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Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

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280 points dargscisyhp | 7 comments | 02 Aug 25 06:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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padjo ◴[02 Aug 25 08:22 UTC] No.44765718[source]▶
It’s pretty clear that the only numbers this administration are interested in are ones that support the narrative that the great leader is infallible.
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exe34 ◴[02 Aug 25 08:33 UTC] No.44765768[source]▶
They just fired the commissioner of Labour Statistics. The great thing about autocrats is that they neuter their own country pretty quickly. When you make it risky for people to give you bad news, you end up with missiles that don't work and capital ships that sink.
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1. eterm ◴[02 Aug 25 09:31 UTC] No.44766036[source]▶
That may be a comforting thought, but the reality is that it takes decades for these things to have an effect, and there's no guarantee that transitioning to a low trust and high corruption society will result in the removal of the autocrat.

See North Korea or Russia. People have been claiming they're on the verge of collapse for decades but the reality is that they just keep going.

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2. rvba ◴[02 Aug 25 10:31 UTC] No.44766397[source]▶
It does not take decades to ruin something. In the example here: scientists can go somewhere else and never come back. Even if the next administration vhanges course you will never know if there wont be constant flip-flopping. That's bad for business, science and life. People want predictability.
3. kzrdude ◴[02 Aug 25 10:49 UTC] No.44766487[source]▶
There's already been a decade of trumpism (Trump in the republican party, and in american politics). In that time, people (politicians) who are not interested in trumpism have by and large adapted (pretend that they do) or left. This partly explains why this presidency is different from his last one.
4. soraminazuki ◴[02 Aug 25 14:10 UTC] No.44767778[source]▶
Isn't that a bit too optimistic? Even before Trump, neoliberalism has wrecked the lives of the majority of Americans for decades at this point. See healthcare, housing, food safety, water supply, electrical grid, public transportation, broadband access, worker protection, wealth gap, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot more.

Is the reason we're in this situation.

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5. LexiMax ◴[02 Aug 25 16:19 UTC] No.44768855[source]▶
You don't need to wait for a hypothetical collapse of the autocrat for it to inform your personal decision-making and long-term planning.
6. exe34 ◴[02 Aug 25 16:33 UTC] No.44768970[source]▶
Oh no, I don't expect Trump to leave the White House unless it's in a box. He' s about to splurge $100M of his own money on a ballroom, so clearly he's planning on being king for a while. No, the comfort is that the US won't be bossing the world around for very long. Russia says a lot of things, but the only people they can bully at this point is their next door neighbours. The US can currently glass pretty much anybody anywhere within 2 hours. Trump is just making sure their influence on the rest of the world becomes minimal within a decade or two.
7. exe34 ◴[03 Aug 25 13:11 UTC] No.44776345[source]▶
Trump is the end stage of that transformation. Only now there's no changing course.