domain:aporiamagazine.com
When people with the opposite politics get in power, it is perfectly reasonable for them to decide that no, they do not want to provide government funding for institutions that are fighting them politically.
I agree! And I agree that the open letter is pushing it, and I find the letter pretty obnoxious.
I think that Tao by signing the open letter was, deliberately or not, unfairly taking advantage of the fact that non-leftist academics who signed an open letter supporting different politics would possibly expose themselves to career-endangering consequences.
That said, I still think that @Sunshine's take goes overboard. Identifying your own political side with America as a whole and calling for the wholesale demolition of the other side is a bit much of a reaction to what amounts to an academic most people have never even heard of putting his name on a politicized open letter.
faceh
2hr ago
If the moon was full of gold nuggets which you just had to pick up, that would still not pay for the expense to bring them to Earth.
Rookie mistake, you can usually make better use of those by manufacturing things in space anyway. (there's an Isaac Arthur video for everything).
Just imagine the settlement of the Americas in a world where every plank of wood had to be shipped in from the old world for the first 100 years.
Yep. But when the boats got big enough, now we can import whole fucking bridges from China.
We're really just quibbling about scale here. If enough industrial capacity gets built in space (robots probably a necessary step here) it brings the cost of operating in space down rapidly.
The question is why would humans 'prefer' to edge out into space and expand horizons for everyone.
And my point is, as stated
I look around and realize that the mindset of people who both appreciate why space is important AND have the chops to actually build the industries necessary to realize an outer space economy is incredibly rare, especially on a global scale. I'd guess a majority of humans are focused on/optimized for bare survival on the day-to-day, another huge chunk, especially in the West, are in a distracted hedonism loop, and of the remaining who might otherwise learn towards space exploration, many (half?) have been mindkilled by lefty politics, effective altruism, or some other nerd-sniping ideology or political orientation that diverts their focus.
So its simply a matter of lack of humanity's real will to do something, to sail beyond the horizon without any guarantees of what was out there, or if they'd survive or ever return.
But as stated, EVERYTHING ELSE is out there. Its pretty much self explanatory why someone would want to leave earth to check it out, unless they just felt too comfortable to be budged. But that only lasts as long as our sun does. So once again, we either get off this rock, or we die, never knowing the answers.
Okay I'm quite bullish on space exploration, but I really don't agree with this. At all. Even a little bit.
EXCEPT that the magic of internet recipes and globalization means that pretty much ANY COUNTRY'S CUISINE is available to me in at most an hour's drive in my own state! There is no such thing as food that is truly 'unique' to a single geographic area anymore!
Globohomo is a thing but this is seriously overstating the point. I'm a Malaysian who now lives in Sydney and no, the Malaysian food joints in Sydney are not the same. I have lived here for nine years, and in that span of time I have only managed to find one authentic restaurant (which I only found last week. Yes it took me nine years to find one). Not gonna lie, I nearly teared up when eating the food.
Of course, it's a single restaurant, and it serves approximately 0.001% of Malaysian dishes. There is still no substitute for going to a country and trying their food there. The amount of variety your city offers may satisfy you, but no, it isn't a representative sample of what the world has to offer.
Something that's also becoming more evident is that outside of the West, especially outside of the tourist areas... most places are just shitty to visit. Beggars, pickpockets, scammers, filth, and aggressive cultures that would see me as a mark for exploitation.
Have you... actually been to East Asia recently? Not 50 years ago. Not even 20. Recently. I have, and this is not what it's like there. Hell it wasn't even like that when I grew up in Southeast Asia. Things are clean, and generally quite safe - safer than in many Western countries to be honest (look up the crime stats in a city like Beijing and compare that to say London. There's no comparison). In addition, I routinely see more homeless in Western cities than I do in Asian ones, and more insane people who just do crazy shit on the subways and streets. There's a real sense of hope that things are getting better in many Asian countries.
In contrast, many areas in the West feel like they're stagnating. My recent trip to Toronto was eye-opening - the sense of torpor was palpable, the subways were fucking falling apart with water damage and exposed wiring in a lot of areas, and homeless were so common that it was hard to walk a kilometre without encountering one of their encampments. I would much rather go home to third-world Malaysia than visit Toronto again. Really, it's funny - I used to want to leave Asia, and now I really yearn to go back.
ulyssessword
2hr ago
I still get surprised at how fast computers can do basic tasks.
A few weeks ago, I had to compare some entries in a .csv list to the filenames that were buried a few layers deep in some subfolders. It went through the thousands of items in an instant. I didn't even bother saving the output because I could regenerate it as fast as doubleclicking a file (or faster if it has to do something silly like opening Microsoft Word).
faceh
2hr ago
At ten trillion dollars, you can give everyone on planet Earth access to first world health care
I honestly don't believe that, since after a certain point the bottleneck STOPS being money, and starts being skilled practitioners, specialized machines, and increasingly rare chemicals/materials.
There's a finite number of people on the planet smart/dedicated enough to become an actual doctor. We're probably not utilizing them optimally now, but the more we throw into the medical field, the fewer we have to throw into other industries where they could have more impact. Tradeoffs.
There's probably not enough of them to give everyone access to true 'first world' healthcare, sans leaps in Robotics (although... LLMs are giving us a tool that can somewhat replace doctors).
Which is also why sending EVERY child on earth to University would be akin to lighting the money on fire, incidentally. Not all of them are going to learn much.
If I was going to throw money at something, it'd probably be at trying to gene edit some significant portion of the population to bump their intelligence up more. Not to make more geniuses, but to just reduce the number of violent idiots ruining things for everyone else. Raise the floor so we aren't spending as much money cleaning up their messes for them.
And being clear, I do not give two FUCKS about 'opportunity cost' of space exploration. The benefits, in the long term, are so ridiculously asymetrical in favor of doing its hilarious.
We could spend trillions on food to simply grow the population of hungry people until we can no longer keep up... or we can spend trillions putting up O'Neill cylinders that enable literally optimal conditions for growing food crops, and can be scaled up endlessly so our population never outpaces our productivity.
This choice should be easy, if we weren't the type of species that we are.
When literally EVERY OTHER watt of energy, every kilo of rare earth metals, every other possible ounce of water is OUT THERE and not on the surface of our planet, do me a solid and try to calculate the 'opportunity cost' of leaving all those valuable resources floating in space, unused, for hundreds of years.
The sooner we make it viable to get to those things and use them, the more problems we are actually capable of solving.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
Attacking Trump on his private blog as a candidate for President is Tao's right as an American citizen. Putting a pseudo-mathematical spin on that (as he does) to try to back his political views with his mathematical expertise is a version of getting Eulered, but while it's bad epistemology that's all it is.
Signing an open letter like that one, on his authority as a professor of mathematics at a university -- a public university at that -- is politicizing the institution. When people with the opposite politics get in power, it is perfectly reasonable for them to decide that no, they do not want to provide government funding for institutions that are fighting them politically. The letter isn't innocuous at all.
faceh
2hr ago
True, but all the experts got wallbroken pretty quickly and came out looking like Schmucks.
faceh
2hr ago
If you are suggesting that this is possible for any one person, I would be extremely surprised if you believe it.
Well, I'm also banking on improvements in longevity.
I also note that most people can learn all the 'important' information about literally any place in the world via the internet. As well as any time in history.
I've never been to Rome, but I've watched dozens of documentaries on it and so I've got a pretty good understanding of the main attractions there. I'm sure there are more interesting things to find on the ground... but I'd also bet that the experiences are very corporatized and streamlined, seeing as MILLIONS of people per year visit and they have to accommodate that.
I don't know that actually going to Rome would be all that enlightening to me. I still want to try it.
And this will make me sound cynical, but the world really is homogenizing. I can eat at a McDonalds in virtually any European city. Cultures are just not nearly as siloed as they used to be.
"Ah, but Faceh! You should eschew commoditized food and eat the local cuisine, Anthony Bourdain style!"
EXCEPT that the magic of internet recipes and globalization means that pretty much ANY COUNTRY'S CUISINE is available to me in at most an hour's drive in my own state! There is no such thing as food that is truly 'unique' to a single geographic area anymore!
Literally within walking distance of my office (which is in a smallish town!) is a Greek food restaurant, a Sushi/Sake bar, a Tex-Mex spot (and like 4 different standard Mexican restaurants), an Italian spot, a Peruvian spot, an Indian spot a short jaunt away, a Pho place, a Poke bowl spot. Korean barbecue, Cuban, Brazillian, and even a Hooters. Every kind of seafood, EVERY kind of pizza. And a specialized Bar that stocks alcohols from everywhere around the world. My area hosts a large population of German Expats, and they host a LARGE Oktoberfest event every year. I've got a low-rent version of EPCOT right in my fuckin' backyard. Also, I live only hours away from the actual EPCOT... so I can enjoy travel to other countries in miniature.
There's a Korean-Baptist church, of all things, right down the road from my house. Also, a Hindu temple. also a Buddhist temple, I just now learned. The world is genuinely smaller than ever. And will continue shrinking, if I get my way and tech keeps improving!
And hey, it would be nice to go and visit certain countries just to say I did. BUT...
Something that's also becoming more evident is that outside of the West, especially outside of the tourist areas... most places are just shitty to visit. Beggars, pickpockets, scammers, filth, and aggressive cultures that would see me as a mark for exploitation.
However, I will actually admit that natural wonders are irreplaceable, and cannot be simulated or imitated with current tech. Yellowstone National Park is actually mindblowingly beautiful and unique, in a way that can't be captured on film. But how long would it actually take for you to experience all the natural wonders on the planet, if you spent approximately a couple weeks exploring each one. 10 years? 20 at most? THEN WHAT. Those wonders aren't changing or updating regularly!
Time to look for wonders on other planets!. Personally, I REALLY want to visit Olympus Mons.
if they can turn Mt. Everest into a Tourist Trap, they can do that with anywhere worth going.
Finally finally, what happens if we get approximately 1:1 simulations in VR of these places, which can convincingly simulate the natural wonders or any location on earth? Then you can go anywhere on earth cheaply and see all there is to see without leaving home.
What then? How quickly will you figure out that there's just not THAT much variety, in the end?
I've heard of none. Why do you believe that should matter?
Most people here are familiar with the Herbert quote:
“When I am Weaker Than You, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom Because that is according to my principles.”
That is a reasonable approximation of my model of Blue Tribe. Over the past ten years, I've watched Progressivism attempt a full-fledged social revolution through methodical weaponization of our society's institutions and centers of value. The revolution they attempted was merciless and insane, caused incalculable harm, and cannot at this date truly be said to have failed. They are on the back foot, momentarily, but they very clearly have learned nothing and will go right back to their revolutionary march the instant they see an opportunity to do so. They must not be given that opportunity. Their political movement must be entombed, their centers of power torn down and destroyed, any possible route back to social dominance foreclosed.
It seems madness to me to pretend that, having seen what we have seen, we should go back to "the way things were before", turn our backs and let them have another swing at our necks. If forestalling that threat means a few years of reduced scientific output, so be it. That is a small price to pay compared to another Blue offensive. To the extent that "neutral" institutions wish to protect themselves from the depredations of unrestrained culture war, common knowledge is necessary that such a defense is achieved through rigorous neutrality, not unlimited Blue appeasement.
You appear to be approaching this from a frame of "how can we remove the worst outliers from the academic system, so that we can get back to the work at hand". I approach it from the angle of "Even ignoring the worst outliers, the Academy has become a vast system for converting taxpayer money into Progressive political power and social control". "Cancelation" is a single facet of that machine. The machine, as a whole, must go.
SkoomaDentist
2hr ago
Img2img has entered the chat
anti_dan
3hr ago
Your problem is thinking there is a healthy tree at all. There are a tiny number of healthy branches. The roots and trunk are diseased and rotten.
gattsuru
3hr ago
The default settings for LM Studio on a GTX 3060, i3-12100, and 48GB DDR5 memory at pretty conservative XMP, using qwen3-30b-a3b-Q_6K gave >13 token/s for this test question. That's not amazing, and I could probably squeak out a lot more performance going to 4bpw or more aggressive tuning, but it's still performant enough to work.
((Although I'd put the code quality pretty low -- in addition to the normal brittleness, there's some stupid bugs unexpected behaviors with filesystemwatcher, and most LLMs so far have walked straight into them. But since some of the other LLMs don't even get the question understood enough to use a filesystemwatcher, there's a bit of a curve here.))
anti_dan
3hr ago
You are ignoring what the actual situation is. Regardless of their actual research output, the supposedly legitimate researchers allowed their research to be misrepresented to support left wing narratives. And even when the research was too obscure or theoretical to do that, they still allowed themselves to provide cover fire for much larger groups of illegitimate "research". It is bad to not be able to calculate the proper path to the moon from Cape Canaveral. But it doesn't matter that you got the calculations right in some obscure corner of the world, if actually those calculators ran cover for DEI nonsense that they, the white men, aren't even a part of NASA or any of NASA's consultants. Instead those places are all black women cosplaying that movie that came out a decade ago and the rockets all land in the Atlantic.
Goodguy
3hr ago
Signing an open letter and writing an article that attacks Trump is pretty innocuous behavior, in my opinion. Is there any evidence that he tried to, for example, cancel anyone?
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
3hr ago
But science or mathematics, at least if they are carried out in any kind of reasonable good faith, are hard to skew like that.
The maths work out or don't work out regardless
Mathematicians are pretty honest about the fact that problem selection, and ultimately basic choices of definitions, are driven at least partially by cultural and aesthetic concerns. But the actual content of mathematics is extremely difficult to politicize, given how abstract it is.
It doesn't matter whether such-and-such the physicist is a rootless cosmopolitan because the results of theories of physics do not depend on the character or values of the theoretician.
It is much harder to introduce bias into fundamental physics than it is to introduce bias into psychology or even biology. I kinda gotta hand it to Irigaray for having the chutzpah to suggest that we haven't fully characterized the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations because of men's fear of menstruation and "feminine" fluids, but... yeah that's actually not a reasonable thing to believe...
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
I feel like it is worth noting here that the results of any valid scientific investigation don't depend on patriotism?
Do they depend on Diversity Equity and Inclusion? If not, how is it that none of the people complaining about Trump's cuts seemed tobhave an issue with their funding being dependant on that supposed "box checking"?
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
3hr ago
When you’re a marine in Iwo Jima, you light fires at every cave entrance after you’ve thrown 3-4 grenades in. Then you move onto the next one. And the next one.
There’s nothing worth saving in there that just won’t slow you down and get your people killed.
That’s just where we are in the culture war. How could anyone be surprised at this point?
odd_primes
3hr ago
TracingWoodgrains has a thread on the topic here: https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1957878299146993821
Terence Tao, signing an open letter in 2020: "We are enraged at the everyday operations of a white supremacist society. ... Complicity with these systems of oppression is deeply rooted in the origins of this country."
He also wrote a blog in 2016 entitled "It ought to be common knowledge that Donald Trump is not fit for the presidency of the United States of America". He might want to put forth the image of a politically neutral mathematician now that his funding is at risk, but that does not reflect his previous behavior.
anti_dan
3hr ago
The nuance was available for Tao and other academics doing "good" work to police their own and not let their own research to be used to launder pure advocacy and propaganda under the guise of research. You can't be a part of "no enemies on the left" for the better part of your career and then act shocked when people put weight on your words and actions.
At the species level, at the level of the collective, we can allocate resources to everything. My post was more about asking why, at the individual level, space colonization becomes such a powerfully attractive symbol for some people and not others.
I think space colonisation has become an attractive symbol because it's an indisputable display of human advancement, and it requires a whole lot of technological know-how in a wide range of fields, possibly more so than any other goal. Developing technology that's both speedy and durable enough to cross light years' worth of distances, keeping humans in stasis or sustaining a viable colony during these prohibitively long travel times, setting up a workable society in a completely alien environment etc are insanely difficult goals way beyond anything we've attempted before.
Every step of the way you're straining against the laws of physics as much as possible - finding a propulsion method that can feasibly bring you anywhere near relativistic speeds is difficult, and if you do, there's the interstellar medium to contend with, which at these speeds basically becomes hard radiation bombarding your starship, its travellers, and all the equipment aboard. And keep in mind, deep space has no significant energy source to speak of, meaning you have to carry all your fuel with you if you want to power a ship (Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, anyone?). Don't even speak about Bussard ramjets that harvest hydrogen from the interstellar medium for fusion, because that's undoable too. Once you reach your destination, you've likely landed on a planet that's nothing like Earth and where the raw physical environment threatens to kill your colonists every step of the way.
I can't think of another goal that's nearly as difficult or aspirational as space colonisation. Not even "understanding how the human mind functions" feels as infeasible to me as colonising another star system or galaxy (and, unlike setting up a colony outside our solar system, there's no clear and hard condition you can point to as proof of success). Space colonisation just runs up against a whole lot of sheer physical limits that are difficult to overcome, and I don't think size and expansion is the only reason for why a lot of people romanticise it - rather, I think it's the fact that large-scale space colonisation requires bending the infinite, indifferent, uncaring universe to your will. It is an assertion that we matter.
Then there is also the possibility of discovery and finding ayy lmaos. That's cool too.
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
I feel like it is worth noting here that the results of any valid scientific investigation don't depend on patriotism?
I can understand how, particularly in the humanities, the results of any given study can be more pro or anti America, or whatever other nation. A subject like history is as much about framing a narrative of the past as it is about objective facts, so you might have great reason to worry about bias.
But science or mathematics, at least if they are carried out in any kind of reasonable good faith, are hard to skew like that. It doesn't matter whether such-and-such the physicist is a rootless cosmopolitan because the results of theories of physics do not depend on the character or values of the theoretician. The maths work out or don't work out regardless, and a country that deprives itself of genuinely useful knowledge because of concerns about the character of scientists is needlessly crippling itself.
Goodguy
4hr ago
Whew boy, now this is really some waging of the culture war.
Has Terence Tao actually engaged in any political activism other than sharing his opinions, or are you purely criticizing him for having anti-right political opinions and working for a California university?
Saying that being a professor at a California university is like being a soldier of the new Red Army is hyperbole. It's the same kind of hyperbole that committed Soviets used against their own ideological enemies in the Soviet academic system.
Sure, I don't think that Terence Tao is entitled to taxpayer money. I don't think even he is trying to claim that he is entitled to taxpayer money. Surely there's some room for nuance in looking at this situation.
SecureSignals
Training the Aryan LLM
4hr ago
The whole thing has taken on an increasingly ridiculous energy
It's really not ridiculous at all. The 2016 Alt-Right, despite its overt anti-semitism, was willing to look the other way and support Trump regardless of his obvious inclinations towards Israel. But experience has proven MAGA was played like Cultural Conservatives were played by the Neocons- "White America" received its worst ever cultural hostility and abysmal political achievements from the Trump administration while Israel was given everything. It is a Zionist tactic to use their substantial influence in US media and politics to commandeer nascent political movements and maneuver them in favor of Israel. This has clearly been done with MAGA, and Vance is their candidate.
As much as I criticize Nick, he is 100% correct that support for Zionism is not compatible with America First, you cannot have both, Vance is the obvious attempt to, as JewishInsider put it, Vance puts pro-israel spin on America First. I'm not falling for that again, I'm not going to look the other way on GOP support for Zionism because all evidence has proven where that leads every single time.
Lorian_Aristedes
4hr ago
Side note: I was unsure of what NaNoWriMo was, and after googling found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole of juicy controversy. What a ride!
While that would probably be a better outcome (to those who value American interests (me)), I don't think it would work. It's too deeply entrenched. I really don't think there's any coming back from it when you look at issues like transgender beliefs. Do you think biologists are about to walk all their support of that back, in favor of what used to be (and, in my mind, still is) an unquestionably obvious conclusion? I don't think it could happen. There will be no surrender on that front of the culture war, especially when you consider the immense reputational damage they'd incur from changing their story like that. It doesn't even matter if it's left wing or whatever at that point, they'd look absolutely retarded to come out and say "Oh, we were wrong about not knowing what a woman is."
Maybe the issue is that, despite a subject mentality, they're absolutely unable to contend with the fact that they are bleeding reputation to people who matter and can exercise control over them. They see the looming threat of admitting failure, and they clearly understand the damage that could incur, but they don't realize that doubling down on what many people see as overwhelming stupidity is causing them to lose substantial trust day after day. All they need to do, they think, is preach endlessly to the choir, those who have already given heart and soul to expert worship and could not think to question them, blind to the irreplaceable losses that their endless march incurs.
They just don't get it. They don't realize that they have a reputational standard that needs to be maintained. You get the certs, you wave a paper, and the people obey. If that's what you're used to, why shouldn't you fight to keep it that way? But any ruler can take things too far. I think there was a perception of invulnerability, that it would not matter what peasants who doubt The Cause think; you just have to yell at them again and again, and reinforce the need to Trust The Science, and all sorts of other patronizing measures. The idea that the experts could be in error is unthinkable, even as Trump hits them in the face with a sledgehammer over and over again while giving them very easy outs. Any mistakes can be corrected, any challenge from the opposition can be waited out (as they are too valuable to be dispensed with, clearly), and anyone noticing their repeated failures can only cause harm by going above their stations to cast doubt on the methods of their betters, who need to remain unchallenged for the ultimate good of America (which they often seem to hate).
I don't want to sound like I am enforcing a consensus, but it is funny. The way you frame the recapture of academia feels to me like The One Ring. You can claim it for yourself, but it will either unmake you into just another dark lord, or it will make you an unwitting pawn of the Enemy himself. Only by destroying it, perhaps, can what's in motion be stopped - and that is the only challenge that has not entered their darkest dreams.
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