Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America. It is good for the world. It helps eventually lift the poor. It helps business. Its something the government can and should do that is hard for private business to do. It helps human knowledge. I'm motivated to reverse this trend.
Unfortunately, "Griefing people we don't like" is the central defining principle behind everything the current administration does. It's the promise that got them elected. And they really don't like scientists and medical professionals. This is not going to be reversed until we get griefing out of politics.
> there wouldn’t be different ideological factions in the first place.
Maybe I’m just very jaded, but I don’t think this is true.
Our values are significantly more aligned than we generally believe, however as long as there is power to be gained by creating the illusion of a difference of values, there will be factions dedicated to ensuring that illusion is maintained.
The republican party is explicitly anti-science. One of the ripple effects of the anti-science agenda is an anti-education mentality among republican civilians. An educated populace is the enemy of the U.S. right wing.
Wife worked in a construction firm in South Texas. Firm owners were a half-hispanic family. It was a decent sized firm, millions of dollars turnover and recipients of millions more in PPP loans, special state contracts, and tax breaks due to being half Hispanic and "woman-owned". They also firmly supported T and believed in qanon stuff. They believed something to the effect of, scientists have sold their souls to Satan in exchange for technological progress.
It was not really shocking. What was shocking is that how similar vibes prevail within silicon valley, as it became clear days after him winning the election.
So scientists shouldn't be allowed to hold their own political opinions, or organizational leaders shouldn't be allowed to exercise some autonomy with regards to the culture they foster, or educated people shouldn't tend to favor the political tribe that focuses on constructive solutions, or what? What is your specific critique here?
Whatever it might be, it seems like we could have instituted a targeted reform for that specific problem rather than self-immolating our educational institutions and continuing to hand the reigns of world leadership to China.
It's a solution. No other solution has worked, or been proposed.
Remember Brendan Eich? He was excommunicated because of a personal political view, allegedly because "he lost trust of the community". So yeah, being right-wing is faux-pass in tech and academia, therefore the left has no argument against people being defunded / fired because of personal political opinions. But we're talking here (see my other post) is institutional far-left policy (DEI meaning explicit racism and sexism against white men). No wonder they have totally lost trust of the community (like half the US), to be seemingly beyond reform, up for restarting from scratch.
I think this is the crux of your misunderstanding. I did not say the scientific institutions were self-immolating - I said you were self-immolating. You're not torching some independent other. You're burning the foundations on which the strength of our country lays.
It's also frightening how often I hear this same refrain of griping about instances of "the left" transgressing upon a certain value, as justification for discarding the entire value - did those values ever matter to you, or do they not? Because the way I see it, the entire point of values is something you stick to even when others trample on them, giving society at least a chance of converging around stability.
For example: I'm a libertarian. I did not like what happened to Eich and I certainly understand the oppressiveness of DEI run amok. I have spoken out about those, dissecting the nuances in those issues modulo my own values. But now that those issues are being used as anti-intellectual rallying cries to tear down our institutions rather than reform them? I'm done. I'll choose the tribe that believes we should at least try to have a society.
I agree with your reasoning, I guess we just have different values.
I value science, defined as unbiased pursuit of truth.
I personally don’t see politically biased institutions that care more about far-left propaganda than truth, as foundation of anything good or wholesome.
But science has always had to fight against the prevailing political winds. Galileo. So has engineering, for that matter. Traditionally one had to hold their tongue and keep their eyes from rolling when some non-productive bureaucrat would wax poetically about the virtues of mega golf or owning a boat. Then for a while these topics included prescriptive diversity and performative inclusion. Now I guess we're back to mega golf and boats.
Do you foresee what remains of our scientific institutions after Trumpism actually being unbiased? Or biased but of the type you are willing to overlook? Or do you merely see the Trumpist bonfire as a stepping stone to having ~zero large scientific institutions which will technically satisfy your criteria?
Brendan Eich did not simply give a commentary on his economic policy. Brendan Eich went so far as donating not insignificant amounts of money to make sure a significant portion of the population - of which many of his users and employees are a part of - do not have equal rights.
I am so beyond tired of this trope.
What, nobody ever faces consequences for hurting other people? We just have to tolerate intolerance forever with a smile?
Why would you otherwise oppose Eich’s private bigotry against gays but ignore educational institutions’ institutional bigotry against white men? Both were the topics of my post you first replied to and the rest of this thread
Have you tried researching the topic? Very quick search:
- Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi expressed a desire for her lab to reflect social justice and actively works to foster a diverse and inclusive environment following events such as George Floyd's murder. (also runs a chem/bio/med lab at Stanford)
Every job requires a somewhat politically neutral attitude, at the very least on the job. And of course "neutral" will be judged as leftist by people on the right and rightist by people on the left. So look past that. And that includes not getting into political fights with the rest of the company and not being so politically "out there" that your company gets attacked on the street.
My employer requires that too, even if we've never explicitly discussed that.
I bet universities are easy targets and so require a very low risk political profile from their employees. That was definitely somewhat leftist-affiliated after George Floyd's murder, and frankly, given what happened, I don't see that as particularly unfair. I see myself as pretty rightist, and I am of the opinion that what happened to George Floyd was a serious fuckup against rightist ideology. Everyone deserves a chance. And when they fuck up, another chance. To me, that is rightist. And that means the police must avoid killing people when arresting them.
I don't understand today's political movements. What I appreciated about leftists was that 40 years ago they were going to bring technological advancement and freedom from religious lunacies and use that technological progress to give everyone an easy and fun life. Progress meant nuclear fusion, fixing diseases, ... "progress" DID NOT mean just letting people steal clothes, or, let's be honest, letting terrorists kill Jews and others in the name of getting muslim votes. That, to me, is NOT leftist, but obviously it is to a lot of today's leftist movements. Yes, antisemitism was a part of leftism 40 years ago, let's be honest, but it was definitely not the rage-bait sole-issue-with-us-or-we'll-kill-you focus of the left it appears to be today.
What I appreciated about rightists that almost absolute equality was the very core of rightist ideology. Color, nationality, religion, ... everyone gets a chance, no one gets a free ride. No guarantee of success, but the possibility is sacred, and if you do fuck it up, you get another chance. So, to me, George Floyd was a pretty fucking serious screwup against rightist ideology and so I think a lot of people supported that effort despite it being "leftist", in that most of the protests were organized by leftist organizations, and those protests did more damage than was acceptable.
But to me, George Floyd was very much NOT OKAY from a rightist perspective, and so justified a strong reaction against what happened.
Is it really so hard to see past the affiliation of the screamers on the street? Leftists have the same idiocy going. Not many leftists support even moderate islam, hell, not many muslims do, never mind terrorism, it's only "the party" that does. Today "if you're not with us you're against us" is so deeply ingrained in BOTH leftism and rightism and muslim organizations and maga and ... and I don't swing that way.
I see myself as pretty to the right, but if you're going to let the police kill black people by casually suffocating them during arrests, I am not with you. In fact, I prefer just letting people steal from shops to that. So if you force that particular issue, you've lost me. Find something else.
That’s exactly the reason the research and development funded by government grants is rarely done in the private sector: It isn’t immediately profitable, and we don’t know for sure if it ever will. It’s important to put man-hours behind even theories that will seemingly never be useful (“trash”), both because it is impossible to know for sure, and because that is the underpinning of science.
Exploration for exploration’s sake, knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Not everything learned by the human race needs to be immediately useful; it all contributes to a vast tapestry.
Not to mention that if we focus solely on profitability and utility, we do bad science: Why do you think we have a reproduction crisis? Because reproducing experiments isn’t sexy nor profitable, so no one is incentivized to do it.
