This video claims that universities create toxic situations in the workforce -- it's from Australia of course, rather than the US which is of course possibly worse:
https://youtu.be/Xl164GrHcM0
How much does this affect national security, since foreign countries recruit key scientists and engineers while promising an escape from toxicity? And does this type of unethical behavior spill over unto the national labs which are also short on research funds?
7 comments:
This has always been true. What Oppenheimer he tried to poison a professor when he was a student.
This could have been an issue 20 years ago when LLNL and LANL would be competing with universities to attract talent as many postdocs would have to choose between faculty positions and staying at the labs, so you had people really deep in the academic mindset. Now we no longer have to worry about this. Heck we are hiring less and less people with Ph.Ds so no big. This is just not a issue at the labs.
Maybe the labs aren't toxic enough, it is too much of a sheltered environment and inefficient compared to the real world. This doesn't prepare postdocs for the outside world, insulates anyone from the consequences of their actions, and prevents good people from solving problems in a normal, competitive manner. The "toxicity" there is of course, is certainly there but unlike in academia doesn't create a proper competition at all.
After all the best and brightest are competing to work in normal "toxic" environments, and (seemingly) many wish to avoid the national labs.
I've known a lot of students and postdocs who end up leaving the US often after wanting to be here because of the top science going on, or because of conditions in their home countries. They leave always for a variety of such reasons, toxicity, and the extreme difficulty of pursuing academic careers here, the fact that students and postdocs are used as cheap labor which does not prepare them for any real US academic position and so on.
This causes an exodus of talent of course, and gives the US a bad reputation over time, as generally the toxicity described in this video is seemingly worse in the US than anywhere else in the world, and anyone who leaves goes on to do well somewhere else.
I do not know the whole story well, but I think the inventor of Huawei's 5G technologies left the US and got a job in Turkey for example, so there are real consequences of having very good people leave. In his case, I think, it may have even been there was no way to pursue the research at all in the US.
Also I have heard anecdotal reports that children learn much better with individualized instruction that can be done in an automated manner, through chatbots or prepared classes and material. This obviously could pose a challenge to the current school system if it turns out they are providing an inferior education in some respects to what can be provided essentially for free.
At the university level of course, it has always been true that certain very highly motivated students do not go to college and go on to be highly successful, or simply take advantage of university libraries and ask to sit in on lectures (which is the professor's choice usually) and obtain information equivalent to a degree.
The rising cost of a university education, along with declining value in some cases, and the availability of a free education that is higher quality would pose a lot of problems I think at the university level.
The public schools for schoolchildren might also become little more than prisons, providing an education of poorer quality than what is available for free, providing a sort of day care for lower income people, single parents, and so on, while providing welfare jobs for teachers who know less than a free chatbot.
We know as these education systems which are costly to maintain, lose their educational value, they will naturally become a means of social control and indoctrination. This could be wonderful of course, however as you know the half of the country termed as "deplorables" hold a variety of non-majority viewpoints and reject certain now mainstream views, such as rights for LGBTQ and minorities.
These people are now increasingly unwilling to support the government in needed activities such as joining the military, and so on, and even some now believe in undermining the system.
Of course, they also have the desire to defund the government in general, especially parts that no longer deliver value in a strict monetary sense, or which oppose certain ideological criteria. Since the Federal government is borrowing money to operate, and is generally averse to higher taxation or restructuring of the economy, under all political parties, there could be issues within the educational system (and also at the National Labs) due to a lack of subsidy for something which does not deliver value to taxpayers, or an inability (or unwillingness) to fund things which are a good investment in the future as well.
Having an ideological component could lead to defunding, of course, Bud Light might be an example, even when the underlying value proposition has not changed. And as you know Trump's "drain the swamp" plans are evidently due to certain feelings about ideological bias (whether or not true) as well as a desire to cut costs. He actually of course, did not drain it, and did initiate the COVID response and rescue, which was very expensive and expanded Federal powers in some respects.
By the way, I think there are other things that discourage people from coming to the United States -- obviously the crime in major cities, and the political instability (such as our President giving a speech to the effect that we might soon embrace a sort of fascism), the xenophobia and attacks on Asians, so forth, or the knowledge that healthcare is better or cheaper in their own country, various government efforts that target foreigners, and so on.
There are Americans leaving of course, for exactly those reasons, in some cases they are in a personal situation for example, with health care needs, or limited retirement funds, where they personally feel it is a better option to become an expatriate "digital nomad" or seek employment in a foreign country.
And many Americans of course, end up in careers outside the country, including China, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Japan, and so on.
Multinational corporations, of course, often do various types of research in countries where it is cheaper, in effect outsourcing research jobs to places like India or China, where it is cheaper to operate.
It is quite remarkable that the Federal government provides research money to universities which in many cases do encourage unethical and in the end unproductive behavior, which drives talent away from the United States in many cases, including many American scientists as well. If the government is providing such huge sums of money to universities why is wasteful and unethical behavior tolerated with no oversight?
For an outsider, it is quite remarkable to see people talk about the threats of deadly lab-created viruses or a 50% chance of extinction due to AI, sometimes the same people we have funded for years, now they are bringing this up and asking for yet more money!
Our Lord had some saying that might relate to this, I believe in him, but of course you don't have to be a Christian to get the point here, I think:
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Scooby, you have completely lost control of this blog. Strings of nonsense, rambling posts by the same blatherer (or the same ChatBot), have killed it. Close it down before your rep takes a bad hit.
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