@josephg Being from the EU myself, I'm surprised in the same way you are. There is certainly something good going on there as well, at least when looking at certain technologies in isolation, where the US leads.

How come there's still no better desktop processor than Intel/AMD on a per core basis? This is just one example. Nobody's made anything at that level still.

Strangely enough, america's tech sector is still exceptional on a global stage. I'm not entirely sure why. There's something magic that happens in the bay area as a result of funding and talent density.

Its weird - I'm australian. We have the same caliber of software engineers here. But there's not the same ambition amongst skilled engineers to solve problems at the world stage. And its far more difficult to convince investors to give you the capital to try.

The technology sector is propping up the US economy. The AI race is - so far - making this even more true.

> Uh....that's more the fault of a president

Who so far has been put into office twice by?

It's more than just "that one president". It's the whole system that brought him to power, where a large part of the population has been trained to hate and fear for almost half a decade now.

That the US military is run by a clown is a feature, not a bug. That an incompetent buffoon like Trump is at the steering wheel is not an accident.

Trump is doing exactly what the moneyed interests behind him have put him in power for - dismantling the system of checks and balances, of regulations and restrictions that prevent the oligarchs from thoroughly screwing the population.

Good luck trying to restore any of your civil institutions after Trump and his ilk - and I don't expect that to be after 2028.

A story Steven Kotkin recently told in an interview:

"And so the anecdote goes that Xi Jinping bragged that they were going to — China - was going to win the competition because they had 1.3 billion people to choose talent from. They had the biggest talent supply.

And the elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, said, 'You're wrong. You have 1.3 billion to draw from, but the United States has 8 billion to draw from, and so they have the upper hand, and don't forget that."

R&D is hit or miss. And a lot will miss. It's really no different from the VC model where 90% of their startups will fail but the 10% that succeed will make up for the rest.

Pointing out a few examples that didn't go anywhere is a meaningless argument. You need to look at it holistically.

The majority of your argument has little to do with your initial complaint about China and India. What does poaching less of the world's best and brightest to contribute to our market and universities have to do with ensuring people are working on meaningful projects?

Even with perfect information regarding R&D outcomes, capitalism is competitive.

Capitalism is duplication of effort.

I've never been particularly convinced by the crusade to eliminate alternatives to capitalism in the name of eliminating a society's wasteful behavior.

The same is roughly true for Silicon Valley investments once the herd mentality sets in. Yet it is celebrated as being the best way for commercial progress.

Almost all advances in deployed PLs come from academic research. Not sure what kind of point you’re trying to make

Less motivation for people to be racist if they have their needs met.

It's a bit reductive to pin this on Ronald Reagan.

The entire western world had been shifting towards neoliberalism as a direct response to the eastern world shifting towards communism since WW2.

Trump also isn't the embodiment of anything other than the guy who didn't take it seriously and suddenly ended up with the job because the voters in the country decided it couldn't be any worse under him than whatever the current situation they were living with was.

Sure

https://www.aei.org/articles/partisan-professors/

I'd be shocked to find anyone surprised by this.

It’s a pretty commonly repeated theory amongst far right / reactionary “thought leaders”. They call it the “Long March Through the Institutions”. I think the comment you were responding to was ironically referencing it.

More likely that conservatives turned liberal once the right went all in on anti-intellectualism.

Of course the real question is: what does conservative even mean any more? The joining of Falwell and Reagan fucked both conservatism and evangelical Christianity.

I think conservatives don't really know what they are, and that's a big problem. I think Sagan discussed this. Like science is a pretty well established "institution" dating back centuries. Intellectualism dates back kind of as far back as humanity, almost every large civilization I can think (that left records) of had strong intellectual presence (including Greeks, Romans, etc.).

I'm not even critiquing any particular cultural stance. But I think it's possible and important to critique anti-intellectualism and specially denialisms specially in things that are actually important and threatening to society -- simply because of greed, most of the time. Let's not fool ourselves, climate change denialism isn't like a random cultural thing they chose to deny, it's specifically because of connections to coal, oil and gas industries.

If things are bad, you should want to know what will be the consequences and what can be done to mitigate things. In fact, I think denial tends to create some reactionary behavior from the left as well, sometimes leading to overblown claims around climate change. All of this leads to increasing polarization.

Slowing down cultural change is perfectly fine (as long as it's respectful of well established things like human rights), cosplaying a farmer is fine, whatever. Or being an actual farmer, or living outside of a big city, etc.. What's not fine is actively denying important scientific facts, being hypocritical (and, largely, stupid) in their positions: for example, farming tends to use very high tech equipment and methods, seeds, and so on; I'm sure most farmers enjoy most technological development, treatment against cancers, all sorts of diseases; computers, the internet, etc.. You can't at the same time want progress in cancer treatment and other conditions and want to cut funding to health sciences. And so on. I am willing to even entertain say technological regression. I don't love every technological change we've been through. But at least be consistent, you can't advocate to stop wearing clothes and want to live in the arctic.

Also, culture should be, carefully yes, questioned. It's not because it's cultural that it should stay frozen forever. People who want their culture completely frozen forever are dangerous to human progress and flourishing (I imagine most people wouldn't find ancient practices of human sacrifice, or say medieval torture practices nice and acceptable today). Being careful and well-reasoned is a completely different thing, and something conservatism could stand for instead.

Conservatives views are not anti-science, so much as they are a demand that science only be allowed to answer certain questions, and only answer those questions in specific ways.

Liberal views are very anti-science on race. Some famous professors even lost their positions just for adopting the statistically correct position that the majority of the difference in outcomes between races is accounted for by IQ, which is mostly immutable after childhood, not some societal conspiracy against certain races.

My point is simple. Real world is highly complex and dynamic system. It is not a linear relationship e.g European scientists never came --> US remained backward.

US may have evolved differently, Asian scientists may have come, US progress may have started a few decades late, US may not have been super power but normal power (not such a bad thing) and so on.

> The US in 2025 and 2026 is extremely hostile to international scientists and is hurting greatly from it.

I never get this point how come these extremely smart scientist feel okay to come to US as long funding is there meanwhile US can continue thousand other extremely bad things all over the world.

These scientists seems like FAANG employees who don't look at what their employers are up to as long paychecks are huge. However once leaving or fired from job they become moral philosophers of our times.