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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   17006 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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What measurable outcomes or evidence of decreased institutional efficacy would you accept

You're already loading the question. Why should we assume that the institutions carrying out their functions is a good thing?

I’m not sure how else you’d phrase it.

If coffee says there’s No Evidence ™ of negative ramifications, he ought to have some measurable outcome in mind.

I like your VA example, except I don’t know how much of the VA is grant-funded. It’s a government agency, not a separate nonprofit, right?

I like your VA example, except I don’t know how much of the VA is grant-funded. It’s a government agency, not a separate nonprofit, right?

Yeah, I'll grant (heh) that this is a problem with Trump's sweeping approach, and it would be a lot easier to talk about costs and benefits if he tried something more targeted. But I was asked a question on what evidence to accept, and that's the type of thing I'd count as a negative. FWIW, someone else mentioned local clinics that are financed with grant money, I think that counts too.

"or" - what measurable outcomes of any kind would you accept as "negative ramifications," when the effects of the pause are analyzed?

You mentioned the VA in the other comment, if there's a measurable increase in waiting times, or some other decrease in service quality would do it. "Research", and other forms of paper pushing is at the lowest risk of me caring about it getting cut, unless it gets in the way of people doing productive work (like longer waiting times for construction permits, or something? I dunno).

"Research", and other forms of paper pushing is at the lowest risk of me caring about it getting cut, unless it gets in the way of people doing productive work (like longer waiting times for construction permits, or something? I dunno).

Here's 1,877 active and/or recruiting (hopefully...) clinical trials targeted at veterans' health problems. Do you consider this "paper pushing?" (Yes, many are the kinds of "community health" interventions that are easy to be cynical about, but there are also many potentially important RCTs and even basic science like "DNA Methylation Markers in Veterans Exposed to Open Burn Pits," just on the first page.)

Yeah. If we survived this long without them, I'm sure we can wait a bit more.

There's always room for more in the invisible graveyard!

Amazingly no one freaking out over this has decided to so much as lift a finger against the FDA and other invisible graveyard producers.

Not that this was an abnormally low quality political comment, but can you actually give examples of people who meet all criteria of:

  1. "freaking out over this"

  2. are in a position to reform the drug approval process

  3. "decided [not] to so much as lift a finger against the FDA"

If so, it would be an abnormally high quality political comment.

The White House said the pause would not impact Social Security or Medicare payments or "assistance provided directly to individuals." That means some food aid programs for the poor would not be affected, sources said.

Ok, so people (read: voters) will keep getting payments but the grants and funding to will be cut. It's not at all clear who any of this effects from that first article. As for medicine in poor countries...I'm sure China will be more than happy to fill that void.

I'm pretty sure Bush II did something similar during his second term. I was working at a non-profit. Some amount of funding stopped coming and we had to hustle for more state and charitable funding. I don't think it had any effect on the community, but maybe in the long run some services (like free dental, a school they ran) might have been stopped.

The Reuters piece was super vague, likely because the leak or memo or whatever was super vague. These things happen either out of malice against the rule-makers or to put people on notice. So the effect is a population of chicken-little's crying about the sky falling. Without more specifics it's almost impossible to set any parameters for what may or may not be a negative externality.

I think many here would agree that there's opposing standard of merit from the various NGO's and Universities and Whatever to compare against. We don't have anything aside from numbers going out and maybe the people employed. Grantees report all kinds of things that their program is definitely doing, but no one (I dunno maybe effective altruists) has done the work of presenting whatever the value-add is for society. Hence the, "Why should we assume their functions are good," statement.

So you'll get the people who never question the goodness of their programs screaming to the heavens, the people who doubt the goodness of these programs cheering in the streets and everyone else shrugging their shoulders and getting on with it.

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