| Because if you want to get a good science education, you need to be in a place that supports science and education. The administration has disrupted the system that made the US the world scientific leader, a status it’s had only since the mid-20th century, which it achieved through concerted government and social investment. Which country is doing that right now? In 1930, if you wanted access to the great science universities and literature, you learned German. Things can change. Quickly. |
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| ▲ | phamtrongthang 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I find this quite true in my field. Recently I attended the biggest conference in computer vision (CVPR), and almost half the time I was there, I heard Chinese instead of English. Most people I met joked that we should learn Mandarin if we want to continue doing AI research now. | |
| ▲ | umanwizard a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | America isn’t the only place that speaks English. It’s the global standard language. When a Japanese and a Chinese person negotiate they are already using English. | | |
| ▲ | jfaat 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is a wild claim | | |
| ▲ | stickfigure 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > That is a wild claim It is not. The vast majority of English speakers do not live in the US or the UK. English is the most widely spoken language in the world. If you are at dinner with people from several countries, the "Lingua Franca" will almost certainly be English. The popularity of Mandarin relies on the sheer mass of native speakers in China. That population is shrinking and that shrinking is expected to accelerate. The cultural export of China is inherently limited by its ideology - there's a reason we have (had, really) "Hong Kong Cinema" not "Peking Cinema". | |
| ▲ | umanwizard 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which part? | | |
| ▲ | jfaat 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | "When a Japanese and a Chinese person negotiate they are already using English" | | |
| ▲ | umanwizard 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | What language do you think they use? All Japanese people learn English at school; few learn Chinese as you can verify by reading about the Japanese school system from various sources including Wikipedia. Similarly in China, English is the only mandatory foreign language taught at school. | | |
| ▲ | jfaat 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | > What language do you think they use? Frequently, Chinese or Japanese. For example companies in these countries employ translators. Are you suggesting they rely on primary school-level English to negotiate? | | |
| ▲ | const_cast 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Other countries have competent language programs, the US is pretty unique in having unbelievably shit education in foreign languages. That is to say, I would not be surprised if, in China, people are quiet fluent in English. | |
| ▲ | umanwizard 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Who says they only study it in primary school? | | |
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| ▲ | alephnerd a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I disagree with that. Instead we are seeing increased siloing of scientific domains. The EU is cracking down on EU-Chinese research cooperation (as recent arrests and deportations in France have shown), India still has a de facto freeze on Chinese R&D and China is still enforcing export controls on IP to India, and South Korea and Japan are still controlling any IP generated from their industrial research fusion programs. We're instead seeing at least 6-7 different scientific and capital ecosystems forming, and with collaboration being tightly controlled by governments. | | |
| ▲ | wmf 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Assuming that's true... if the largest silo is China I can imagine plenty of people wanting to "defect" to China for their own advancement. But you'll have to speak Chinese. | | |
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