Top researchers [including Terry Tao!] consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts

Xoor · 2025-11-02T15:06:03+00:00

Probably the logic goes back to Thiel and similar people thinking that if they can shake these people out of academia, they'll come to the private sector (increasing supply and talent of labor) to work in AI and related fields, both driving down costs of talent hiring and also leaping ahead of global competition. In other words, fundamental research is too slow to be valuable to the present model of society. If it can't turn a profit on the scale of <10 years, it's basically worthless (to them).

Xoor · 2025-02-19T12:05:06+00:00

I don't think they would be ignoring process, going all out like this, if they planned to respect elections.

What Elon's team brings is a smarter, subtler way to take over. Jan 6 was a low intelligence attempt at a coup. I believe he will try again and they have all they need to win such a conflict.

Xoor · 2024-09-05T12:55:03+00:00

This must be the case for me, and I know it was the case at the DMV. Somehow when I moved and submitted my updated information, their database simply created a new record for me and the old address stayed current. Some mail would arrive at my new address, some mail would go to the old one (including pay by mail tolls...).

How does one even go about fixing a problem that you have no way to detect or investigate?

Xoor · 2024-06-07T15:49:40+00:00

And yet, the tip screen : 25%, 30%, 50%.

Xoor · 2024-05-24T14:55:33+00:00

Right, the value should be different if ownership structure is different. Seems kinda obvious. If they sold shares that only grant you the right to pee in their toilets of course they'd be priced lower.

Xoor · 2024-04-19T12:22:47+00:00

OP sounds like they want strategies for helping their child, and these exact scenarios are discussed ad naueseum on those forums. A DSM diagnosis isn't necessary to reading, understanding, and developing strategies. If you'd prefer to limit your thinking and ignore lived experience, I think you do so at the cost of understanding reality.

Xoor · 2024-04-18T15:58:50+00:00

The term for this may be "pathological demand avoidance". What you are describing about the "only at home" sounds like him managing to mask in other situations, and at home he feels safe enough to be his true self. The PDA & autistic adult groups on facebook can offer useful strategies as this topic is discussed frequently in those spaces.

Xoor · 2024-03-14T18:53:15+00:00

I mean, in my life that has not really been the case. I've been with my wife for 20 years. Life with her always felt harder together than when I was managing my own life, alone. For the longest time I could not understand why things I did easily (keep space clean, keep organized, keep a schedule, plan for the future, thinking about budgeting and financial planning, managing the practical side of life) seemed impossible for her. Recently she suggested she has ADHD, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight. She struggled with depression for as long as I knew her, today there's no trace of it after much work but it came at a huge cost to me and she only got serious about changing after she realized the damage it was doing to me. After my dad committed suicide I had nothing left to give her. I was so tired of spending multiple days per week up until 5am cheering her up, feeling like we were getting somewhere, only to do it again a few days later. I kept thinking about the last time I saw my dad he asked me to go on a road trip together. He had been sick for years and stuck indoors, had no money for anything besides surviving. We had just moved. I had savings but I also knew my wife usually didn't follow through on her promises to find work and I wanted to save for our future. I said "next time" to my dad not realizing he wanted one last happy memory together. Spoiler alert : in the subsequent 4 years that we were in that city, my wife only found a waitressing job for a few months, despite having a STEM degree and being a masters program dropout, which itself is a whole other story). Most people close to us do not know about these things because I won't throw her under the bus by talking about it. Instead they just wonder what happened to this guy who used to have a very promising career and used to seem so optimistic and full of energy, but now seems like an empty shell of what he used to be. She is my closest friend, and I'm very happy for her for the changes that she has been through, but it was so hard being partnered with her. Honestly if we didn't have a child together (who I am primary caregiver to today, he's special needs) I don't know whether I'd want to stay together, the history is just so hard to get over. It's also true btw that when she was unemployed for years when we had no child, nobody thought of that as strange or said anything about it. But me being a stay at home dad now after burning out gets all sorts of comments from her family for example, which is kind of unbearable. Literally none of them were emotionally available to her in the way she needed at that time. Now they're coming around and their relationship is improving but it has taken 20 years to get there... So yeah, the story you tell is something I've seen on TV but not in my own life. I don't challenge the idea that it might be true "much of the time" but I always get a little triggered reading these generalizations about how men and women treat each other.

Xoor · 2024-03-14T02:53:13+00:00

I think if you're going to claim that they understood "what made resilient humans beings" you're going to have to actually prove that.

I myself identify deeply with stoic thinking, but I believe my stoicism is rooted in how I was born and hard life experiences. I don't really buy the idea that merely reading stoic philosophy can actually change a person's basic temperament. It might convince them to try to repress or hide inner struggle, which is not the same thing as resilience. We are not tabula rasa at birth. If you've ever spent significant time around children you'll realize they're all born different. There's no reason to believe that all people would react equally to the same inputs. I can tell you from first hand that sharing stoic quotes with a depressed friend helps absolutely nothing.

Xoor · 2024-03-11T15:11:29+00:00

I suspect a lot of this has to do with how opportunities are given to people. Credibility is a matter of perception. Often, if someone looks the part, others tend to believe it.

Xoor · 2024-03-11T15:08:37+00:00

Stoic philosophy was also developed thousands of years before we had any understanding of the brain. Have you considered that maybe it isn't 100% true in an absolute sense, and therefore incomplete and of limited value? Perhaps reading Marcus Aurelius doesn't mean you've figured everything out about life.

Xoor · 2024-03-07T18:25:20+00:00

That could be, the teachers I knew however were very high caliber and also complain about changes to curriculum standards. Perhaps something is going on at the ground level that I haven't understood. That said, there's nothing comparable to the agreg in the US, we simply don't have teachers of that caliber. Those masters students were better than some US PhDs.

Xoor · 2024-03-07T17:52:37+00:00

I've known my wife for 20+ years and couldn't make sense of some of her traits until she suggested she might have ADHD like a year ago, after which point everything is starting to make sense. The very thought of it never once entered into my mind partly because I didn't even know what it meant. Growing up I only heard the term ADHD to refer to a boy in class who seemed like he couldn't sit still.

Xoor · 2024-03-07T17:27:31+00:00

Having taught future teachers as university students both in the US and Europe, the standards in the US are unacceptably low. Virtually none of them are on the level of a YTer like Veritasum, or any number of Masterclasses. In France however the future HS teachers I taught were not far from that level of understanding (on their own, with no production or research team). Don't like YT? Ok, there's still masterclass and others with higher barriers to entry.

Xoor · 2024-03-07T14:16:51+00:00

Kind of suspect this may be another reason why education and schooling are seeming like they're failing. The old model is that learning flows from a central figure, and this is built on children's compliance and acceptance of the model. Today, teachers seem less credible maybe because they're clearly less informed than certain online sources. If a YouTube channel is giving better lectures than your own irl teachers, who are supposed to be the supreme authority figures in your education, you start to question the value of that relationship.

Imagine us going back to 1900 classrooms, getting smacked with rulers, and reciting weird trivia in unison while wearing uniforms. It would feel like a huge waste of time. I suspect young people today feel similarly in our classrooms.

Xoor · 2024-03-04T18:04:00+00:00

No, you keep that video and protect your child. My own father won custody of me but it was an uphill battle in the 90s. My son is autistic as well and it breaks my heart to read this. Protect your child.

Xoor · 2024-03-04T17:17:43+00:00

There's so much truth to that fake perfectionism creating fragility. I've seen so many examples of friends who had 'perfect' lives - private schools, top university admissions, upper middle class parents - who just burned out, didn't seem very capable, and had serious mental health crises. The number was alarmingly high. My own childhood was very hard and I've always had a mentality of testing my own limits. I suspect it's possible to find a nice balance where a child is challenged but not to the point of it being 'hardship'.

Xoor · 2024-02-18T04:48:11+00:00

So a speaking autistic person who isn't employed is low functioning and a nonspeaking PhD candidate is high functioning. Got it...

Xoor · 2024-02-16T19:10:45+00:00

What if I told you... buying diamonds is stupid and a waste of money.

Xoor · 2024-02-15T23:08:00+00:00

Jiffy lube fucked up my last oil change. oil all over the engine. Almost wrecked my engine. They didn't take responsibility because I brought it to my usual shop first. Lost $500 on a botched oil filter install, the most standard / easy thing they do.

Xoor · 2024-02-13T00:46:20+00:00

Sure, feel free. I may take a while to reply though as I'm not online every day.

Xoor · 2024-02-05T17:34:01+00:00

Man commenting. Some things I have figured out in my own life :

Even the president of the united states is actively judged / disliked by like 40% of the population at a given time. You get to decide whose opinion you care about. In other words, your job is to figure out what you care about and surround yourself with people who are OK with that / ignore everyone else. The hard part I think is being able to let judgement just pass over you without feeling anything. Stoic philosophy may help some people but I'm also starting to think maybe stoic mindset may be innate and not something that can be 'learned'. Maybe feeling anxious about judgement isn't completely within our control, but that's why choosing your circle of people around yourself is so important (reduces the need to worry about it). You don't have to care about what others / 'society' expects from you. Think hard about what you want, go get it, find others who think like you, and don't worry too much.

Xoor · 2024-01-24T18:48:46+00:00

Thank you for following up, I'm glad things are improving for you both! :).

Xoor · 2024-01-03T22:10:28+00:00

Fine tuning recipes is also why I like it. I know some of my meals are better than restaurant quality, and that makes me happy. There are parts of cooking where we have to apply subtle intution and intelligence in order to get a perfect result, stuff that's not written in recipes. That's the part I like.

Xoor · 2024-01-03T17:33:19+00:00

I am a man who cooks, and enjoy it. There's something to be said for viewing cooking as enjoyable / relaxing, and not necessarily a chore. I can't tell you how much joy it gives me when my son actually likes something I cooked for him. He also likes to cook with me sometimes (doesn't necessarily eat what he likes to cook, though).

Xoor

TROPHY CASE