Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man. No one yet has guessed multiple people, or a scholar. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
29d ago
Dean
Flairless
29d ago
I think I'm going to take a break from the Motte for a bit. I do love this community, but I have not been doing a very good job contributing to it.
Best of luck with your siesta!
Don't be ashamed of it in the least. It truly can be for the best. Focus on your family, friends, or just take the opportunity to do some half-days of volunteer work improving your community. Even if it's as simply as helping clean up a graveyard with others, it can really help get one's head out of all-politics-all-the-time mindsets.
That's what the reported Russian threat was aimed against: "it will be five regions the next time we meet".
And it was a poor threat for the same reason. Good threats should never incentivize people to not comply.
The issue is not how many regions Russia wants to claim. The issue is that it no matter how many kms of regions Russia wants to demand the ukrainians turn over without fighting, it will still be in the Ukrainian interest to make Russia pay the resources they are willing to spend fighting km by km, rather than let Russia have both kms and the resources to conquer more.
A Russian offer that a concession of KMs will stop further aggression runs into the Russian credibility problem.
I agree that a major Ukrainian collapse is improbable, but it is not impossible. Russian operational competence is low, but most Ukrainian units are half-strength right now at best. If there's a lucky breakthrough, the 93rd might not be there to plug the gap in time. I am not talking about a total collapse, but a major realignment like the 2022 Harjkov counteroffensive.
Better a kharkiv further east within the regions that Russia insists it wants all of, than a kharkiv further west to be basis of claim a fifth region.
No ceasefire until Ukraine withdraws from the four mainland regions
What is the purchasing maxim? Never offer to pay what someone is willing to do for free? This is the inverse of that- demanding for free what others know you are willing to pay for.
Even if all parts of the Russian position eventually end up being accepted as written, this demand alone would be reason enough to keep fighting on. The 'rapid' advances of Russia in the eastern front last year were still slow enough in absolute amount of territory gained that it would have taken years of fighting at the same rates to finish conquering the claimed territories at the same rate, if they could sustain the same intensity over that period of time. Indications so far this year don't really support that, with the territorial advances in Ukraine in the earlier part of this year falling behind the rate of the last months of last year.
The upcoming Russian summer offensive does not change that. In fact, the bloodier it is expected to be, the less reason to accept the Russian ceasefire terms to give up land it has not conquered, especially if you expect this advance to make major gains against the Ukrainian defensive lines.
After all, if the land and defensive lines would be lost regardless, the relevant variable isn't the land being lost, but the resources both sides lose to do so. Russian forces and equipment and time spent taking the easternmost regions by force are resources that can't be used in a later offensive should the conditional ceasefire break down. In turn, the defensive positions in the east, even if they are insufficient, are better than the defensive lines further west, while the investments in the east provide no benefit if turned over without a fight. But defenses in the west will have more time to be developed if it takes months, or even 'just' weeks, to be developed.
Even if the entirety of the four regions is conquered in the coming offensive- and that requires a level of belief that the Ukrainians are about to have a systemic collapse cascade that ignores the last few years of the war to date- it would still be better to accept the Russian demands then, rather than now.
And if the Russians wouldn't be interested in accepting them then, that is a pretty strong indicator they aren't likely to be satisfied even if the terms were accepted now. Which increases the value of making the Russians pay more manpower / material / time in the present, rather than leaving it open in the future.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I think honestly you should have the ability to do a National injunction but it should be a situation where you have to get all the plaintiffs on one case, and it should be automatically taken up by SCOTUS.
Maybe, but only if the nation injunction takes effect if the SCOTUS agrees to take it up, and is negated if SCOTUS refuses the case. Otherwise, this could easily cause more harm than it avoids.
One of the critical institutional power factors of the Supreme Court is precisely that it gets to choose it's own cases. This is power over other branches of government, but also a power over the rest of the judiciary. The Supreme Court gets to dodge politically untenable legal issues that could threaten the independence of the court precisely because it reserves the right to ignore a court for now but overrule it later. The ability to disagree later-but-not-now is a positional influence which can allow the Supreme Court members to pick their battle and avoid unfavorable contexts.
Forcing the Supreme Court to take cases is a way of exercising process control/influence to influence the Supreme Court. A coalition that is already willing to abuse injunctions through willing partners in the mid-judiciary could easily use the lack of case autonomy to force the Supreme Court into politically untenable positions that provide the political cover to either force SC endorsement, or use the refusal as the political basis to dismantle institutional independence until the political pressure can dominate. Either way undercuts the Supreme Court's institutional autonomy and pressures it into political conformity with lower courts.
Which might be fine and preferable if you think the lower courts are on your side / substantially correct. But the issue of nationwide injunctions itself- where an overwhelming majority of injunctions in the last quarter century have been against one party, despite the Presidency having been evenly split between two parties- indicate a lack of consensus that would legitimize such a position.
It's also bizarre to suddenly give life advice in the middle of an argument with someone over the Internet. Clearly you told him to do that as part of the argument, not because you have a habit of giving random advice to strangers.
Direct question before anything else- are you confusing different posters and posts?
Are you confusing this sub-thread response to Pasha's perception of ethics courses to Pasha's top-level comment about cheating, where my only direct response was a non-sequitur that noted from the start I was merely going off of the same article that I'd been intended an effort-post on? This is a completely different thread-chain. That thread had no argument with Pasha, and Pasha did not even respond to my post on that. He did have a later reply over what 'modern' means in na different context that I did not respond to (because I felt it was fair and valid).
Or are you perhaps confusing the Dean quoted by Pasha here to be referring to me, the user who goes by Dean, and not the Dean of the AvocadoPanic's post that he was replying to, an academic title? I.E., the Dean of a school?
Like, I would be charmed if after all these years someone publicly guessed why I've had this username for nearly a decade. And if this is a general misunderstanding due to the nature of different subthreads, that would clarify a lot.
But if you are not confused about what response chain you are in, there are three problems with your claim of clarity.
First, I have not had an exchange with Pasha on the subject of ethics classes. I have not opined on the merits or demerits of Pasha's position on ethic classes. Pasha has not responded to my post on alternatives to ethic classes. The only exchanges on my recommendation have been with not-Pasha one, and not-Pasha two (that's you).
Second, there is no dispute/argument between Pasha's position that I quoted, and my response to it. I agree with Pasha's claim that he has "never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors." I certainly have no reason to doubt his account or perception.
Third, 'giving random advice to strangers' is what a substantial proportion of my posts on The Motte are. I am, if anything, notorious for unsolicited, loquacious, and sometimes unwanted advice on random subjects of debatable utility to the individual.
These are, admittedly, often advice on how to understand current events, history, or governmental affairs. But I have also been known to offer advice on things to listen to during workouts or car drives, family-friendly media recommendations, limits on the use of historical metaphors, and even writing advice that I don't follow enough myself.
Trying to cut down on loquaciousness is what ironically has led to this exchange. Giving examples of how studying ethics could be useful could itself be perceived as patronizing/implying that Pasha did not understand that utility argument.
Come on. There's a difference between "I am suggesting that people do this to learn life skills" and "I am suggesting that people do this to justify my claims". Ethics classes are recommended in the former context. Your "recommendation" that Pasha study things himself was in the latter context.
You have confused the former for the later. I may not have written well enough and so be partly to blame for your misconception, but unless you have developed internet mind reading skills that allow you to identify motives that I am unaware of, I am confident I know my motives, and my separate claims, better than you.
My claim is that Pasha should learn life skill do this because it can be interesting, and with later elaboration, useful. This could fairly be characterized as "I am suggesting that people do this to learn life skills (that can be interesting and are useful)."
My suggestion of how Pasha should go about it, with the reasoning as to why elaborated after the post, is a claim of a way to avoid (and thus respect) his distrust of the institutional actors who normally teach the subject matter. This could be fairly characterized as "I am suggesting a specific way to learn life skill (that differs from a ways that you have indicated contempt for).
I am not claiming Pasha should do the [this] that was the subject of what I quoted when replying to him-
I have never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors. Just all around busywork.
My claim is not that Pasha should do [this] to learn life skills anyway. Nor am I making a claim that he should keep trying until he finds one by a non-dimwit professor. Or that the busywork he was assigned in the past was secretly meaningful and he just missed the point.
My claim is that self-driven study of certain sub-fields (professional ethics) is a way to get better value (interest and useful insights) in a way that isn't a disliked medium (ethics class) taught by distrusted instructors (dimwit professors) and or with make-work (busywork). The 'assignment' proposed- noting different lines of emphasis, and how some professions deal with the blanket moral prohibitions espoused by others- does not require any writing or feedback to anyone else. It exists not to provide something to do for a grade, but provide relevant insights for how different professional cultures interact.
You should just explain it, since you are the one making the claim, not demand he study it himself.
One, if you do not consider 'this subject matter can be interesting and professional useful, and this learning way avoids your concerns' an explanation for why to self-study study material, I would suggest you are too used to the motte's tendency for essay-length responses.
Two, it is not a demand. It is a suggestion, hence 'if you get a chance,' which allows him full discretion to refuse on any grounds he wants. The emphasis on his discretion may not have been clear enough due to the words used and the filtering effect of internet, but even then demands have an 'or else [consequence]' attached to the back end. The only [consequence] for not partaking is that he might lose the benefits of [interesting and useful insights] of partaking.
"I want you to do it on your own" is a filibuster, not an honest argument.
No, it is not. On two fronts.
One, a short argument is not a filibuster.
The argument provided may have been too short of an argument. The argument may have been unclear, and used poor choices of word to seem more of a demand than it was. But recommendations with short supporting arguments and no time commitment are about as far from a filibuster argument as one can get.
Two, 'I want you to do it on your own' is an honest argument if it I honestly think he would enjoy and benefit more from doing it on his own and I want him to have that benefit.
Pasha seems highly skeptical of the university format- a format generally meant to guide students rather than have them do it on their own. Moreover, he has built this from personal experience. One can sincerely believe he would both enjoy the material more and be in a mindset to learn specific lessons if he engaged it on his own volition, in a more targeted nature, on their own spare time, rather than be compelled to (i.e. from a demand from dim-wit professors) in a time-constrained environment (university with competing classes).
But a lot of naziism does seem like a conscious attempt to try and return to premodern modes of thinking, where the chief’s or king’s obligation is to Protect the Tribe and there are very loose rules of conduct of what you can do to the out group.
This is consistent with Enlightenment-derived movements and thinking, however. While this begs (as always) what the nature of the enlightenment was, it's generally accepted that both the slave-holding American and the Europe-conquering French revolutions were expressions of it, and the idea of a national / social contract model which ties the ruler to the people, and vice versa, was absolutely a part of both. So was the relative partition of 'us' versus 'them' that led to looser rules of conducts to the out groups including, well, slavery and conquest. You even had the shared rationalizations of tearing down an unjust surrounding political order to all the people (tribes, if you will) express themselves. Naturally we remember this as good because they won and we liked them winning, but the French revolution wasn't exactly shy about exporting the revolution.
For all that the nazis were warmongers who wanted to conquer and colonize others, that too was consistent with the enlightenment civilizations. The status quo powers had just already conquered and colonized enough of the world between them that they didn't want to continue- but they were enlightenment-derived nations when they did so. That is the primary 'pre-modern' thinking- modernity was the status quo, not that post-enlightenment states didn't conquer or do terrible things.
There is always a tension in the enlightenment between it's generally positive connotation and the bad-to-terrible things that Enlightenment-states did. But the French Revolution has about as much a claim as anyone else attempts to separate the french revolution and Napoleon from it runs into typical problems of trying to define away the morally bad stuff, which returns it to the moral connotation argument. The Nazis aren't non-enlightenment just because they did bad things, unless bad things are incompatible with Enlightenment influence.
Which seems pretty unlikely, unless you start moving back the enlightenment a few hundred years to after the Nazis and European de-imperialization.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I think your distinction of 'critical thinking' versus 'rigor' is more important than a 'slight' confounder. Which is to say- I think you could be even more right than you realize.
I can fully get on board with arguments that universities have, in fact, lowered rigorous standards and this is a bad thing. I'd even consider systemic contributions for this, ranging from the commercialization of higher education (students are customers, as opposed to wards), to political preference systems (we can't let [X] do worse than [Y]). The economic incentives to, say, not fail the rich-sons of benefactors has changed to different 'we may/may not relax standards.' The cluster of distinctions can support that. If you relax standards in one way, that can lead to also relaxing standards in another. Rigor and critical thinking do correlate.
But- and an important distinction of clusters- they are not the same thing. Working hard, working diligently, and working smartly are three different things. Critical thinking and rigorous thinking are not the same either. They more correlate, but they don't have to. More importantly, they aren't causal.
They also may have ambiguous / shifting definitions.
Take your point on 'maximum' point in the past. Is the maximum the [% pure critical thinking] of the students, a ratio? Or is the maximum measured by [#critical thinking] = [% PCT]x[# of students], a volume?
In the former, the downgrading of standards lowers critical thinking. Each student is less pure/capable at critical thinking as part of the correlation 'all boats decrease.' In the later, the downgrading of student standards increases critical thinking. If lower standards allow more students, then more students, even if less capable, provide more critical thinking overall.
And this gets changed by non-stable equilibrium. Universities are constantly changing in composition. Slowly, in the case of professors (usually), but constantly. Even if there is an optimal setup for Maximum Critical Thinking, the very conditions that set it up may lead to it's decline in a natural ebb-and-flow.
Say you need particularly good professors, but the professor dies/retires and gets hired with a cheaper one. University MCT goes down, even if all other things stay constant. Say you need a particular political balance of professors to encourage MCT, to encourage both a healthy consensus but a vibrant and occasionally persuasive minority, but the winners (or losers) of the ratio upset that balance. Say there are temporary MCT buffs if you have something like a politically controversial-but-persuasive movement who increase MCT as a byproduct of their activities to get people to change their mind in critical thinking-compatible ways, but total MCT goes down after the agitators stop convincing people to change positions but instead are enforcing a new status quo.
I think these factors would support a natural ebb-and-flow of critical thinking MCT%, even as it obscures specific contributions (artificial highs) with cluster-visible effects (lower standards lowering the cluster). 'You' (ControlsFreak) are accurately seeing cluster-wide effects at a time of your presence, but cannot see events that happened / were set in progress before your arrival.
But it does suggest both that things could get better in the future, but also that previous/accustomed levels were an aberration reverting to a historical norm, as opposed to a sustainable new norm.
Before we continue this discussion, I believe you should read all 7 Harry Potter books. I also believe you should read the Bible and the Torah. I believe you should read the Dead Sea Scrolls. I believe you should have an AI translate all 7 Harry Potter books into Swahili and read them again. Learn Swahili first if you have to, time is apparently no object. I believe you should read every word ever written by Thomas Aquinas. I believe you should re-read them, but this time reinterpret them as the works of Thomas Aquinas's black trans lesbian housekeeper, plagiarized without credit.
Since you seem to desire to continue this discussion regardless of your requested pause, I'll be happy to indulge you just once more before honoring your requested pause for the Swahili translation step.
Which surprisingly is the only one I haven't already done. (Well, mostly. I don't think there's an authoritative word count for Aquinas.)
I will start by noting that you have retreated from the earlier bailey. I am happy for you to abandon prior arguments about midwit professors, defending blood sacrifice, and other arguments I did not make. I will be interested if your next / last post in this exchange abandons any more strawmen arguments I did not make.
I think you're operating under a misconception. You seem to think I disagree with the concept of reading things. I do not. My point of contention with you is that you are not making any actual arguments in favor of your position. Telling people to read more books is not an argument.
Disagree with the concept of reading? Heavens no. I just think you had a bit of a reading comprehension failure.
I suspect you believed it was advocating some sort view that ethics reading would/should change one's own ethics, hence you emphasis in response two that no reading would change your moral worldview, as if that was an objective.
I also think you also thought I was advocating dimwit-professor-led ethics classes, hence your repeated reference to the dimwits characterization, until response three after your (hopefully) accidental almost-insinuation against Pasha was teased.
I also think you completely missed the point that recommending self-pursued reading outside of a university class format is a complete non-advocacy for, well, university-level ethics classes.
Further, my conception of you is that you are doubling down in a you-won't-admit-it's-embarrassment defensiveness and are trying to claim some rhetorical moral high ground after your earlier mistakes were teased. You are attempting to reposition to an argument about making unreasonable demands, despite no demands having been made of Pasha, by using a ironic-equivalence of a raising learning Swahili as a precondition for further discussion. A language whose only relevance to the discussion is to demonstrate the difficulty of unreasonable demands. Since clearly learning Swahili is as relevant, and as unreasonable, a precondition for addressing provided arguments as...
...checks notes...
...recommending someone read about a potentially interesting and useful subject in a way that avoids a medium and format they have said they don't trust.
Checks out.
It's not that I don't know enough about ethics, or that I haven't considered the possibility that other people might believe different things than me. My point is very simple: If you're here to make an argument, then make it. If you're not here to make an argument then you should at least stop trying to give people homework.
If your point was simply about homework, you would have talked about homework from the start, rather than spending the first two responses talking about blood sacrifices and the strength of your convictions and dimwit professors.
But hey. It's still the internet. Being called out can be embarrassing, even more so than leaving with out the last word. In fact, I'll even give you a hand with some counter arguments you could leave off with.
You could argue that you did not actually miss the argument, but that it was not long enough, even though there's no requirement for how long an argument needs to be in a short post. You could argue that you were requesting an elaboration of the argument, which I unfairly did not provide, despite you not asking for a longer argument. You could even argue that you didn't misunderstand the argument at all, truly.
But for your pending last word, I would suggest that 'you did not make an argument' falls a little flat after three iterations of the argument have been provided, and then had it's presence ignored even after being re-posted and bolded for emphasis. That would be just a tad embarrassing to end off on.
Especially if you were so predictable as to do it after being predicted you would try for the last word.
Farewell. I'll not respond until after I learn Swahili, so consider any last word yours.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
If you think human sacrifice is good, then you should say so outright and explain why you believe that.
And this exchange gets sillier and sillier.
If you think that ethics classes are not "total non-sense taught by dimwit professors" as the above poster claims, then you should say so outright and explain why you believe that.
I did. (And did not.)
I have made no position on ethics classes taught by dimwit professors. The only educator I have recommended to Pasha is Pasha himself, and I decline to accuse Pasha of being a dimwit. I will even offer a concurrence that bad teachers- dimwit or otherwise- can ruin valid material. Take this as a concession if you'd like.
What I did do was suggest for Pasha himself take an opportunity on their own to study a specific sub-set of ethics, professional ethics, with the supporting justification-
What they emphasize changes as you go from fields where harming anyone is proof of something going wrong and ethics is about avoiding it, to fields where people will be harmed regardless and ethics is about balancing it, to fields where harming people is the point and ethics is about managing it. The later can be all the more interesting for how they have to handle the simpler moral rejections that can suffice for the former.
I.e., I believe they should review different professional ethic systems to understand how they differ in what they emphasize. Specifically between fields where one profession accepts human harms that another profession would reject. At the very least, it can be interesting to understand how they do so.
I even restated and clarified it in the post you are responding to, in case it was not clear enough-
The value of studying different forms of professional ethics isn't to change your own mind on ethics. The value is understanding what others want, or expect, the ethics of a professional to be. This has relevant insights when it comes to dealing with specific professions in isolation, when multiple professions with different professional ethics engage each other, or even how the same profession's ethics across different cultures.
I.e., the value of understanding how different ethic systems work, besides that it can be interesting, is that it is useful when professional-ethical systems interact in various ways. This can apply when you are dealing with a professional consensus, potential professional conflicts, or cross-cultural divergences where a consensus might be.
If noting there are implications of potentially clashing ethical systems seems vague and nonsensical to you, this is an excellent indication of why further study on the subject would be beneficial. If you do not trust a professor to be able to help you with it, that would be an excellent reason to educate yourself instead.
But please don't gesture vaguely in the direction of doing further research to nay-say the value judgements of those who have stronger opinions than you.
The only way a suggestion for Pasha teaching himself about ethics violates the value judgement of dimwit professors teaching ethics is if Pasha is a dimwit professor. Again, I decline.
I suspect Pasha may think the subject matter of ethics is itself is [pick your pejorative]. Regardless of the strength of his opinion, I believe it is useful, and recommend he examine it in certain ways to learn the utility for himself, in a way that respects his dismissal of formal instructors of the subject.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Ah, I vaguely remember that!
If you're keeping notes / a running version, it'd be interesting to see an update at the end of this year or so and see you reflect on what changed in the political slang discourse.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
That's still a far cry from our ideal, but...
...but the people who led and cultivated the critical thinking of 1900-1914 were also the people who thought throwing the flower of your civilization into flowering shrapnel on the French frontier was a better national policy than not.
And most of the generation raised to be critical thinkers in the 1900-1914 range- which is to say, the generation born in 1890s and before- went along with it, and shamed, ridiculed, or forced others to do so as well. Theirs was a critical thinking shaped by / built upon nationalism, propaganda, imperialist delusions, and various pseudo-sciences racial and otherwise.
And then the people born or with their own formative years between 1900-1914 went on to do it again.
WW1 was a madness born from the civilization it ended, not an external imposition. WW2 was an extension of that turn-of-the-century generation. Any exceptional critical thinkers were despite, not because, of the nature of that era.
If you ever get a chance, do a self-driven review compare / contrast of ancient human-sacrifice rituals for different religions with different stakes in humans harm.
If you had good directions of where to start, I might just do that. It sounds interesting, and I expect some free time later this year. However, it is a bit harder to find structured reviews of them than, say, pointing three distinct but overlapping types of professionals.
Why don't you provide two good sources for the Aztecs and Carthaginians ethics? Good as in effectively and analytically characterizes their ethical systems. A bad work would be one that simply relegates Aztec morality to 'they conducted human sacrifice to keep the world from ending.' Yes, that is a utilitarian justification. It is not an ethical system.
And then, once you've read that, presumably you will somehow have changed your mind and believe human sacrifice is a good thing instead of a senseless waste of human life. You will probably even want to sacrifice your own children to Moloch, when the time comes. I know I haven't provided any reason why that should be the case, but apparently that's how this works now.
If that was what you took away from my post, then congratulations- you demonstrated a point by missing it.
The value of studying different forms of professional ethics isn't to change your own mind on ethics. The value is understanding what others want, or expect, the ethics of a professional to be. This has relevant insights when it comes to dealing with specific professions in isolation, when multiple professions with different professional ethics engage each other, or even how the same profession's ethics across different cultures.
Understanding other people's ethical frameworks has never been endorsement, or required conversion, unless you subscribe to some universal morality theory.
I saw this article and was saving it to write an effort post, and now you beat me to it. A shame, but I guess I should put the outline to use anyway.
My intent would have been to use this article to highlight my concern about the AI revolution, and share my perspective on a topic I've never really gone into.
I am on record on being a skeptic / doubter on AI singularity fears (or hopes). I broadly think the 'the winner of AI is the winner of all' is overstated due to other required dynamics for such a monopoly of power/influence to occur. I think other technology dynamics matter more in different ways- for example, I think the drone revolution matters more than the AI revolution for shaping geopolitical contexts in the decades to come. I think that AI technologies under human control are more likely to do something irrevocably stupid than AI-controlled technologies deciding to paperclip everything and somehow having the unique ability to compel all other AI to align with that.
I do think it's fine to characterize AI as a significant disruptive technology, even if I think the inherent limits of LLM are more relevant to certain fields (especially anything novel/emerging without substantial successful learning material) than is commonly appreciated. Something doesn't have to be world ending to be a major disruption. I just think it's one of many, many major disruptions in the decade to come, and not even necessarily the worst. (Though disruptions do compound.)
What scares me isn't the AI singularity, but the AI-educated youth.
Specifically, I fear for- and fear from- people who might otherwise have learned critical thinking skills in how to not only search for answers, but organize and retain answers, to things they didn't know at the start. The example in the articles covered people using AI not only in lieu of finding a solution, but even knowing what the solution was. (The students who didn't know their own essay's response.) I don't think AI is bad for students because the answers AI provide are bad, necessarily. Getting an answer from AI isn't that different from getting an answer from a first-few pages search of google. (Even before they were the same thing.) It's more that if you don't even know how to do a tailored good search, or you don't know where other alternative answers are, you can't compare even that result. And if you're not retaining the solution- if you don't understand 'why' the solution is correct- the student is missing the opportunity. What's the point of passing a test if you, the student, haven't learned?
And I think the process of learning is important. In fact, I think learning the process of learning is among the most important things to learn at all. How to find an answer you don't know. How to distinguish good answers from bad answers. How to detect and distinguish bias from error from manipulation. How to generate a new solution to a complex problem when there isn't a proven solution at hand, or if the old solutions aren't accessible because [reasons]. And finally, how to both organize and communicate that in a way that other people can use. 'Knowing' a lot is not enough. 'Communicating' it can be just as important. All of these are skills that have to be practiced to be developed.
AI can compromise critical thinking and skill development. AI can compromise learning how to look for answers. AI can compromise how to retain the answers. AI can compromise the ability of people to respond to unclear situations with incomplete information or no baselines. AI can compromise the ability of people to convey their ideas to other people.
I had a great big screed on how I think AI is ruining youth... and then I looked back to that first mention of google, and asked myself 'what is so different?'
I grew up in an era where the pre-AI internet promised unparalleled information access. An era where seemingly infinite libraries of fiction (fan or otherwise) were open to anyone with an internet, with more to read than a lifetime of book purchases. Access to other people's opinions would break people out of their small-minded closed-worlds. The truth was out there, and the internet would help you reach it. In one of the earlier versions of Civilization, the Internet was considered a world wonder, and would give the civilization that developed it first (eventual) access to any technology that at least two other states knew.
But I also grew up in an era where people bemoaned that google was ruining the ability of people to find anything not on the internet. Documents that were never digitized, people who never wrote down their thoughts, the subtext that comes from investing things in person rather than from a distance. You can think you know how hilly a hike is from reading it, but a picture of it is worth a thousand words, and actually hiking it yourself in the heat and humidity and while carrying dozens of pounds of equipment is something else. It's hard to capture the sublime beauty of nature, and thus understand why people would value nature preservation for its own sake, if you don't go out to it.
(Then again, I did go into it. I also didn't like it. My sympathies were never exactly with anti-industrial environmentalism after that.)
And it's not like the pre-AI google-internet wasn't directly facilitating cheating. Who here was ever introduced to SparkNotes? The best friend of anyone who didn't want to actually do the required reading, but still needs a talking point or essay about a famous book. It advertises itself as a 'study guide' site these days. It condensed hundreds of pages into a few small pages of summary, and that was Good Enough.
Similar points could be made about cheating. I remember when facebook was not only young, but mostly a college student thing. And I remember how schools wrestled with students sharing answer sheets to quizzes, past essays, and so on. Even if I didn't partake, I know people did. Were they getting substantially more critical thinking skills than the modern AI exploiter just because their cheating methods were a bit more taxing on time or effort?
Maybe. But then, what's so different between the pre-AI/post-internet student cheating, and the pre-internet student cheating?
Were cheating circles any less of a thing in eras where colleges had notorious stories of famous historical figures basically fooling around until last-minute cramming? Were those cramming sessions really imparting the value of critical thinking not only to the Great Figures of History, but their less memorable peers?
Or information. If you're getting all your politics from AI, that was pretty dumb. But then, I remember when it was (and still is) a common expression of contempt to dismiss people who watched [bad political TV station], or read [biased partisan news paper], or listened to [objectional radio figure] rather than the other alternatives.
But were the people who were turning into [good political TV station] being any more critical thinking for listening to the 'correct' opinion shows? Or was it just 'my noble voters know I speak truth through their own critical thinking, yours are misled by propaganda that critical thinking would negate'? Were radio listeners decades prior any less mono-tuned for having even fewer alternative stations to listen to? Were regional or municipal newspapers any partisan when there was less competition outside the influence of political machines? Were their readers any more objective critical thinkers when there were fewer easy alternative options?
Has there ever been a golden age of critical thinkers, schooled to think well, untainted by the technology of its era, or the character of its students?
Or has critical thinking been consistent across history, with most students of any era doing the least possible to get through any required courses, and missing the point along the way?
And- by implication- some minority of critical thinkers existing and emerging regardless of the excuses of the era? And often out-competing their contemporaries by the advantages that come with critical thinking?
The more I think of it, the more convinced I am of the later. Most people in history wouldn't have been great critical thinkers if only they had access to more or even better information. They'd still have taken the easiest way to meet the immediate social pressure. Similarly, I doubt that the Great Critical Thinkers of History would have been ruined by AI. Not as a class, at least. They already had their alternative off-ramps, and didn't.
Critical thinking can always be encouraged, but never forced. The people who do so are the sort of people who are naturally inclined to question, to think, or to recognize the value of critical thinking in a competitive or personal sense. The people who actually do so... they were always a minority. They will probably always be a minority.
So on reflection, my fear about bad students isn't really warranted by AI. There has always been [things degrading critical thinking] that the learners of the era could defer to, or cheat with. If I'd been born generations earlier, I'd have had an equivalent instinct 'warranted' by something else. My fear is/was more about the idea of 'losing' something- an expectation of the critical thinking of others- that probably never existed.
Realizing that made me fear the effects of AI a bit less. As silly as it sounds to put my updated prior in this way, and the sillyness is the point here, there was no golden age of critical thinking and enlightened education that just so happened to be when I was maturing. Just as [current year] wasn't the first time in human history moralistic college students felt ideal social morality was obviously achievable, a downgrade of critical thinking didn't start after I left college either.
So when I read that article about the south korean kid who viewed Ivy League not as a chance to learn in an environment of unparalled access to quality minds and material, but as a change to meet his wife and co-founder of some company, I shouldn't- don't- despair. Instead, I shrug. As it was before, so it shall be again.
Two centuries ago, his mindset would have been right at home in his home country. He would probably only have cared about the material the nominally-meritocratic gwageo civil service exams assessed (including classical literature) to the degree it let out-compete other would-be competitors and join the yangban, a relatively comfortable aristocratic-social class. If he had the ability to cheat at the civil service exam and get away with it, I imagine he would have.
I doubt the social sanctity of meritocrat exams would have bothered him anymore than the espoused value of critical thinking in a progressive academic institution.
What is so different?
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I have never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors. Just all around busywork.
If you ever get a chance, do a self-driven review a compare / contrast of ethic courses and frameworks for different professional groups with different stakes in human harm. Even if it's just regulators who enforce safety standards, medical policymakers that shape the standards, and state prosecutors who's job it is to give the people who violated the standards a bad day in court, the overlaps and distinctions in what they base their professional-ethic frameworks upon can be enlightening.
What they emphasize changes as you go from fields where harming anyone is proof of something going wrong and ethics is about avoiding it, to fields where people will be harmed regardless and ethics is about balancing it, to fields where harming people is the point and ethics is about managing it. The later can be all the more interesting for how they have to handle the simpler moral rejections that can suffice for the former.
Few classes / professors will ever frame these for you, which is why it will need to be self-driven. Bad professors can undercut even that. Still.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
I am reminded of Isaac Asimov's series of stories on "The Three Laws". It basically assumes away the hardest part of AI alignment "how do you enforce the rules". But then he still manages to write about a dozen stories about how it all goes horribly wrong.
I read that recently. I was struck by how Asimov smuggled a change of rules throughout the series in a way I've rarely heard noted.
The book's narrative framing devices (the exposition characters) try to justify it each time as an unanticipated consequence but predictable outcome of the established rules. However, despite the initial setup the series isn't actually formatted as 'this is the natural conclusion of previous truths taken further.' Instead, there is a roughly mid-series switch in which the robot behaviors and three laws switch from being treated as a form of consequentialist ethics (the robot cannot allow X to happen), to utilitarian ethics (the robot gets to not only let X happen, but may conduct X itself, if it rationalizes it as greater utility of X).
It is not even that the meaning of various words in the laws of robotics were reinterpreted to allow different meanings. It's that actual parts of the rules are changed without actually acknowledged that they are changing. This is how we go from the initial rules establishing a unit of concern down to the individual human level, but the end-series machines only applying the rules to humanity as a collective in order to justify harming both collective and individual humans on utilitarian grounds. We also see changes to how the robots deal with equivalent forms of harm- going from a robot self-destructing over the moral injury inflicted of being caught in a lie, to a chapter about regulatory fraud, identify theft, and punching an agent provocateur in order to subvert democracy. (The robot is the good guy for doing this, of course.)
Even setting aside some of the sillyness of the setting (no rival robot producers, no robot-on-robot conflict between rival human interests, no mandatory medical checkups for world leaders), for all that the story series tries to present it as a building series of conclusions, rather than 'it all goes horribly wrong' I found it more akin to 'well this time it means this thing.'
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
...not a 'constant update' thing, but if you ever want to do a deep dive / generally-untapped government policy resource, have you ever looked up stuff from legislative research services?
Some (generally larger/richer) countries keep a dedicated organization to do basic policy research for the legislative body. In Britain, this is the House of Commons Library, while in the US it is the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service.
These sort of organizations are surprisingly good / useful when trying to read up on a policy issue. They are relatively non-partisan for the level they work at- they are working for both/all parties in general- and they tend to excel at characterizing existing laws / regulations of governments. This is because they have to take a lot of legal dynamics and convey it into forms that the target audience- legislators with minimal expertise- may understand.
Sometimes it can be interesting to take the current culture war issue of the day, and just look up what was last written about it months or years ago, before it became [current thing in culture war / propaganda].
Obviously you are limited to your language, but it can be interesting to see how parliamentary research services from around the world approach common policy issues.
I'm confused.
I'm partly confused why no_one necroed a two-month-dead threat for a response that clearly misunderstood the point they were trying to rebut. But I'm even more confused how you knew/noticed/responded within the hour for a post that didn't reference you.
Not offended / upset or anything. Just confused.
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Berry isn't a marginal figure, certainly more influential at this point than, say, Jonah Goldberg.
Is that a bar to be tripped over? Walked under? An insinuation of jewish nefariousness with a lastname like that? Some white nationalist thing? An epitaph of the National Review's fall from influence within the Republican party?
Has the DOGE Buyout/Firing Campaign Been Setup for This Year's US Budget Negotiations?
In 'culture war developments easily missed in interesting times,' around 60% of the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division is expected to resign rather than stick around for the Trump administration's change of focus on civil rights priorities.
To quote the set-up...
"No one has been fired by me … but what we have made very clear last week in memos to each of the 11 sections in the Civil Rights Division is that our priorities under President Trump are going to be somewhat different than they were under President Biden," Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, told conservative commentator Glenn Beck during an appearance on his show at the weekend.
"And then we tell them, these are the President's priorities, this is what we will be focusing on—you know, govern yourself accordingly. And en masse, dozens and now over 100 attorneys decided that they'd rather not do what their job requires them to do."
Over a 100 is vague. 100 lawyers isn't cheap, but scale matters. How does this compare to the office?
There were around 380 lawyers in the civil rights division when Trump returned to office in January, according to The New York Times. The newspaper, citing unofficial estimates of the number of people planning to resign by Monday's deadline, reported the division would soon have about 140 attorneys or possibly even fewer.
140 of 380 is a 37% retention rate.
63% turnover is an organizational-culture-destroying amount. Just in terms of base-load responsibilities dropped as no longer supportable, an organization is fundamentally changed on what the members expect to do. If the organizational mission shifts...
Newsweek's 'Why It Matters' frames the difference in focus.
Why It Matters
The DOJ's civil rights division, founded after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, initially focused on protecting the voting rights of Black Americans. But Congress later expanded its responsibilities to include protecting Americans from discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and military status.
But Dhillion reportedly issued a series of memos earlier in April detailing the division would be focusing on priorities laid out in Trump's executive orders, such as the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports, combating antisemitism and ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Obviously the framings are their own, and may / may not properly characterize what was done / what will be done.
This article, and a few others this week as the second-round buyout tallies come in, are raising the implications of the upcoming US federal... 'exodus' is probably too strong a term, though appropriate in the DOJ Civil Rights division. 'Buyout' is more accurate
You may remember the initial DOGE buy-out from February, which about 75,000 Federal Employees took. The general offer was pay and benefits through September, the end of the fiscal year. This was less than the desired target (about 3.5% of work force to a 5-10% target), and was part of the general legal injunctions as it and other firing actions were taken to court.
Last month, the Trump administration offered a second round of buyouts, and media reporting from the last week suggests the court-confusion / insecurities / etc. have let more to take the offer. In the USDA, less than 4,000 took the initial buyout offer, but over 11,000 have taken the second. It's unclear how typical this is- I didn't find many first and second round stats at this time- but it does suggest that the last three months have increased, not decreased, the Trump administration's ability to shake the federal bureacracy.
A (non-supportive) Politico E&E article reviewing different agencies affected emphasizes not just numbers, but levels of departees, with an emphasis on more senior personnel. While the article emphasizes ways that will hurt Trump's policy agendas, I suspect many of the red tribe will see this 'problems' more ranging from 'acceptable costs' to 'good.'
For example, when the article raises-
While Trump administration officials have applauded the staff downsizing as a much-needed curtailing of federal bloat, former and current employees say the overhaul is driving a historic loss of institutional knowledge. The losses could be hard to reverse, damaging the government’s ability to craft and implement energy and environmental policy for years to come, they warned. Potentially, the personnel losses could also undermine the president’s pursuit of his “energy dominance” agenda.
-I suspect the Trumpian right doubts the personnel lost would have supported rather than undermined Trump's agenda anyway. That may be an inaccurate doubt, or at least not universally justified across every buy-out departee, but it is a foreseeable consequence of the Resistance strategy played in the first trump administration.
Other quotable quotes by agency include-
“You can’t understate the expertise and institutional knowledge we’re losing,” said one career staffer at the Department of Energy. “Directors and senior leaders who have run programs and offices that release hundreds of millions of dollars annually.”
A sweep of resignations and retirements have emptied key leadership posts across Interior bureaus and agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, forcing other employees to take on the managerial responsibilities in an “acting” capacity, according to internal documents viewed by E&E News.
Thousands of workers leaving the DOE are spread across the department, working on bolstering the U.S. electric grid, deploying renewables, meeting national climate goals and even building out Trump’s own agenda around supply chains. Career staffers inside the agency say the losses are hitting policy offices hard,
(EPA) But as the Trump administration heralds plans for an unparalleled series of regulatory rollbacks, one former top official predicts that the exodus could hamstring efforts to turn that agenda into reality. “It’s going to be very difficult to get anything done,” said Stan Meiburg, whose 39-year career at the agency included a stint as acting deputy administrator from 2014 to 2017.
Speaking to the North American Agricultural Journalists on Monday, Bonnie said he worries many other senior employees are on the way out as well, including Forest Service employees qualified to work on wildfire mitigation.
Overall, Reuters estimates that about 260,000 federal workers- over a quarter of a million- have been fired, taken a buyout, or retired early since Trump came into office.
So, what else does this mean, besides an increase in job applications for DOGE-scrutinized federal workers?
I think this buy-out process is best understood in a similar light- as a deliberate culture-change strategy to change the institutional culture of the Executive Branch administrative state. You can even see the outlines a corporate turnover strategy.
I've noted before the organizational-culture implications of the Trump administration trying to relocate federal agencies out of the hyper-blue DC area to other places in the country.
I submit that the current government curtailment efforts look to have been part of a deliberate phased process to reach this buy-out point in preparation for the mid-2025 budget negotiations.
End-Jan: At the end of January (29Jan), the initial buyout-offer was made and set to expire on 6 Feb. This was the initial offer. It would receive some court resistance. As previously addressed, it didn't get as much traction as the Administration wanted.
Feb: February is the month of DOGE fear, starting with the USAID takedown. I wrote in February about how the takedown and releases were enabled by the dual-hatting mechanics of Secretary of State Rubio becoming USAID director. This was a unique legal dynamic due to USAID's specific legal structure, but it served to create insecurity in the work force. Similar dynamics like the OPM '5 bullets' email. Requirements for complaince build credibility in DOGE-threats.
March: Transition from DOGE-fear to Secretary Management. In mid-march, Trump signals that DOGE will take a supporting role to the department heads. This was conveyed in the time as Musk having his wings clipped. How much was stage-managed kabuki theater is up for debate. Regardless, Department heads are now 'backed by' DOGE-threats, without having had to make the threats themselves.
March-April: Early Trump lawfare as efforts at initial cuts / firings / etc. are resisted in public and in the courts. While courts create setbacks for Trump, this actually increases uncertainty overall. Trump is able to get enough wins enough of the time such that the threat of reductions in force (RIFs) / future firings are credible.
April: Buyout 2.0 offered. The anti-Trump resistance in the courts gets ominous foreshadowing that the Supreme Court may strictly limit the sort of injunctions being used to stop Trump's federal efforts. As the public chaos / pressure over jobs occurs, more federal employees take the buyout.
May: On 1 May, Trump announces his budget priorities for FY 2026. This includes cutting $163 billion from various US government programs, with the NYT choosing its highlights.
May now: Here we are
So, where does the clickbait title come in?
Basically, the next few months are the typical annual US budget negotiation season. Its far from the only thing going on, but the first federal budget of a new president is kind of a big deal. It's where the new administration goes from inheriting the policy priorities of the previous administration to making their own, and this year in particular is the start of a (probably brief) Republican trifecta. The US entered a (somewhat surprising) rest-of-the-year budget stability when back in March Senate Minority Leader Schumer decided to support Trump's spending bill out of concern of the increased power Trump would get if there was no budget or only continuing resolutions.
I bring this up now, because the DOGE-Buyout plan is, itself, a lever / tool in the next year budget cycle, where Congress discusses not just budgets, but manpower authorizations for agencies.
Government shutdown politics change when there a quarter-of-a-million fewer federal employees suddenly out of work and not getting paid. Federal employees out of work are free to do stuff. Ex-Federal employees go on with their non-federal jobs. The bigger the federal bureacracy, the more painful it is to get into these kind of fights. On the other hand, the smaller, the easier.
Position vacancies are also a big implication for program cuts. It's politically easier for Congressional negotiators to cut billets / positions / parts of agencies that are currently (or will be predictably) empty than parts that are filled. Part of the reason few things are as hard to end as a temporary government program is because there is a person whose job is on the line, and a department supervisor whose authorities / money / personal influence network hinges on the people they have. These are not the only obstacles, but they are diminished when relevant leaders take a buyout and aren't there to advocate to the death.
This is particularly true when partisans negotiate over politically sensitive institutions that a former partisan 'owner' may or may not want to see fall into 'enemy hands.' The DOJ Civil Rights Division, for example, has a reputation for being Democrat-aligned in political sympathies. It was 380 lawyers, and is expected to go down to 180 lawyers. That is a 200-lawyer gap.
Does an arch-progressive true-blue Democrat really want to insist in the DOJ-authorization bill that Trump must hire 200 lawyers to get back to 380 lawyers? Even though that will almost certainly mean 200 red-tribe lawyers who now form a majority of the civil rights division?
Or do they maybe feel that 180 mostly-old-guard lawyers are preferable, and deny Trump the influence of reshaping CRD composition? Hoping that- next presidency- they can re-expand the government service?
Even if that happens, my final point is that nothing that's going on right now is so easily reversed as the next administration in 4 years simply going 'reverse all that.' Even if an alternate Democratic trifecta emerges with the next Dem president, things will have changed.
- Buyouts and early retirements are removing a lot of the institutional knowledge from the Blue tribe favored programs, and thus ability to recreate as-were
- Former federal employees will be either long-gone or long-since employed elsewhere, mitigating the the potential flow-back population
- DC-divestments will make it harder for the sort of geographic-socialization to create a social consensus across as many agencies
- Blue-tribe distrust in red tribe institutions will complicate 'rehabilitation' when the distrust is at a composition and not just leadership level
- Even future anti-Trump/anti-MAGA purges of 'red' bureaucracies will only make the institutions more vulnerable to further changes
However these dynamics play out, I suspect the Trump administration's effects will still be felt decades from now. But this year of DOGE so far has been setting the stage for the budget negotiations that will make these changes far more long-term than they would otherwise be.
(Finally- none of this is any sort of dispute / counter / negation of the warning/accusation/predictions that the federal drawdown will hinder Trump or the Republicans in predictable/unflattering/unhelpful ways in the future. To quote H. L. Mencken, Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.)
Dean
Flairless
1mo ago
Gullibility is the tendency to be persuaded, which is method agnostic. If your idea of gullibility is tied to social conformity pressure alone, your concept needs to be expanded.
So the same thing that's been happening for the last 3 months?
No.
What has been happening for the last 3 months is a result of the different legal authorities for government agencies existing.
While Congress is the root authorizer of all money for the government, Congress is not the origin of all agencies. Certain agencies / offices exist because Congress says so, and some exist because the President thinks it'd be a good idea. When Congress funds the later, it tends to be in a far more open-to-executive discretion way. Instead of 'spend X amount on Y program for Z purpose,' where a failure to spend is against the law, the authorizations may be structured more like 'here is X amount for you to figure out how to spend best for Z purpose.' The last 3 months has been, in effect, the Executive branch saying 'we don't need all this after all' in the agencies where the Executive gets to make greater calls in what to spend on.
What Schumer is referring to is what happens when Congress does not pass a spending bill at all, and/or shifts to a continuing resolution model. Which has far more expansive in implications.
Honey wake up. The US Fiscal Year 2026 Budget War started today.
Earlier today, the Trump Administration published its discretionary budget request for next year, fiscal year 2026 (FY26). The USA Today has a media-level summary here. You are probably going to be seeing various other coverings as various federal agencies report their relevant equities, and media coverage of these.
More interesting (to nerds, accountants, or political prognosticators who wouldn't trust a media summary) is the White House's own summary here.
The Discretionary Budget request is basically what most people think of as 'the budget,' but is really 'everything that is not an entitlement.' This is the part of the budget where Congress and Presidents really haggle over year-by-year. The US President's Request is just that- a request- but generally serves as an initial input for the rest of the Congressional process to work off of.
Which- since this is a year of Republican trifecta- makes the following opening a bit... spicey. (For a bureaucratic proposal.)
(As a disclaimer- the following should be read as raising implications, not advocacy or predictions of success. I am not making any moral argument on the proposal at this time. Feel free to hate or like the budget proposal as you will.)
The President’s topline discretionary Budget holds the line on total spending while providing unprecedented increases for defense and border security. Defense spending increases by 13 percent, and appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security increase by nearly 65 percent, to ensure that agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources they need to complete their mission. These increases would be made possible through budget reconciliation, which would allow them to be enacted with simple majorities in the Congress, and not be held hostage by Democrats for wasteful nondefense spending increases as was the case in President Trump’s first term.
**Nondefense spending is reduced by $163 billion or 22.6 percent while still providing support for our Nation’s veterans, seniors, law enforcement, and other critical priorities for the Federal Government. Savings are achieved by reducing or eliminating programs found to be woke and weaponized against ordinary working Americans, wasteful, or best left to the States and localities to provide.
Well, maybe the partisan jabs are spicier to most. But the point of planning to pass through reconciliation is an opening salvo of an intent / threat to pass without seeking Democratic buy-in. That doesn't mean there will be no negotiations or concessions for votes, but it is signaling an interest/willingness to brute force through the legislature as needed.
This is very much maximizing the value of a trifecta while you have it. It can also galvanize an opposition party to call 'bet,' and try to target / pressure vulnerable Republicans to flip their vote, and thus make it fail. In which case, either the Republicans compromise, or a government shutdown results. This is what some Democrats wanted Chuck Schumer to do earlier this year, rather than pass the Republican budget through the Senate.
Keep a pin on that shutdown. We'll come back to it later.
The budget says it prioritizes three main things. This is the surface-level 'what they want you to know'-level priorities, not what specific elements are more important than others. Just in general terms, they are-
Rebuild our Nation’s Military. The Budget request for the Department of Defense builds on the President’s promise to achieve peace through strength by providing the resources to rebuild our military, re-establish deterrence, and revive the warrior ethos of our Armed Forces. In combination with $113 billion in mandatory funding, the Budget increases Defense spending by 13 percent, and prioritizes investments to: strengthen the safety, security, and sovereignty of the homeland; deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific; and revitalize America’s defense industrial base.
No real surprise. Generally ambiguous / non-specific.
Secure the Border. Amounts for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the 2026 Budget complement amounts that the Administration has requested as part of the reconciliation bill currently under consideration in Congress. The resources provided would empower the DHS to implement the President’s mass removal campaign and secure the border.
This is notable not because it's a surprise, but because budget laws are a key way for the US government to be granted authorities to do things. Part of the current judicial holdups on the Trump judicial programs have centered on 'you can't use that law in this way' objections. While the administration is likely going to argue in court that they do and see what it can still do, expect the cases they lose to lead to language in these bills giving a more modern congressional authorization.
Achieve American Energy Dominance. The Budget supports the President’s commitment to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources. The Budget cancels over $15 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Green New Scam funds provided to the Department of Energy for unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies that burden ratepayers and consumers. The Budget reorients Department of Energy funding toward research and development of technologies that could produce an abundance of domestic fossil energy and critical minerals, innovative concepts for nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuels, and technologies that promote firm baseload power. The Budget also cancels an additional $5.7 billion in IIJA funding provided to the Department of Transportation for failed and unnecessary electric vehicle charger grant programs.
Hostility to renewable energy spending is not a surprise. The emphasis on baseload power is consistent with Trump's arguments of reshoring domestic manufacturing, as baseload power dynamics are a major consideration for energy-intensive heavy industry.
The next three pages are 1-paragraph summaries of specific lines of effort. Call these sub-priorities, and expect these to be the Trump-aligned media's preferred framings for various efforts.
Due to the formatting dynamics, I can't copy-paste the whole thing. Instead, I will bring the main section headers, and what I think are the most interesting implications to the motte cultural war thread audience.
Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). The discretionary Budget request builds on the President’s MAHA Commission. The Budget provides resources to the Department of Health and Human Services that would allow the Secretary to tackle issues related to nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.
Generally unobjectionable. However, don't be surprised if progressive medical policies (particularly for transgender health) get involved in the medications and treatments section.
Support Our Veterans.
Includes a proposal to allow veterans to see local community providers, rather than go to specific Veteran Affairs installations.
This proposal will allow Trump to cut Veterans Affair federal employees due to offsetting care to the private sector. This is part of a reoccuring theme of 'things that would allow the Federal government to reduce workforce.' Expect it to be raised as cutting care for veterans, but also to be a popular-ish proposal with veteran groups depending on how it's done.
Preserve Social Security. The Budget also includes investments in program integrity, to reduce fraud and abuse in Social Security programs, and in investments in artificial intelligence to increase employee productivity and automate routine workloads.
The social security fraud angle will almost certainly tie into authorizing DOGE to access to social security data, which was subject to an injunction and was part of the mid-April media cycles. The AI-to-automate is the first mention of AI use, and is an enabler of a key theme of reducing the required government workforce.
Streamline K-12 Education Funding and Promote Parental Choice. To limit the Federal role in education, and provide States with more flexibility, the Budget creates a new K-12 Simplified Funding Program that consolidates 18 competitive and formula grant programs into a new formula grant, and a Special Education Simplified Funding Program that consolidates seven IDEA programs into a single grant. The Budget also invests $500 million, a $60 million increase, to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, which have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.
Grant program conditions are occasionally subject to criticism for which criteria they favor. Consolidating them not only provides a more uniform dynamic, but- again- reduces workforce requirements to manage.
A more than 10% increase in charter fund support, which is completely compatible with undercutting public employee teacher unions, which are a significant Democratic party interest group in various states.
Make America Skilled Again (MASA). The Budget proposes to give States and localities the flexibility to spend Federal workforce dollars to best support their workers and economies, instead of funneling taxpayer dollars to progressive non-profits finding work for illegal immigrants or focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Under this proposal, States would now have more control and flexibility to coordinate with employers and would have to spend at least 10 percent of their MASA grant on apprenticeship, a proven model that trains workers while they earn a paycheck and offers a valuable alternative to college.
Ignoring the (expected) DEI jab / defunding, this both (a) uses the grant model to decrease federal administrator roles in determining how grants are used, as opposed to checking for violations in state use, and (b) increases a local-state emphasis on manufacturing / 'apprenticeship' jobs. This later is consistent with the broader re-shore industry premise of other policies.
Support Space Flight. 7 billion for lunar exploration, 1 billion for Mars-focused efforts, and a reductions in 'lower priority' research for a 'leaner' workforce.
Expect 'lower priority' to go after environment-science related areas.
Realign Foreign Aid. The Budget reorganizes the U.S. Agency for International Development into the Department of State to meet current needs and eliminates non-essential staff that were hired based on DEI and preferencing practice.
Codifying what was already de facto being done under the Rubio dual-hat arrangement at the beginning of the administration. The probable expectation / intention of codifying this into law should update people's understandings of why the USAID shutdown went about the way it did, and view it as part of an opening move in the months that followed.
End Weaponization and Reduce Violent Crime. The Budget ends the previous administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), and instead prioritizes the Department’s key functions: combatting lawlessness; restoring order to America’s communities; fighting crime; and supporting America’s men and women in Blue. To that end, the Budget proposes to eliminate nearly 40 DOJ grant programs that are duplicative, not aligned with the President’s priorities, fail to reduce violent crime, or are weaponized against the American people.
Expect this to be the shoe to drop on parts of the FBI that Trump has a suspicion / skepticism / has felt internally opposed by, but which have been protected by their establishing laws that limit USAID-style Executive-only actions against them.
Maintain Support for Tribal Nations. The Budget preserves Federal funding for the Indian Health Service and supports core programs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education, sustaining the Federal Government’s support for core programs that benefit tribal communities. At the same time, it streamlines other programs for tribal communities, to reduce inefficiencies and eliminate funding for programs and activities found to be ineffective
This matches a general theme of 'healthcare to Americans is not the target; administrating programs that disperse it and other types of programs are.'
Address Drug Abuse and Mental Health. This includes redirecting DEA’s foreign spending to regions with criminal organizations that traffic significant quantities of deadly drugs into the United States—Mexico, Central America, South America, and China. The Budget also proposes to refocus activities that were formerly part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, by eliminating funding for programs that duplicate block grant funding, or are too small to have a national impact.
This is actually the first budget-level section focused on foreign countries, and it's focused on the Western Hemisphere. This is particularly notable due to Trump designated the drug cartels as terrorist organizations. This- and the earlier DHS- indicate an expected / intended increase in emphasis in Latin America efforts, which... could be not well received, depending on how Trump goes about it. (Or- alternatively- foreign agreement in cooperating is a basis of ongoing tariff negotiations.)
The second sentence of programs that duplicate block grant is notable as part of the block grant trend. For those unfamiliar, in the US block grants refer to money given to states and localities directly to use for specific programs, as opposed to programs managed by the government. It's basically delegating to state levels, as opposed to a federal bureaucracy. Advocates typically argue on grounds of efficiency / local expertise. Opponents of block grants have claimed they are a back-door to reducing programs, and/or make it harder to monitor.
Support Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Research. The Budget maintains funding for research in artificial intelligence and quantum information science at key agencies, to ensure the United States remains on the cutting edge of these critical technologies’ development and responsible use.
Quoted in full for the interested. There are no cuts advocated here, but also no increases claimed.
Improve Wildland Firefighting. Federal wildfire risk mitigation and suppression responsibilities currently are split across five agencies in two departments. The Budget reforms Federal wildland fire management to create operational efficiencies by consolidating and unifying Federal wildland fire responsibilities into a new Federal Wildland Fire Service at the Department of the Interior. This new service would streamline Federal wildfire suppression response, risk mitigation efforts, and coordination with non-Federal partners to combat the wildfire crisis.
Further reorganization / consolidation / implicit reduction in overall scope.
And that's it! At least on the White House summary.
Something not mentioned- but which may be hidden in the non-public spending- was anything about relocating federal agency headquarters out of DC. I made a point last month about how relocating agencies out of DC could be expected to have long-term effects on their political alignment with hyper-blue DC norms. I would be surprised if that doesn't come up.
But- to bring back to an earlier point- how likely is this to pass?
A lot of this is naked culture war politics. That's not surprising, even if the previous administration used different political interest language in its proposals and such. There are also some pretty clear institutional interests. In so much that any agency is seen as 'too friendly' or 'too hostile,' reorganizations, reductions, and so on, any reduction is a risk in future allies and influence. Or a mitigation, depending on your perspective.
So, that's going to be a major question of the next few months. Coincidentally, right as Trump reduces his interest in Ukraine after the mineral deal, freeing up decisionmaker space for ongoing tariff negotiations and then the later budget battle culminations.
What will happen? Who will win? Will the Democrats be able to peal off enough Republicans and deny the budget the votes it needs to pass? Will the Democrats compromise and support a bill that guts treasured programs and threatens some interest groups? Will the Democrats be able to save their institutional allies?
Or will the Republicans lose, and be forced to take blame with a government shutdown?
In a respect, that last option may not matter. When it comes to saving certain agencies, this budget may be heading for a 'Heads I win, Tails you lose' dynamic.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ignited a party rebellion by averting a government shutdown earlier this year. He has been accused of being too weak on Trump, of not picking the fight the democratic base wanted. I can fully see one occurring again, but worse, with a few more months of political pressure.
As bad as passing the CR is, as I said, allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.
First, a shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now.
Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs, and personnel “non-essential,” furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.
The decision on what is essential would be solely left to the executive branch, with nobody left at agencies to check them.
In short, a shutdown would give Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE, and Russell Vought the keys to the city, state and country.
...
Many federal employees and government experts are rightly worried that a temporary shutdown could lead to permanent cuts.
Second, if we enter a shutdown, Congressional Republicans would weaponize their majorities to cherry-pick which parts of the government to reopen.
In a protracted shutdown, House and Senate Republicans would pursue a strategy of bringing bills to the floor to reopen only their favorite departments and agencies, while leaving other vital services that they don’t like to languish.
...
Extremely troubling, I believe, is that a shutdown could stall federal court cases – one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness. It could furlough critical staff, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals, and clogging the justice system for months or even years.
I will note in this last section that judges legally cannot require the Federal government to spend money on programs Congress has not authorized money for in a budget or continuing resolution.
So each of those judicial-injunction fights? The ones stopping Trump from closing a program now / demanding employees be re-hired / spend money on the already-passed budgets? Money that would be legally unavailable for the government to spend without a FY26 budget?
...yeah... you can't injunction a shutdown of government agencies during a government shutdown...
A lot of the ongoing DOGE fights aren't necessarily about shutting programs literally right now or not at all. In some respects, they should be thought of as preparatory actions. Testing limits, generating early wins for the base and provoking some doomed fights from the opposition, seeing what polls better or worse with the electorate they care more about. Setting conditions for the FY26 budget that Trump's team was planning for.
And baiting out the nation-wide injunctions, so that the ongoing Supreme Court case about them can limit a current go-to policy obstacle. Which- whatever the outcome- will clarify the legal environment, and Trump's legal strategies, for the next few years.
So... who wants to register predictions on a US government shutdown later this year?
A Game of Chairs (At Columbia University)
or
How
Trump Defeated Columbia UniversityColumbia University Defeated ItselfThe Intelligencer, a generally left-leaning American media outlet of the sort to still refer to anti-Trump actors 'the Resistance,' released a long-but-interesting report on many of the internal dynamics of the road to Columbia University's rise to prominence in the US culture war in the last year or so.
A (brief) recap for this year is that Trump Administration's suspended 400 million in grants and contracts on grounds of Civil Rights Act violations (namely anti-semitism related to Gaza War protests). Columbia's public acceptance of the Trump administration terms for restoring funding was under cut the then-President downplaying any impacts from the Federal agreement in a private faculty meeting.
As the
strikethroughsub-title implies, the proximal cause, and political attribution that author (or editor) wants you to take away, is that Trump defeated Columbia. The not-so-deep subtext that is more interesting (and perhaps not surprising) is how the Columbia internal politics sabotaged set the stage.TLDR: Columbia is currently in an unstable leadership vacuum because of how the university distributed internal administrative powers to students and faculty, how a key (but controversial) past President consolidated power in the office of the president rather than the senate, and how the Board attempted to mitigate/reform the Presidential power centralization led to leaders who were unprepared with the politics of the Gaza War. Would-be ambitious university faculty who tried to take advantage did not help.
This is presented because (a) the Columbia dynamics exposed may help people understand the dynamic of 'marching through institutions' across leadership generations, and (b) rabbit holes be fun to share.
///
The Nature of the Columbia Governance Problem
Two don't-call-it-foreshadowing notes here.
1: Remember that money is fungible.
2: Keep track of which department is offering praise or criticism.
(A) Root of the Problem
As a result of Vietnam War protests, Columbia delegated various institutional powers to a sub-body that gave faculty and students- but particularly faculty and students coordinating together- not just policy power, but disciplinary power.
Columbia Presidential Centralization
President Bollinger, 2002-2023, centralized administrative power in the office of the President, and sidelined the faculty/student senate institutions.
While not explicit, this is a two-fold basis of an anti-Presidential-deference institutional bias in the student-faculty senate. First, common grievance / loss of influence to bind teachers, and the students they can influence, seeking to regain influence. Second, and less obvious, that the President would decrease efforts to build/maintain a power coalition in the Senate that he does not need the assistance of... in favor of other, more directly influential, influence areas.
Bollinger Influence in the Columbia Board of Trustees
Bollinger's influence matters because the Columbia Board of Trustees in power now is in a post-Bollinger transition. Because...
Reframed- the current board of trustees is not only Bollinger-era, but were used to a stronger University President who was willing to sideline / ignore the student-and-faculty university senate.
But the recent presidents are not strong Presidents, in part by the Board's own design.
The Board Strikes Back
In 2023, the Bollinger-era board replaced Bollinger with a new, and more importantly, foreign and less experienced in Columbia politics, University President. Shafik was a 'can appeal to all interests' compromise. She had the the demographic aspects attractive to the liberal-art progressive wing, the economic background to recognize the role / relevance of the 'cash cow' departments, and for the board she was a deliberate break from the Bollinger-style president.
And she was aware of that from the start.
And then history happened.
Shafik and the Gaza Conflict on Campus
The relevant point here isn't that the University had strong pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups. The point here is that Shafik was personally involved in the peace process before, which- along with her deliberately non-Columbia Uni/foreign background that went into her hiring- shaped her (eventual) decision to allow New York Police onto the campus to arrest protestor encampments/occupations, after an April 2024 Congressional hearing. (This Columbia-centric hearing followed the disastrous 2023 Congressional hearing that led to the replacement of Harvard's president.)
Skipping forward just a bit for a relevant perspective from her-
So Shafik's lived experience- previously considered a virtue in her hiring- led to decisions that ultimately led to her ouster.
But there was more before then, which started the grounds by which the Trump Administration would later invoke the Civil Rights Act against Columbia.
The Rise of the Antisemitism Civil Rights Act Issue
Going back to the immediate aftermath of October 7, even before the Israeli ground incursion...
This created 2 separate problems for pro-Palestinian institutional interests in Columbia against the office of the President, and the Board of Trustees more generally.
First, the divestment demand went against the Board's mandate for Shafik when they hired her, which is rarely helpful.
Particularly in the light of the 'liberal-arts are prestigious but unprofitable' tension. Spreading the brand is what allows subsidizing such.
Second, and worse, this created a Civil Rights Act violation risk if Columbia did not respond appropriately.
For those unfamiliar,...
The 'or' is significant. A CRA hostile environment discrimination does not have to be created by the university. It is enough if you accept, tolerate, or leave uncorrected.
Additionally, anti-semitism is considered a violation of title VI CRA, but anti-anti-semitism is not, because the later is a political position, which is not a protected category, but antisemitism is considered an act against a protected category. This is Trump's fault.
So. In the opening days following the October 7 2023 attack, a Columbia faculty member publicly praised the atrocity in glowing terms, campus protestors chanted slogan with known ethnic cleansing connotations, and at a University permitted protest, pro-Palestinian protestors ignored their designated deconfliction exit and instead mobbed a Jewish center and locked jewish students inside.
Also, later, unrepentent protestors did not help.
Remember Title VI, and 'or left uncorrected.'
But back in April 24, Shafik went to Congress.
This probably did not help Shafik's position before Congress. It also may or may not have been predictable what the outcomes would be.
Shafik resorted to law enforcement against the encampments. During this times, student government- but also teacher government because the Senate is both student-and-teacher dominated- met with Shafik privately, even as protest leaders- presumably a different and 'unconnected' group- refused to meet her at all.
And this is when we get our next governance turnover.
The Board Intervenes (Again)
If you want to take a guess on how many of these identified members are Jewish, have children on campus who are jewish, or otherwise close connections with jewish friends / family, feel free to look up for yourself. The answer is more than two. I only bring this up to note the only time the article actually specifies someone's Jewishness later.
The point now, however, is that the Board has a positional divide between 'anti-semitism is a big problem' and 'anti-semitism is a concern but is disingenuously used to stifle speech.'
The issue that Columbia ran into was that the protestors lost the Free Speech argument with the Bollinger-era board... despite Bollinger being a notable First Amendment advocate himself in his selections.
Or possibly because of his influence.
This point here isn't that the pro-Palestinian protestors agitated their way into a losing argument, though they did. The point here is that the pro-Palestinian protestor advocates were running into the Civil Rights Act issue.
Columbia University had stated policies on time, place, and manner restrictions. These were pre-established, and pre-enforced, restrictions. Not equally enforcing them could become a form of favoritism contributing to, well, a Title VI hostile environment under the CRA.
However, the Board didn't come to a consensus as much as a consensus came with timely personnel turnover.
A previous gridlock leads to an imbalance in favor of the clamp downs by the Board. However, the Board doesn't have all the formal power here.
Remember the root of the problem paragraph earlier?
The Student-Teach Senate Demands Control Over The Judicial-Disciplinary Process (And Gets It (Back))
After the Vietnam War Protests, the (presumably then-anti-war Board of Trustees) gave students (and teachers) the right to sanction protest rule violators. However, this was rarely and haphazardly used.
In the aftermath of Oct 7, Shafik used an office that was created during the Bollinger era of centralizing power into the Presidency to handle protest issues.
After the (highly condemned by student and teacher protestors) start of enforcement, Shafik gives up institutional control of the disciplinary process back to the Student and Teacher-dominated senate. This may be partly out of a (doomed) compromise to stable the ship of office, but it is also consistent with Shafik and the Columbia Board of Trustee's desire to dis-empower the Bollinger-era president.
But what Shafik did on her way out the door isn't what mattered. What the Senate did not do was more relevant.
Remember Title VI.
Shafik started in an environment where Columbia professors (and students) were encouraging a hostile environment, faced with clear speech policy and protest management violations that made non-action against violators a form of acceptance / toleration, and then handed off the disciplinary/correction process to an institution that did not work... after her predecessor had given her office the tools to take actions.
In August 2024, Shafik quit, in what was the then-shortest presidential tenure in more than 200 years.
Enter Katrina Armstrong: The Anti-Anti-Bollinger President
Katrina Armstrong, Shafik's successor, was picked from the in-house university leaders to be an anti-Shafik. Someone who was more familiar with Columbia politics, more sensitive to student interests, and, well...
...well, remember the departments praise and criticism are coming from.
However- and forgive the paragraph separation- Armstrong was not as familiar with Israeli-Palestinian politics as she might (not) have been with institutional politics.
In other words: the Columbia Board of Trustees replaced an economist directly familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but insufficiency sensitive to the Columbia protests, with a doctor so unfamiliar with it (or inclined to play the part of ignorant) she had to ask the (it's important to note he's Jewish) Jewish professor who ousted her predecessor for being too hard on pro-Palestinian protestors why other Jewish faculty and students might perceive antisemitism.
The Gathering Enemy Action
The 'how' to brankrupcy is another para that refers to an American Enterprise Institute paper by Max Eden. I don't feel the article characterizes it well, so link it for your own review.
However, the point is that financial interests were at risk was raised, and...
The Armstrong Denial
The Stand Colombia Society does not have much of a public facing position on politics in general. However, in March 2025 it did publish a (paywalled even on internet archive) position paper titled: Issue #037: No, the Endowment Cannot Be Used to “Fight Trump”
The public-facing summary is-
Pretty strong words. But why might interim president from the medical center have dismissed even a 'mere' quarter-billion million short-term threat?
Because there could be a bigger-than-that short-term windfall incoming, if Armstrong played her professional self-interest cards right.
Armstrong's Nine-Figure Gamble for the (Columbian) Presidency
Roy Vagelos's characterization here is interesting, because it provides some interesting sequencing implications, not least because the Vagelos donation was made public on 22 August with no public acknowledgement of the Armstrong condition. Which just so happened to be aweek after Armstrong took the acting-President position after Shafik's resignation on 14 August 24.
Which created a sequencing dynamic of...
Naturally, knowing that the biggest financial windfall of her university's year is conditional on her future exit, Armstrong...
Which continues so that-
But really, remember the context.
And Armstrong would look really, really good to the student/teacher protestor block if she heroically stood up to the Trump administration, and held out against to any short-term cuts thanks to her ability to pull in that $400 million mega-donation to cover a year of cuts.
And thus Katrina Armstrong almost got the job of her ambitions, the accolades of her humanity peers, and the support of the Board.
And then the
Fire NationTrump Administration AttackedInitial efforts start small, but escalate week by week.
Yes, those individuals are non-citizens who were involved in participating or leading the Columbia protests. However, one of the interesting demands from the 'ransom note' list is actually institutional power related..
One of the bold letter demands is Primacy of the President in disciplinary matters, i.e. restoring the Bollinger reform, and reversing the late-Shafik power turnover to the University Senate.
Some held out hope for a defiant university administration. There was just one problem for the 'concede no ground' caucus-
Armstrong's support from the (still-Bollinger-era) Board wasn't as firm as she (probably) presumed.
The Fall of Armstrong
Again- remember the department.
But also- remember the sequencing.
A sequence-conspiracist might think that- as Armstrong made her political alliances known- she was left to take an easily foreseeable fall.
John Kluge's Sr.'s gift had been for... $400 million. Back in... 2007.
While $400 mil in 2007 is more than $400 mil in 2024, 2024 is a heck of a lot more recent- and influential- than 2007. And John Kluge Junior is not the one donating in a year Columbia needs money most.
Or, more relevantly, when Armstrong needs support most.
Elsewhere...
Armstrong's finishing moment was, perhaps appropriately, a matter of record when she tried to make it not. Twice, sorta.
...
There is some irony in how Armstrong was replaced, though.
So Armstrong was replaced by a member of the (Bollinger)-era Trustee Board member, Claire Shipman.
And not just any board member- the co-Chair.
What Next for Columbia?
And as an opening policy, Shipman, and the most direct Bollinger-era Board proxy yet, votes to dissolve the Senate.
In the end, perhaps Bollinger, or at least his influence, will win the Columbia game of chairs after all.
Or maybe not. Chaos is a ladder, and all that.
Then again...
I am sure they, and their preferred University leaders, will have the Board's full support.
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