betascience
1mo ago
Maybe I misunderstood your position. I thought you were saying the mismatch between the number of scientists requesting funding and the amount of funds available put the scientists in a position where they vulnerable to pressures to conform to the current zeitgeist and unable to be principled. And thus, the way to "save science" is to ensure that the funding is less competitive. That there are is more funding being chased by fewer projects. Thus they can be principled.
I am interpreting that to mean that science cannot be apolitical unless all (or the vast majority) of science is funded. If those are the terms, I would rather not fund it.
betascience
1mo ago
I think that work sounds really cool. I hope a private company wants to continue it and you get hired.
But I mean come on "you have to give me and my friends money or your country will fail" is obviously not a compelling argument. If it don't make dollars it don't make sense.
betascience
1mo ago
We're not going to do unlimited gay race science funding. I'm sorry. Just pour so much money into the program that everything is funded is not the a realistic vision of the future. Forget practically reasonable, it's not politically reasonable. This will always devolve into patron-client politics.
betascience
1mo ago
I don't want to throw them in a gulag. But the system that did it has to go away. You get that right? It's not punishment per se. I understand that they don't like it or it negatively affects them. But the institutions have to be destroyed. I don't want these guys in jail or anything. But they'll need to find someone who's not the American tax payer to fund their work. If they are as smart as they think they are, they will be wildly successful in business. If they're not, they will be wildly successful in food service.
In a perfect world I would a be an "I f*ing love science!" guy. I grew up watching Mr. Wizard and later Bill Nye, winning the science fair, and getting graduate degrees. I even get to do something that sometimes slightly resembles "research" in the corporate world doing data experiments at a big company. I do f'ing love science.
But I'm not convinced that government funded science can be anything but a patronage program with our present politics. What institutions put their neck on the line for Jay Bhattacharya during covid? What institutions pushed the government to back off from childhood covid vaccinations? What institutions stood strongly against strong-arming covid survivors into vaccinating.
This is a simple, but salient example. There is not a strong enough scientific apparatus to stand up against anti-scientific viewpoints from within the government. It's an entirely controlled program. I don't want to fund it anymore. Elon started Space X with $100M. I hope someone can peel off a few notes for you, but if they take it out of my pocket, we've got a problem.
betascience
1mo ago
It's just silly. Trump can fire any government employee. DOGE can advise Trump. Elon can advise Trump. The janitor can advise Trump (and from what I've heard, probably does!) when he empties the waste paper basket in the oval office. The firings come from department heads who the President instructed to collaborate with DOGE. The department heads can fire the people under them, as can Trump, and Trump can fire the department heads.
That there's any confusion around this leaves me a bit flabbergasted.
betascience
1mo ago
It should replace h1b and the cost should be closer to 1.5 or 2 million. Banks can finance them, with the citizenship as collateral. Don't make your payments? We'll sell your house and put you on the next flight to Hyderabad. Those who are so incredibly talented that the US can't live without them will have an easy time getting financing. They'll clear 300k a year no problem here and pay it off in no time.
betascience
1mo ago
There is something deeply unsettling to me about the way that subcontinentals talk and think about the US. First of all, I want to do my best to empathize with them. Millennials entering the job market post 2008, racked with student loan debt often had a very tough time getting a foot hold in their careers, and I was one of those. There was a feeling among many that a promise had been that if you make it to a state school and get a bachelor's degree that companies will roll out the red carpet for you and you'll be on a glidepath to the upper middle class. Many of us did those thing and then languished in food service or retail for a period while struggling to make ends meet and coping with crushing student debt. The promise didn't pay off. And we resented the promiser.
For Indians, America is the promise. And you can sense that in this post. If you're going to work hard in India, get grades, pass tests all in the hopes that some richer country will let you in, then America is the destination of choice. You'll have friends and relatives who make it. If you get left behind, you'll see your cousin Rajesh posting a photo of his McMansion in Cincinnati. He'll be holding his little son, an American citizen, which means he'll have a hell of a time being deported even if his H1B falls through. He'll be with his beautiful wife, because families in your home village were eager to throw their daughters at him. And, if after 15 years he becomes an American citizen, he will be able to sponsor other relatives for green card consideration -- a huge boon to the family. And, he'll be making more money than he could anywhere else in the world even though he's working at a discount compared to every other American citizen.
Why is he working at a discount? Because the ability to offer him legal residency in the US and all of the status and opportunity that comes with that ESPECIALLY to his friends and neighbors back home and especially in terms of his children being American citizens is HUGELY valuable. The government giving his employer the opportunity to do that are subsidizing his wages to compete against American citizens. And in doing so, they've created a situation where the whole world in general, but subcontinentals in particular, think they are getting cheated if they can't come here.
Obviously, I'm not in favor of this arrangement. It is grossly unfair to Americans. H1Bs, insofar as they're needed, should come at a cost to the company that wants to issue them. They should be paying more than they would pay any American in that role, and they should be paying a tax on top of that to the government. A tariff on foreign labor if you will. Otherwise we are stuck in this gross situation that breeds resentment.
betascience
10mo ago
I think the excessive fat storage is because your metabolism has been broken by industrialized food. If you were to repair it, your experience would be different.
betascience
10mo ago
I'm pro Israel as a matter of practicality. I don't believe there is some universal obligation of the world at large or of people of the present to somehow make right wrongs of the past. This is a thing that may be worked out between an individual injured party and and their injurer, but Palestinians have a lot of different opinions about what they are owed and the center of mass of those opinions is something like a complete right to return to familial properties and a single state. Israel of course never can grant that.
Palestinians are also completely incapable of governing themselves in a way that makes them an acceptable neighbor. You can argue that Hamas doesn't represent Palestine (despite being elected), and yet if your average 22-40 year old Palestinian wanted to enforce some order other than Hamas, they could band together and govern themselves and do so. They could organize, police, enforce order. Eventually keep things calm until Israeli hearts soften and a two-state solution is back on the table. This would all be achievable were it what they wanted. They do not want it or incapable of achieving.
And so you're left with a Israel having essentially ungoverned barbarians on their border that they have been prevented from dealing with due to intense international pressure for decades. This is not a stable state of affairs. It seems clear to me that the best thing for Israel to due is to scatter them to the wind, and the best thing for the world to do is to force Arab countries to take Palestinians in as refugees, each an accordance to what they can assimilate, and then quickly assimilate them. No ghettos. No extended families kept close together. And no weird second-class citizenships or eternal refugee status. Utter assimilation. End them as a people, as the old testament would command. Dragging this on has been good for no one.
betascience
1yr ago
There's a nigh infinite number of ways to approach this. I would recommend perhaps starting at the beginning of the fabulous Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (https://shwep.net/). Christianity did not evolve in a vacuum. It's a part of western thought with roots dating back to pre-Socratic philosophy. It may benefit you to have a more complete picture of how it came to be and the issues that early Christian thinkers like Origen and Augustine wrestled with. There are as many different Christianities as there are Christians, and there is almost certainly a Christian path that is true for you.
betascience
1yr ago
I simply believe peoples are allowed to make war. It's the last argument of kings, and when rulers decide to make it, it's their right by God. Palestinians have consented to rule by Hamas, both by in democratic elections and by failing to remove them. Israelis have consented to rule by Likud, both by democratically electing them and failing to remove them. I have no desire to force some sort optimization where people with different religions, values, cultures, languages, and histories from me have to adopt my values and solve problems as I would prefer that they solve them. They have the right to their own way of life and that includes going to war with their neighbors and the resulting devastation that war my cause in the short term and a hopeful peace in the long term when one side extracts the necessary concessions from the other. Forcing people who hate each other to live as peaceful neighbors is cruel, humiliating, and dehumanizing. They will commit escalating aggressions against each that slowly escalate the hate they hold for each other, which is corrosive to their souls. If they have to settle the matter through war, well that may be painful, but at least their grandchildren may grow up in a world where the matter is resolved.
betascience
1yr ago
Everyone dies. Protecting people from having their death pulled forward six months is only mildly socially valuable. If the opportunity costs put on the rest of society are even mildly onerous, it’s almost certainly a net loss.
betascience
1yr ago
I don’t fully understand what you’re proposing here. It doesn’t sound like a better situation for anyone involved. Is this actually two states occupying the same territory with international militaries policing it? How could this possibly be better than the present situation?
betascience
1yr ago
What do you think happens if that state suddenly exists? Is it a democracy? What do you think the Palestians elect to do to the Jews?
betascience
1yr ago
This strikes me as incredibly emotionally stunted. You do know that people occasionally ask their children to make grandbabies? I think the FIL can probably handle drinking a beer and talking about "how bout them Cowboys?" without being driven to distraction that his married daughter is having sex.
betascience
1yr ago
The idea of stealing and the system that disallows it are just social technologies and systems that are agreed upon prior. "Don't steal and that's the law" isn't different in principle from "young people have to support old people and that's the law." In fact, both are pretty straightforwardly Biblical.
Ownership relies on violence which means it's not coercive only by some means of special pleading, which you make pretty explicit by hinting that it's not coercive because you prefer to live in a world that includes it. That's fine for what it's worth, but recognize it more forthrightly. It is coercive, just a type that you specifically prefer.
betascience
1yr ago
If the government ever touches the money allocated for social security.
It's actually mandated by the program that they do. It purchases treasuries. What would you have them do with it?
betascience
1yr ago
Its a generational trap. The system places the burden of funding on kids that are not yet born, and couldn't have possibly voted to not have the system.
Is this not true of any store of value system? Ultimately the question of caring for the old is a question of how the resources of those that are young enough to work will be redistributed to those who are too old to work and what precisely counts as too old to work. If we allowed old people to save thing X in their productive years, protect thing X from being taken with force by those who are young enough and strong enough to do so, and thing X is then used a store of value to pay those who are young and strong for food, services, etc. then we are essentially back in the same place.
This isn't to argue for or against social security, but simply to point out that any system to care for the elderly is going to do so by using some element of coercive redistribution on the young because the scarce element is their productivity.
betascience
1yr ago
he shot at jump kick man, but did not hit him, and jump kick man's identity was not known at the time of the trial.
betascience
1yr ago
I think that all of Godot is ultimately interpreted whether you're using C# or Gscript. So if the thing that I think is correct, then yes. But I'm not certain what's going on under the hood.
betascience
1yr ago
Godot's Gscript is pretty well documented and easy to learn. You'll probably find it preferable as it's what most of the community uses. Also Godot is incredibly lightweight and older machine friendly, so you'll probably find it a very good fit.
betascience
1yr ago
I admire L and his actions, because they demonstrate that he's high agency.
I despise our country's response to his actions, because it means we're not.
betascience
1yr ago
I got a medical exam before 1st grade tee-ball. I don't think anyone was doing bloodwork, but they probably took temperature, bp, and maybe some fellas had to turn their head to the side and cough.
The political process will naturally take any government expenditure and turn it into a patronage program. How are you going to do politics unless you take from your enemies and give to your friends? Since I don't think this thing can remain apolitical, the options are to destroy it or to make it a place to park political allies. Leave it alone isn't a choice.
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