're not cutting in
order to fund better research, they're cutting
(in the most counterproductive way) to send a
message to scientists that politically
inconvenient research is not welcome.
|
> > > > ModernMech
Trump's 17 months in office saw $17T
increase in debt, 30% of the entire US
debt, representing about 220 years of what
had accumulated prior to ever electing
him.
|
> > irchans
Certainly most universities now have a very strong
liberal bias. I think most science departments
were left leaning in the 1950s, but it is stronger
now. (I think colleges and universities have
always been more progressive than the general
populous.) The administrations of universities are
now very strongly Democrat leaning. I think that
Trump just sees a lot of Democrat run institutions
and thinks, "Why should the government support
these institutions run almost entirely by
Democrats."
|
> > > svachalek
Because until this administration, it has been
considered a vital principle of democracy that
the elected government supports all the
citizens and institutions of the nation, not
just the ones that it controls.
|
> > > godsinhisheaven
Exactly man exactly, most every professor in
the United States hates Donald Trump. 80, 90,
95%+ of professors at about say, 90% of all
universities hates Donald Trump and the
Republican party and will gladly tell you they
do. The thing is, this isn't a new thing, they
also hated the last R guy, and the R guy
before him, and so on and so forth. What did
they expect would happen? Trump to just
continue funding these people that hate him?
To be fair, that's what he usually does
though, so I can understand being blindsided
by this.
|
> > > > Draiken
> What did they expect would happen? Trump
to just continue funding these people that
hate him?So you believe it's expected that
a president will de-fund everything that
supports their opposing party? I'm sure
that's a totally great idea that won't
cause any issues whatsoever.American
politics are so absurd.
|
> > > > > godsinhisheaven
Honestly, yes. I would expect that, or
at least whichever party controls
Congress to defund efforts that would
seek to hurt them. The real abberation
is that university funding has gone
unscathed for so long. It's said too
much and honestly I hate it, but
consider the hypothetical: what if 80%
of professors expounded right wing
ideologies for about, 60 years? Would
you not expect some kind of backlash?
|
> > > acdha
This is has been significantly overstated my
entire life - people making this claim always
point to the women's studies faculty and don't
mention how many engineering, Econ, law, etc.
faculty are more conservative - but it more
deeply misses the cause, as well. As the
Republican Party purged internal dissent, that
pushed people out who might have otherwise
been on board for things like their fiscal or
foreign policy positions but weren't willing
to say gay people were less than fully human
or rejected the war on science. That last one
is huge for universities because for most of
the current century being a Republican has
required rejecting the scientific consensus on
climate change, the most pressing issue of our
time, as well as other topics like public
health or the separation of church and state.
Criticizing universities for not having more
people who reject their foundational
principles is badly missing the point.I used
to know a Republican lobbyist who worked on
environmental issues. He used to represent the
coalition of fishers, hunters, hikers,
bird-watchers, etc. who valued healthy
forests, water, etc. but that line of work
disappeared when they put out the fatwa
against giving Obama any legislative wins even
on issues which have broad public support and
it never really came back because the party
leadership decide that they represented
industry first and only. Those people didn't
suddenly become liberals, the party moved away
from them.
|
> > cubefox
Both sides have biases against parts of
science:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/
b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...https://youtube.com/watch?v=r
BNtOCCSSRc
|
> > > IsTom
I don't think I've ever met a leftist denying
evolution.
|
> > > > ffsm8
Me neither. Lots of them deny that certain
differences between humanity exist
however, and that's just biology.Eg.
Fe-/male and racial differences. They
exist, yet they cannot be admitted to and
any reference to them will have the
political left call you a nazi, racist,
sexist and pedo to boot, because the other
terms are already less impactful from
overuse
|
> > > > > brookst
It's one of those topics where there's
a kernel of truth, but most people who
insist women or Black people are
scientifically different are not doing
so out of any interest in science. So
the small percentage of people who
just want to make a valid point get
lumped in with the much larger group,
and unfairly tarred.Perhaps because,
to many people, it seems wrong to set
policy based on marginal differences
in the aggregate when the policy will
affect individuals, and also because
people doubt the motives of those who
are highly invested in proving a
scientific basis for negative
stereotypes.
|
> > > > > > samlinnfer
I wonder who makes assumptions
that these differences are
marginal and refuse or deny any
studies that conclude otherwise.
The left version of climate change
if you will.
|
> > > > > IsTom
> any reference to them will have the
political left call you a nazi,
racist, sexist and pedo to bootI think
this boils down to the fact it's
typically just a thin veil for
motivated reasoning.
|
> > > > > > foxglacier
What's the veiled motivation of a
white person who says that Asians
are intellectually superior to
whites?Leftists see racism and
sexism everywhere - their ideology
focusses on that and they pick up
on any excuse they can to label
people as that. It's actually a
horrible way to treat their fellow
humans.
|
> > > > > > j_w
Because the same reasoning behind
that statements implies that
certain races are innately
inferior to others. You chose to
write "Asians" and "whites" here -
why not make the same statement
with "whites" and "blacks?"Saying
"Asians" are intellectually
superior to "whites" is a thinly
veiled way to say "and whites are
superior to all other
non-Asian/white races."And the
claim that "Asians" are
intellectually superior to
"whites" isn't even correct
"because of race." I'm not aware
of any real study that attributed
racial identity to measure
intelligence. Cultural
differences? Socioeconomic
differences? Country of origin?
Sure. Race? Used as a proxy for
the former.
|
> > > > joenot443
Totally, but there's a lot more to science
than just evolution.
|
> > > > > IsTom
Sure, but that's one of examples OP
gave and it doesn't match my
experience. Doesn't leave a great
impression of the rest of the
argument.
|
> > > > > > cubefox
For the record, I provided a
counterargument and it got flagged
and downvoted.
|
changoplatanero
I would have supported reforming the way science is funded
in the US, but the way republicans did it is far worse
than if they had done nothing at all.
|
> analog31
What's a better way, that's not the Chinese way?What I
mean is more centralized oversight over research
priorities, metric-driven rewards, and preference for
political favorites?
|
KolibriFly
A research system can adapt to lower funding if the rules
are stable. What it can't adapt to is grants being frozen,
staff disappearing mid-project, forbidden vocabulary
changing
|
nickpeterson
You probably don't need the word science in the headline.
|
Herring
Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of
the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low
inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.Support
for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high
taxes etc) is usually low among
Americans.https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/
welfare-cuts...
|
fabian2k
This administration is both fundamentally anti-science and
wants to enforce political control over all government
institutions. Science was never a particularly stable work
environment, but the sheer insanity you have now makes it
a deeply unattractive place. You have no idea if your
grant might be denied, or even canceled at any point later
by some political commissar that doesn't understand
science.And it's not just particular topics they hate,
they hate the entire system and institutions. And they try
to either break them and force them to adopt their
political views, or they attack their funding or use any
other powers to dismantle them.
|
> bsenftner
It is far worse than "this administration", the
population in general are vastly undereducated, to the
degree they do not even realize how serious this
is.There has been a massive, decades long educational
failure in the United States, and probably the entire
western hemisphere of culture: no where are people
taught how to manage disagreement. due to that, we
have this moronic destruction taking place where
"idiots of authority" see no reason not to dismantle
anything that irritates them, and nobody has the
langage to explain nor the peer power to stop the
desolation of our entire supporting infrastructure.
All because idiots of power do not like being told and
proved they are wrong. So, power removed the education
that taught people how to debate without emotions, and
here we are.
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> alberto467
Science, or more specific to what we're talking about,
public research which happens mostly in universities,
has turned political long before this
administration.That's the simple reality.
Administrations impose their politics, but also
universities do the same, and they're not any more
noble for doing so.Research groups need to have more
independence and that can only happens through a very
meritocratic funding process, and also, at the risk of
sounding like a STEM lord, by being very cynical and
realizing that not all fields of research merit the
same amount of funding. Countries like China have
already realiezed this.
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> > orwin
> realizing that not all fields of research merit
the same amount of fundingUnless america does it
_very_ different than the rest of the western
world, this is already the case. STEM research
receive way more public funding and have way more
PhDs than other fields, in my country it's almost
two order of magnitude (this has to do with the
cost of instrumentation mostly, but not only).On
the "science have turned political", yes, but that
has always been the case. You can be political and
non-partisan. UNSCEAR has been political from its
creation, but is still non-partisan, anybody can
use its research to make partisan proposition on
nuclear. Same for WHO, it was _obvisouly_
political, advanced the interest of the first
world in poorer countries, but it stayed
non-partisan. This is probably the same for any
medical research: obviously what is researched is
political. Non-partisan though. Just because heart
attack research was done by, with and for men,
women also benefit from the research (although to
a way lower degree until like 2010).The only
counter-example i can think of is the GIEC group3.
I don't think it is partisan, but i can hear
arguments that say that it is, and debate. But it
has the lowest amount of funding of the 3 groups,
and Group 1 and 2 are not partisan at all.
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> > fabian2k
What happens right now is vastly different than
before. Of course there are different priorities
in funding for each administration, but those are
usually more gradual shifts and especially don't
cancel running grants arbitrarily.And if you think
this administration is prioritizing science with
actual applications, I have a bridge to sell to
you. The cuts they made are not sensible policy,
they are inherently destructive and wasteful. They
aborted studies that were still running, so a lot
of money was spent and we'll never get any results
from that because they were not finished.
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> > thrance
Just lies upon lies. Always the same weak rhetoric
of "it's both sides!". The truth is that science
didn't get more political, the right is just going
in a direction orthogonal to material
reality.Science will appear political to you if
you claim that climate change isn't real, that
vaccines and Tylenol give autism, that oil prices
will soon go down when the wells are destroyed,
that the economy is hotter than ever when
everything's going to shit, that the weather
channel is just anti-American and woke when they
predict rain for the UFC Freedom 250 held for the
emperor's birthday...
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testhest
Nearly 40 trillion rollers in debt.
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api
After the election my very first thought was that this is
the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted
to step down.Seems to be playing out.
|
> svachalek
The US situation is mitigated by both Russia and China
deciding to make massive, foolish maneuvers at the
same time as ours. However neither can match how
stupendously we are lighting our future on fire in
every possible dimension.
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> > kingnothing
What are the foolish maneuvers that China is
making?
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> Schlagbohrer
No other country punches itself in the face as hard or
as often as the usa does.
|
> > brookst
And if you tell us to stop, we'll punch ourselves
in the face even harder just to prove you can't
tell us what to do.
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> collinmcnulty
Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return
to great power competition.
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> > marcyb5st
I don't see that happening. The US debt will
hinder any big expense that could keep it in any
game long term.Take AI for instance. The US grid
is struggling to keep up with demand, while
Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually,
this could be solved by an increase in spending
lasting a few years which would make the debt tick
up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use
of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that
will pay dividends for the next 20ish years.Now?
Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt
and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it
because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive
everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil,
not debt. Which mades interest rates go up
considerably, and for a country with already ~130%
of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news.So, I
don't think there will be a great power race.
Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of
innovation. Russia is struggling already to
finance a war of conquest they started. China is
the only one that can run if it comes down to it
(unless of course the numbers coming out of China
are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough
to have an opinion).[1]
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-
grid-us-in...
|
> > > elgertam
> Take AI for instance. The US grid is
struggling to keep up with demand, while
Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually,
this could be solved by an increase in
spending lasting a few years which would make
the debt tick up, but that would've been an
absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some
shiny new infra that will pay dividends for
the next 20ish years.I object. The CCP is much
more deeply indebted than the US when taking
into account provincial and local governments
as well as state-owned enterprises.[0] And of
course the US debt is financed in its own
currency while Chinese foreign debt is
financed in dollars or other currencies.The
problem in the US is regulation. An
environmental impact study takes 54 months in
the US.[1] The CCP, which has no problem
poisoning its people or even launching rockets
over inhabited villages, doesn't delay itself
at all.[2] I'm glad we don't poison our people
or place dangerous industry in places that
could harm populated areas, or even perform
some prophylactic measures to protect nature,
but I'm confident that we could do this in
less then a year (less than six months?) and
make much faster progress. Even for something
like nuclear, the ten years (mostly caused by
red tape) are really onerous.> China is the
only one that can run if it comes down to it
(unless of course the numbers coming out of
China are mega bogus, but for that I don't
know enough to have an opinion).Yes, the
common opinion among China watchers is that
any number the CCP touches is "mega bogus."
They're actually in the midst of something of
a financial crisis at the moment because of
the high
debt.[0]https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/
debt-in-china/[1]https://www.rff.org/publicati
ons/reports/how-long-does-it-ta...[2]https://a
rstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dro
pping...
|
> > > kranke155
It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the
comment above isn't wrong per se - great power
competition is normal during the interregnum,
ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is
rising while another is declining. But
eventually one of them does rise and the world
conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.
|
> > > > bxk76
Well China cant seem to make a single
friend beyond North Korea and Russia.
Everyone is a bit wary of them.I mean when
the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a
large part of the world wasnt nervous
about it.
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> > > inigyou
The US can just hyperinflate to pay its debts.
|
> > > rimliu
Maybe AI is not a good example. It is
extremely efficient as money burning machine,
but for everything else...
|
> > > brnt
> Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack
of innovationSpoken like somebody who has no
idea what they are talking about.Apart from
the large share of fundamental science which
Europe has always been bigger in and better at
(I mean, there's a huge tunnel in Texas to
show that Americans at some point understood
this and tried to compete), Europe is funding
the military tools of the next generation in
Ukraine.Americans used to be excellent
executors, then China took that role. What's
left?
|
> > bsenftner
Nah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of
Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely
Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
|
> > > api
The irony is that the people who screamed the
most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed
for what you brilliantly call Moron Power.They
thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit,
and pushed forward as hard as they could on
the stick. Forward is up, right?
|
> > > > franktankbank
I'm sorry but Rome certainly didn't have
airplanes.
|
Havoc
Administration remains undefeated - in its ability to
score own goals
|
> simonh
They're not own goals, they're achieving what they set
out to do.
|
> neogodless
You have to remember that many of us are worried about
the effects on everyone but the people pulling the
levers are only worried about effects on themselves,
and (at least in the short term) they are absolutely
benefiting (e.g. enriching) themselves, regardless of
how much damage it does to everyone else.
|
roysting
The fact that people think the current state of chaos is a
consequence of recent developments clearly tells us more
about why it is in chaos than those types of people have
the capacity to hear or understand.It also tells us that
it's very unlikely going to be resolved on this side of
some catalytic event. If reason prevailed, we would not be
in this state of chaos.People who think this is a
consequence of merely the last 10 or 40 years, clearly
have no understand of cause and lagging effects.
|
newsclues
Currently there are lots of systems that are in
chaos.Rather than demand reversion back to mean, we should
be asking, "Before we reset this system back to the way it
was, was it working and are there improvements to be
made?"Because the current chaos can be viewed as an
opportunity to improve, and we should take it because may
of the systems in chaos today, were dysfunctional or in
need of modernization yesterday.
|
> svachalek
It's not an opportunity to improve until the source of
chaos is removed. You don't rebuild from a hurricane
while the winds are still 150 mph.
|
> > dmpk2k
You're right, and yet it's also true that existing
institutions have ossified. There is immense
inertia.
|
ur-whale
https://archive.ph/zn6FI
|
croes
> The hardest part, though, is how it happened. DOGE's
cuts sliced through American research grants like a
thresher, "but this was much murkier," Reynolds says. "We
were never canceled. We were just starved to death."Maybe
time to sue the richest man alive for helping destroy
American science.More efficient than any foreign actor
|
> athrowaway3z
There used to be a time when you came across accounts
from 100 years ago - and you'd just be flabbergasted
by the whimsical stupidity when laid out so
plainly.Now we lament that in 70 years somebody is
going to chuckle when they read such non-sequiturs as:
The great Texas protein crisis of the late '20s was
made several orders of magnitude worse - if not right
out caused - by the first trillionaire's purge of the
government. At the time justified as a cost saving
measure while the president would spend >35% more than
its income while saying things were going great and
had never been so great at anytime in history.
|
> tokai
But that man is a foreign actor.
|
> > vrganj
Whatever happened to stripping criminal immigrants
of their US citizenship and putting them in a
torture cell in El Salvador?Not a policy I'd
usually support, but I think a certain South
African has really done enough damage to justify
it.
|
> > > inigyou
Policy doesn't matter any more. Every case is
judged as an individual case. Elon hasn't had
his citizenship stripped because he's powerful
and the president likes him, that's it.
|
> > > croes
Musk can afford the Trump Gold Card
|
jdw64
Reading this article, I think Elon Musk is a genius. He's
truly smart. He's cutting the budget of his smartest
competitor, NASA, so that when national scientists and
engineers are thrown out onto the streets, they'll end up
at SpaceX.Not only that, but real innovations like cancer
treatments require decades of unprofitable 'basic science'
grunt work. Musk and his friends don't care about saving
humanity 30 years from now. He talks about going to Mars
with nonsense lies to fatten his own pockets. And by
filling the science advisory committee with VCs instead of
scientists, he has turned science in America from a
'pursuit of truth' into a 'Silicon Valley VC
portfolio.'Elon Musk is a genius. He will destroy the
growth engines that could produce his future competitors,
and he will reign forever.The smart thing about Elon Musk
and his friends is their ban on international cooperation
among scientists and their word censorship. They seem to
think that viruses like Ebola will enter the country by
getting a Trump card issued. Clearly, smart people like
them cannot understand ordinary people like us. To them,
it's only natural that everything comes through a visa, so
they probably think viruses come through visas too.
Elon Musk's lecturing about border etiquette for viruses
can be described as a kind of elite duty. Indeed,
injecting morality into something immoral is 'noblesse
oblige.
|
> raincole
First of all, NASA is the main client of SpaceX. They
pay SpaceX money. Sabotaging NASA is sabotaging
SpaceX. If NASA can (or want to) compete against
SpaceX directly it probably wouldn't have fund half
the R&D cost of Falcon 9.The rest of your comment is
just nice fiction.
|
> > jdw64
What DOGE has actually struck is not the
procurement budget for launch vehicles, but the
destruction of the internal engineering capability
to design them. The benefit of destroying that
capability, in turn, greatly favors SpaceX. SpaceX
doesn't want NASA to be a smart partner that
builds its own rockets; it wants NASA to be
nothing more than a giant wallet that just pays
money.This is a classic monopoly strategy that
cloud companies used to employ all the time:
destroying the customer's internal
capabilities[1][1]https://www.medianama.com/2024/0
9/223-google-files-antitrust...
|
> > jdw64
To be clear, DOGE's strategy is not actually for
America.The bigger issue is that NIH, NSF, NASA,
and public health agencies are no longer perceived
by the US right as neutral expert institutions.
They see these institutions as strongholds of left
wing elites. So this is less about fiscal policy
and more about cultural policy retribution.That's
why from the perspective of an outsider like me,
it looks like 'they are killing their own
country's science,' while someone like you might
see it as 'smashing the power institutions of the
opposing camp.' I think this is simply a
difference between an external and internal
perspective.Honestly, just looking at the ban on
international cooperation mentioned in the
article, it comes across as nothing more than a
desire for control.
|
> alberto467
I'm sorry to tell you this, but he hasn't been part of
this administration for a while. And also i'm not
quite sure you have his views on NASA funding (one of
his main customers) right, you're just making them
up.He is a genius though, great results on the market.
|
Weallneedclima
I looked at the greenland ice sheet website regularly and
its defunded since last
year:https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-todayThere is no reason
at all that the biggest military power, richest from GDP
and the biggest co2 producer country invests anything in
climate research /sI hope the USA goes down, fast...Shout
out to Elon Musk, the richest asshole on our planet who
wants to leave earth to go to a planet which is not
inhabitable and a planet which can't keep humans alive
without our blue marble...But hey when we all have
starlink in every remote corner of our planet, who cares
if our atmosphere is getting poisned by all these rocket
starts.Btw. Starlink has 10 Million customers and putting
only a single 'small' datacenter into space needs over 350
starship starts. go figure
|
panny
You guys can't see it can you? You're just in the filter
bubble. Let's take this quote from the article, shall
we...>"The most passionate and creative scientists are
very intuitive and very driven by emotion and curiosity,"
says Gregory Feist, a psychologist at San José State
University who studies scientists. "Until Trump, they'd
been able to keep political questions out of mind."See,
that's a filter bubble state of mind. "Driven by emotion"
evidently means calling anyone who disagrees with you a
"science denier." You were being politcal all along. Now
that the people you spent the last 30 years insulting are
in charge, they want blood for all the bad things you said
to them. Only now is it "Oh no! I don't like being
political!""Freedom of speech is not freedom from
consequences." You bit the hand that feeds you and you
stopped getting fed. Whether you like it or not, both
sides, the red and the blue, are your government. If you
attack either, you're attacking your government. That's
not a wise decision when your government pays your salary.
You can't just let someone like James Hansen run off at
the mouth for decades and not expect blowback.
|