This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Optimistically, the academics leaving the USA are the ones most ideologically captured, such that their contributions to knowledge production is easily replaceable or even a net negative, as is the case for much of what is purportedly being cut by DOGE. Given how academia has been pushing for the model of uplifting people by putting them into these institutions versus the the model of putting people into these institutions based on their ability to contribute to knowledge production for a couple of generations now, it wouldn't surprise me if even a solid majority of academics could leave the USA and leave the USA's academia better off for it.
Pessimistically, there's enough damage to funding in even in the most productive portions of academia, such that plenty of the academics leaving the USA really do create a "brain drain." I'd guess that academics doing actual good knowledge production are most likely to have the resources and options to pick up their lives and move to another continent, after all.
It really speaks to the immense wealth and prosperity of the western world that academic institutions are able to support so many unproductive and anti-productive academics; is it worth it to get rid of many of those, even at the cost of some loss of the productive ones? Or do we accept those as the cost for maximizing the amount of actual productive academics? The shape of the data probably matters a lot for whatever conclusion one draws. If we're looking at a 10-90 proportion of productive-un/anti-productive academics, and we can cut 50% of the latter while cutting 1% of the former, that sounds like that'd be worth it, whereas if cutting 1% of the latter results in cutting 50% of the former, that probably isn't.
Which then takes us a step back to the fact that we no longer have any credible institutions to tell us what the data looks like. The past decade has seen mainstream journalism outlets constantly discrediting themselves, especially with respect to politics surrounding Trump and his allies, and non-mainstream ones don't have a great track record by my lights, either. So I guess we'll see.
In terms of scientific research of the sort that would make USA stronger relative to other countries, like rocketry or nuclear physics in the past, it seems to me that AI is the most relevant field, where I perceive USA as still being most attractive for AI researchers. At least in the private sector, where a lot of the developments seem to be taking place. The part about that that worries me the most is the actual hardware the AI runs on, which basically universally are produced elsewhere, which is a mostly separate issue from the brain drain.
In my experience, there are a substantial number of ideologically captured researchers working in hard science fields where it doesn't affect their output very much, but who would consider moving to Europe if they felt the government was sufficiently hostile to their politics. Losing these people would result in serious brain drain, even if it would probably make the social sciences more productive.
Perhaps, but the Europeans have demonstrated a complete inability to make use of them either; it's a question of "they work in the US and the work gets done", or "they go home and receive half pay for doing nothing".
I mean, perhaps some people are concerned about brain drain solely from the perspective of a zero-sum competition with other countries, but I think that letting these people's talent go to waste is a loss for humanity as a whole.
Well, then their receiving countries can reorient themselves to take advantage of their returning human capital.
If they don’t, perhaps because those politics (that their researchers are more aligned with) inherently won’t let them, who am I to tell them that the perpetuation of those politics is a net-negative for humanity because it means objective progress is sacrificed? Clearly they believe those politics more important, and far be it from me to interrupt their mistakes, or even categorize them as such.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link