CharonY

Going back to OP and reflecting on I use the forum, I noticed that my motivation is largely to look for perspectives of folks who I never met but had many interesting conversations with (OP is such an example). I actually think because I am surrounded by scientists in my job, I gravitate a bit more to things that I would rather discuss with friends rather than colleagues. I am not sure how true that might for others, though.

Or national-socialism (nazism) vs socialism. I honestly couldn't believe how otherwise seemingly very intelligent folks fall for that one (strangely, all examples were libertarian with small vs large government perspectives).

A couple of other issues that are happening in all this shit storm. The NIH is cutting overhead funding to 15%. These are funding in addition to the actual project cost (such as personnel and materials) that universities get. These cost fund things like building costs (space, electricity, heating etc.) and administrative cost (including HR, financial services, etc.). These were often up to 50% of the project cost. E.g., if you get funding for a project costing 200k to execute, the univ would get up to 100k in assistance. While there is some argument to be had whether that is really how things should be, in the US it has become a critical element to keep the research alive at universities. One big reason on the reliance for overhead is that public funding for universities has stagnated (or even been reduced) despite rising costs. However, cutting to 15% puts it in line with philanthropic donations, which clearly shows that the conservative idea of research and education should be controlled and disbursed by rich folks, not unlike how arts and science were conducted in before modernity. On another front, grant agencies are scrutinizing active grants and are using keywords to find grants that go against the administrations directives. The lists I found are (again) very telling and include for example: Advocacy, Biases, Barrier, Female, Minority, Trauma, Systemic, Victims, Socieconomic, Oppression, Polarization, Inclusive, Women. I will note that none of the lists mentioned "men" and and "male" only appeared as "male dominated". So in summary, the US is on a good path make folks (male and not-male) stupid again. Clearly, the current trend in the conservative mind (and they are too dominant to be called the far-right) is to use "free speech" as a cudgel and then do everything to not only limit free speech but also to limit thought. In a way it is quite clever, as they get to play both sides of the game (and it is also something that incidentally authoritarians are very good at). The number of folks losing their jobs and careers due to this administration's stance on DEI makes the long discussions we had on this forum regarding whether transgender rights could somehow potentially lead to someone losing their job quite ridiculous.

Very true and examples are already happening.

And then it can result in a cycle of purges which will severely undermine the mission of each agency (not only the FBI). Institutions work to a large degree because institutional knowledge is retained in the mid-ranks, so that even when leadership changes, things kind of continue to work. Techbros believe they are more clever than anyone else and have little issue to break things. After all, it is not them who need to fix things. They learned the master of pitching, though. Also, the whole mess will again move the baseline of what is acceptable. The US system is built on elements of outreach, and also a certain code of conduct where violating them could result in triggering some of the checks and balances. Now we are going to learn what happens if we throw away norms and let folks game the system.

The issue is that the core defenses are severely crippled and the scenario you outlined would basically require an 180 of the current situation. I think the way you describe things are actually a bit of black and white as the current trend is a slide into weakening of structures. I.e. it is a quantitative decline (which can become qualitative at some point) rather than a black and white situation (i.e. fascist or no). Basically it assumes that a sudden reversal is equally likely as a continuation of the current path. Both have a non-zero chance. But giving the power situation it is also not at 50:50. Very fair point. Bondi has already indicated that the DOJ will be a tool of the administration rather than one of the people as originally intended. Oh didn't you hear, there won't be an awakening. "Woke" is been outlawed

You are forgetting that much if it is no longer hypothetical. They are enacting things that they outlined in project 2025. This is less an educated guess, but simply just listing what they do now. What is your evidence that they will actually give up power and stop doing what they are doing now. Or do you not read the news and are merely blissfully unaware? Weimar failed because it had insufficient checks and balances. And in US only the judiciary remains. But even that is undermined by SCOTUS. As it turns out the pigeon chess strategy is superior.

That is the issue with folks with virtually unchecked powers due to their wealth. They also assume they are better than everyone else and cannot imagine being accountable to laws or anything else. I imagine that normal folks do not offer a horse to someone in exchange for sexual acts. Allegedly (and settled). During a flight. Just saying.

The pretty much gutted USAID already with planned layoffs of all but a few hundred employees (out of about 10,000) https://apnews.com/article/trump-usaid-layoffs-7e0a159d8a419c4c9388ab02e8259f23 And there are calls from Trump to shut it down entirely. If the void is not filled immediately, it will be catastrophic for a lot of people. And what they probably do not understand is that many of these projects are also protecting the US (and their interests). The simplest example includes public health help to contain HIV, ebola and other pathogens. But since they are probably going to shut down monitoring and support for other countries to do monitoring, we'll never now.

That is absolutely true. Engagement for better or for worse is driven by emotion and controversy. That is something that algorithms have learned and which we actually discourage. And another aspect is that we as a community have diverse expertise, but not enough critical mass in one particular area where it could spark certain in-depth discussions.

LLMs sometimes also just outright contradict themselves. I think there is a bit of a contradiction in the idea to try to train a system that cannot think to help someone else to think. Maybe it can be overcome eventually, but right now I don't see it. One aspect regarding self-learning: traditionally that is done with book, where folks often read context beyond what they expect. The reasons is simple, students do not know what they don't know and learning exclusively by writing questions will not reveal the gaps and I believe will strengthen misconception, based on the GIGO principle. In contrast, a prof or teacher can identify gaps and misconceptions and direct them to new sources they weren't aware of (or, more likely didn't want to read until being told to do so).

I believe the original idea was to keep a Religion section as a kind of containment area. When I joined (20 years or so ago????) there were tons of semi-religious threads pertaining to evolution (and, also in a mirror of some the recent threads, abiogenesis). I think some posters also used that to hone their arguments. I certainly learned to simplify my explanation of parts of evolution, which actually were quite useful also for teaching students.

Those that still exist, in any case.

All true (and I just wanted to seize on your comment to at least pretend to move slightly back on topic...:)). And yes the last point is really important.

I agree, it is a matter of degree and especially in terms of motivation it follows a very old mold. The one thing I am uncertain of is what how many of these issues (from AI to social media and, say Cliffs notes can be layered on top of each other before we see a really new change. Not well at this point. It really just provides answers of various quality but is not really good in asking the right questions. Well, that is exactly not teaching. I am wondering, even if it has how well it works. A big part of teaching (including in statistics) is not just highlighting, say, methods and approaches, but also anticipating how students might (or might not) think about it and get them to ask questions that tell you where their misunderstanding in concepts or approach might be. I am not sure current AI are good at that as they take whatever misconceptions the querier has as gospel (mostly).

Not only that. I always imagine it more radial- i.e. there are some tenets that we are somewhat certain about and then branch out into all kinds of related things. Whatever we learn about these edges can solidify our central assumptions. Or, if it turns out that too many aspects point a particular way, we shift the center of gravity to a new assumption and now spread out from there. It could be a biology thing, but frequently it looks to me more like random walk rather than towards a specific goal (could also because we are better at fermenting and consuming fermented stuff).

I don't disagree, but convenience and scale has changed in my experience. I.e., 20 years or so back you had a handful of occasional cheaters in classes. Also use of cliff notes requires to actually read them and write a summary of it down. It is not great, but better than nothing. What I get is literally a random response to what they typed into Chat GPT with no editing whatsoever. I think there was still some sort of barrier to pay someone to do all the work vs anonymously copying prompts into a convenient tool. And it sets standards on what students expect to do nowadays. I shared an article earlier where students in lit classes are complaining that reading a book is too much work. I see the same thing in biological sciences. I.e. instead of having a few students not learning, but passing by cheating, we now have lowered expectation what students should be able to do (and reading comprehension is the big one). Over the last few years, I have seen massive drops that I have not experienced before. Grade inflation and related issues usually go fairly slow and you needed a 30-yr or so perspective to see measurable change. Now it happens in about 5yr intervals. Accessing books (E or physical) have dropped precipitously and students now demand (and admin bows to these demands) that the only exam questions you may have are those on e.g., slides, so you cannot actually teach context found in books anymore. Again, the issue is not that some folks use it to cheat on an essay. But rather that they use it to avoid gaining basic skills (up until they get their first job). I suspect it may take another 5-10 years to see the scope of the impact as obviously all I have at this point is personal experience and anecdotes from colleagues. But articles like these, just reflect a lot of what I am seeing. This is not to say that this is all AI. There are also structural issues (e.g. teaching for tests rather than understanding), it is just another element that would make things worse: https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-the-end-of-reading Now, the obvious answer to that is that this might be just a shift how we communicate. E.g., videos vs. reading. But my issue is that we do not have a strategy to address these changes in a meaningful way and all indicators show that despite spending way more time on videos as with books, folks know much less and lack the skill to build knowledge. I just don't think we found an alternative to reading yet. But we found a way to avoid reading more effectively.

That is a rather bad example, as complex modeling is not very amenable to manual input and was heavily automated from the get-go. I have little concerns on its application to such (already) heavily automated processes. And while it may impact e.g. arts, I am not too worried about that- it will stifle some elements of artistry, but may enable other areas, such as when photography became a thing. The actual worry is an entirely different one. What I worry about is that it will impact basic skills, such as the ability to read, remember and synthesize things. The ability of kids (but also adults) is already degraded by constant distraction. However, there were still areas where young adults were challenged to exercise those skills. Examples include writing assays. While finding sources might be trivial now, they usually still had to read and try to understand articles and synthesize somehow (often badly) that information. But the goal was never the essays themselves. Invariably they are crappy anyway. But the goal was that by going through the process they learn how to read and eventually how to think about, well, anything. Take this away from them, it removes yet another learning opportunity. And if we go down that route, they won't gain many skills even after going through college. And I do think it is a fundamental different situation to e.g., when the internet became a thing and simplified research. In order to deal with the change that is coming, we need to fundamentally rethink how we teach, which really has not changed much in the last maybe thousands of years. It is a tool that allows us to stop thinking and at least so far I am not seeing any good responses that would work at scale. And while for a while I was thinking that I am in the old man yelling at cloud stage, talking with colleagues around the globe, and even with young ones, we already see change at a speed that we have never experienced. COVID-19 was one factor, for sure, but things are still accelerating. Edit: I should add, I am really talking about higher (college) level reasoning skills. The the lower level skills, including remembering and reproduction is still present, but smaller fraction of students now reach the higher levels, which 10-20 years ago were considered prerequisites.

It does ruin teaching as students forgo tasks that could build up critical thinking muscles.

Well, considering that learning and critical thinking are things folks really don't want to do, replacing those skills with AI is going to cause a huge bunch of issues. Already are, actually.

I think there was a study showing that particular mindset, i.e., where economic or other issues are mere excuses for personality cults and folks would justify even an 180 from their original position to justify that. I just cannot recall how the effect was called.

I heard rumors that CDC scientists were instructed to purge certain terms from submitted publications. If true this would a desaster for integrity of science. Also it would suggest that the fears from right wing folks of getting muzzled because of EDI and other measures is just projection (again). Compelled speech my arse.

DEI caused bird flu and high egg prices. But the highly competent folks decided to stop testing/reporting and the numbers go down. That's meritocracy at work.

I think there will be a power struggle, after all the whole university system would be at peril if they acquiesced en masse. But who knows. We are pretty much in a one step forward and half a dozen steps backwards situation.

In addition I will note again the failure to provide specifics or any evidence that the provided assertions are true and caused by DEI. It is not explained how the situation in LA is linked to DEI, for example. There are issues with DEI policies, no doubt. This is true for virtually all policies. However, if one keeps harping on merit, it is pretty clear that no discussion in good faith can be had. Event he link provided to seemingly support their position does not mention merit a single time. Rather it is more talking about whether DEI measures actually contribute to diversity. Let's make things rather clear as the provided gish gallop clearly shows that there is no meaningful discussion to be had with that poster. There is a huge body of literature showing that in many cases, meritocracy is mostly a myth in many respects- selection parameters of successful candidates in job searches for example do not necessarily predict ability reliably. Even worse, there are many non-performance parameters which strongly influence hiring preferences. Especially in low-diversity environments conformity is such a parameter, i.e. having a similar look, accent and mannerism as the majority becomes very important. Meritocracy is then used as an excuse to solidify such a status quo. We often trick ourselves into thinking that our selection is objective by assigning scores to various parameters, but as everyone involved in hiring will tell you (if they are honest) this really just hides the underlying subjectivity. It does not mean that merit has no, ehm merit. But it means that we often have biased and imperfect rubrics to measure merit. If one really want to create a system that is based on merit, it needs to be flexible enough to identify positive characteristics, even if folks look or behave differently, as long as it does not affect the core mission. A secondary goal is to increase diversity in the group to avoid this type of groupthink where folks start to believe that having a beard and polo shirt is a sign of intelligence, because they all look like that and are clearly the most intelligent folks in the bunch. Ironically, one very valid criticism of DEI is not that they start hiring unsuitable folks, this only happens if the hiring committee or manager themselves are incompetent (i.e. they are unable to spot suitable candidates regardless of measures present). What is more likely to happen is that DEI policies amount to little more than window dressing (the link provided hinted at that). I.e., in many cases it is not really effective at breaking the mold as it does not address the actual barriers present. But again, bringing out merit in context of DEI is just a mildly veiled suggestion that minorities are fundamentally less capable, as obviously fully merit-based systems for some reason keep on benefiting white (and orange) men. An older but easy-to-follow read is here Lawton, Anne. "The meritocracy myth and the illusion of equal employment opportunity." Minn. L. Rev. 85 (2000): 587. Another well-cited article using an empirical approach using personnel data is here https://doi.org/10.1086/588738 This article describes the illusion of objectivity and how it can lead to discrimination https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2007.07.001