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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

The lead the US has had in science/engineering/technology over the past 70+ years is in no small part due to the massive brain drain from Europe, and the rest of the world, due to fascist regimes.

If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace, you can bet that things will reverse quickly. Good bye, world leading startups, nobel prizes, top universities, etc. These things can happen faster than one tends to think.

The best thing countries like China could do right now is heavily open up to English, and fund things such as foreign PhD students. Everyone is fighting to get into Harvard and MIT right now, but a half decade of Trump policies could have drastic consequences a few decades down the line and give us a very different world.

Edit: some followup to this comment further below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13831085

People also seem to get stuck on "China" in my comment. If that makes you unhappy, replace that word with Brazil, Japan, Singapore, Estonia, whatever you want... the point is, viewed under the "startup lens", this new administration makes the dominance of the US in STEM/entrepreneurship ripe for disruption by a more nimble, flexible entity.

View on HN

Would you mind not taking HN threads straight into political flamewar? The mess you set off is totally not in the spirit of this site, and the problems can be traced back to how you posted. Comments on HN need to get more civil and substantive, not less, as the topic gets more divisive.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13830700 and marked it off-topic.

Are we reading the same comments? I'm seeing a large number of people commenting on how they feel the various policies the current administration is enacting will affect STEM funding and research in the US in the future, and how this fits within the global context.

I'm not sure where you see incivility - are any of the posters in the child comments insulting each other?

I'm not sure where you see lack of substance - posts in the child comments are using past historical events, political analysis, and personal experiences to discuss current ones.

Maybe you're upset by the use of the word "fascist", but that's hard to avoid when the current government is discriminating against legal citizens purely based on their religion/skin color, or the president insinuated the assassination of his political opponents.

If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace...the best thing countries like China could do right now is heavily fund things such as foreign PhD students.

Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that?

People don't always act rationally, and some people perceive the US to be worse than China.

> some people perceive the US to be worse than China.

Those people are dangerously ignorant.

While I wouldn't say that the US is worse than China, I think your statement is just as dangerous (possibly more).

How so?

Not parent, but it seems irresponsible to call someone that is ignorant about the domestic policies of a country half the world away "dangerous." It's not dangerous until national policy is based on that ignorance, which is several as of yet uncrossed bridges farther than even a majority of Americans being ignorant of Chinese domestic policy.

That said, parent is just as wrong to call the original comment "dangerous" as well.

You have to be joking? My point is that ignorance is dangerous.

Why do you say that? I did not downvote you.

And would be interested real and objective criteria for assessing which country is "worse" ethically or "worse" by some criteria you select.

What is a criteria in which China is "better" ethically or "better" by some criteria you select?

I can think of none.

Foreign nationals killed in undeclared wars?

Why be specific to foreign nationals? Why not include the tens of millions of their own citizens the China gov't has killed?

I think is at least instructive to compare the number of Chinese citizens immigrating or wanting to immigrate to the US to the number of US citizens who would like to move to China.

China forces its citizens to have abortions if they have more than 2 children, and they censor the internet, so you can't access social media, like Facebook for instance. So, I would say they are ethically worse than the U.S.

So, is the problem that they are forcing abortions, or that they have a social policy about childbearing?

If it's about the abortions, apparently there's two types of action taken[1]. If it's in an urban area, they apparently either charge a fee or don't assign a household register to the child (not sure what that means), but if it's rural they do apparently force abortions. If you're okay with the social policy, it seems like there are solutions that don't require forced abortions (such as implanted birth control). Whether that aspect is still ethically worse than the U.S. or not probably depends on your view on reproductive rights.

1: https://www.quora.com/What-happens-when-a-family-disobeys-th...

Why would you think that any particularly intrusive forced medical practive is ethical? Is such a policy really all that much more acceptable than mandating abortions?

While I do not think it is more ethical I could imagine arguments from someone in such a society.

One possible argument might be that the social cost of that unborn child is so high that is it is morally reprehensible to have conceived it in the first place, and that such an action is a horrible crime.

Plenty of places suspend human right to imprison or even execute people who have committed crimes. It could be seen that such an action isn't even isn't even punitive, just corrective. Some might feel that the government simply removes the child before it is born, and then is lenient because the mother is not imprisoned for her indiscretion against society.

Other possible arguments could stem from the long term environmental harm that the child will have on the environment. If someone places higher value on nature than on human life this argument naturally follows.

That all depends on your view of individual rights vs the what's best for society. We make decisions all the time on things that restrict individual freedom because it's best for society overall. Which of these you think is okay and which you don't generally come down to where you draw the line. Here's a short list of things that in the U.S. we have dictated that everyone needs to deal with, except for specific exceptional circumstances ("exceptional" being somewhat relative depending on the item).

- Paying taxes

- Child schooling

- Vaccination

- Health care

A population growth policy that targets birth is not so entirely different from those, as fundamentally different as it may feel, depending on your background. Giving people the option of either birth control or an abortion if they get pregnant would be one way to handle that. Have a fundamental disagreement with abortion? Use birth control. Have a problem with birth control too? Take it up with the state, just like in those items above.

I'm not advocating for this, I'm just pointing out it's not fundamentally different than other things we already do.

> If it's in an urban area, they apparently either charge a fee or don't assign a household register to the child (not sure what that means)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

Ah, thanks. I actually wasn't aware mobility was restricted like that. It's a little mind-boggling that China inadvertently emulated the national immigration problems of other countries with internal immigration[1], but at least it appears they are trying to fix it[2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system#Effect_on_rural_w...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_in_China#Hukou_refor...

First, I would like to say I want to agree the USA is ethically superior, but let me show how I can see the other side.

Stepping into the murky quagmire of ethics, I could argue that the 2 to 4 million Vietnamese who died defending Vietnam from American invaders is much worse than censoring the Internet. That Internet is largely made by those same murderers and they have the largest spy agency in the world, the CIA, trying to break in and spy on seemingly everyone, so it must be filtered.

One could also argue that enforced family planning allows for centralized natural resource and pollution management. China per capita pollutes much less than the United States.

Again, I am not taking or defending these arguments, but it is easy to see that it is not clean and objectively true that one nation is always ethically superior to another.

Sure it is.

If you (or anybody else) wants to count casualties, approximately 8 million Chinese dies in the Chinese Civil Wars. Surely the life of a Vietnamese person is not more valuable to America than a life of a Chinese person is to China.

And we also ought to include the lives of the between 15 and 45 million who starved to death in Mao's "Great Leap Forward."

It is also worth noting that China was largest foreign backer of North Vietnam, providing "both financial aid and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of military personnel in support roles" (quote from wikipedia), so it is untrue to say that the United States in uniquely culpable for the war's casualties.

You are assuming a perspective again. There are many perspectives.

For example different people will pick different ways to count. Some will distinguish between domestic and foreign, claiming that there some ethical difference. These people might claim that a government should kill its citizens that cause problems in the name of social order, and that the US is unjust and horrible because they don't kill enough dissenters.

Some will claim that lives lost in mistakes are different than lives lost in oppression and war. These people might claim that the great leap forward was good in intention, but lacked nuance in execution that could have saved many lives.

Some will claim that government and corporations should not be separated so will point the all the slave owning corporations and humans rights abusing industrialists in the USA and lump them in with the government.

All I am saying is that there are gray areas here, and that I cannot see a way to see different perspectives as objectively wrong or right. In some things there is objective right and wrong. Does Man-made CO2 change the climate, yes unambiguously no amount of perspective wiggling changes this. Is it ethical to make social that mildly harms one group to prevent a perceived larger harm to another, this seems fuzzier and innately requires something to be 'perceived' correctly.

In terms of Human rights, it would be better to be in the US.

But things change. US is becoming more fascist which is potentially leading to an exodus of intelligent minds - who are perhaps going to be migrating to one of their main competitors, China.

The one good thing about China is that they are open to changes in their policies (but can't change the party).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out with all the immigration talk. I really hope Brexit and stuff like this don't actually happen. To me it feels like the reversal of the Fall of the Berlin wall.

Why China instead of say, the EU?

Op mentioned China

If we were on a colony on mars where food, oxygen, and water were metered to the centiliter, I doubt you would bat an eye at enforced birth control and accidental-pregnancy control policy.

It's an extreme example, but I want to underline that enforcing birth policy is not automatically immoral. China has a lot of people, of course they enforce birth policy.

Why do you say that?

By any objective measure the US's record on human rights far exceeds that of China. Has the US violated human rights? Sure. Does it try and remedy those situations? Yes.

China has zero qualms about putting people under house arrest for voicing opinions contrary to the Party. It doesn't come back and say "that was an injustice" it says "this is the right thing to do for China". Add on top of that forced abortions, mock trials, etc. The two countries aren't even comparable.

The US is a democracy with a flawed government in power. The system of checks and balances is still in place. The president isn't nearly as powerful as he wants to be.

China is an actual authoritarian regime guilty of many human rights violations. I can say whatever I want about Trump in the states. Try that in China against Chinese leadership.

You don't need everyone to be leaving it, you just need the new generations of scientists/entrepreneurs/etc to go somewhere else.

And if they can't get in the US, well that's an easy call.

Perhaps, if funding to research is cut in the US via Trump policies (or even remains small as is currently the case) and China jumps on this opportunity to snatch the world's best talent, the question for brilliant young students will be China, a fascist regime where you are funded, or the US, a slightly less fascist regime where you are not funded and face hate crime, discrimination, and constant threats to your ability to remain due to your immigration status.

PhDs take a long time; do you want to commit 5+ years of your life to being in a place whose leaders are psychotic and don't want you around? Remember, if you are forced to quit your PhD program early, you don't get one and you have to start over somewhere else. And the time you've spent you're being paid nothing. Stability is key when you're making decisions like that, and it's something we've lost here inarguably in a big way.

So why do so many Chinese students chose to come to the US for college? Do they not know that China is better?

To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong. Go read up on human rights violations in China some time.

Other areas of concern include the lack of legal recognition of human rights and the lack of an independent judiciary, rule of law, and due process. Further issues raised in regard to human rights include the severe lack of worker's rights (in particular the hukou system which restricts migrant labourers' freedom of movement), the absence of independent labour unions (which have since been changing[3]), and allegations of discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities, as well as the lack of religious freedom – rights groups have highlighted repression of the Christian,[4][5][6][7][8][9] Tibetan Buddhist, and Falun Gong religious groups. Some Chinese activist groups are trying to expand these freedoms, including Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Chinese human rights attorneys who take on cases related to these issues, however, often face harassment, disbarment, and arrest.[10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

The gap between the US and China in most measures of freedom and business rights is absolutely massive and isn't going to shift because six Muslim countries have restricted immigration. Maybe see how China treats Muslims in the western part of the country?

> So why do so many Chinese students chose to come to the US for college? [...] To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong.

You aren't reading very carefully. They're speaking of a plausible hypothetical future. Whereas your evidence is from a past that, even if it's a few months ago, now seems quite distant.

Notice how of all the groups listed there, "foreign university students" are not included.

I have little doubt that human and especially political rights in China are considerably worse than in the US overall, but you can live well anywhere if you're part of a preferred class and don't intend to rock the boat.

Believe the OP is suggesting it's on its way, not that the US is there quite yet. And the US certainly has our own questionable human rights issues.

Right now it's better in the USA and presumably easier to get funding for various R&D projects at post-grad level.

However your parent post was suggesting that this could extremely easily shift if it's hard for talented African/European/Asian students to get US visas, and China siezes the opportunity - investing heavily in R&D making student immigration easier.

Likely it won't change overnight, but it's not impossible to imagine a world where this scenario plays out - a few more Trump Executive Orders, a savvy couple moves from the CCP and you're not far off.

Another possible reality is that nobody benefits - the USA squeezes its intake of the worlds best and brightest, the EU is too busy puzzling over Brexit and similar distractions among South American, Asian and African nations (sorry I'm not familiar enough with their internal troubles to speculate) scupper their own efforts.

There are more than a billion Chinese, and only a tiny number of them came to US for college. From such a large population pool, you can find people with all kinds of options. Even if all of those who came to US are aligned with western ideology, it really doesn't mean much.

On top of that, from what I see most of the Chinese that came to US nowadays are becoming more patriotic, and more tolerant about Chinese government before they came.

> Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that?

In recent years, the US has turned noticeably anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-elite, and anti-government-support-of-almost-everything, including education, health care, the arts, science, and infrastructure. Whereas China has been energetic about pursuing global leadership in a variety of areas, and they're not shy about spending.

It would not shock me at all to see China take advantage of the US's turn to appeal to bright foreigners who just want to do their thing. The US previously did well because we were welcoming to immigrants and serious about having world-class universities doing world-class research. If we throw away our advantages and China makes up its deficits, why wouldn't more talent pick China?

>" the US has turned noticeably anti-science, anti-immigrant..."

The US gives grants citizenship to more immigrants each month than the PRC has in its entire history.

Another interesting statistic is the total number of people the PRC has granted permanent residency to ever. It's definitely worth googling.

Useful numbers, but in a discussion about what could happen, ultimately less informative than they seem. The U.S. can drastically reduce the citizenships they award, and China can start awarding permanent residencies or citizenship. That is one aspect of what China capitalizing on this might mean. China has shown itself willing to change to achieve what it wants.

Chinese concepts of race and nationality are hopelessly intertwined and Chinese nationalism has been increasing, not decreasing, over the past generation. In recent times, the very best chance of China becoming open—even in comparison to its neighbors—was in the late 80s... and we all know how that ended. The climate hasn't gotten close to being that tolerant since, and in the past five years, political control has tightened considerably.

Of course it is possible to reverse course and open up, but it would take quite a bit of time to change in the ways you're suggesting.

> Of course it is possible to reverse course and open up, but it would take quite a bit of time to change in the ways you're suggesting.

Interestingly, it might not need to open up all that soon to still reap the benefits. If in the future the US is also not very open, but China is apparently making strides to become more open, that could affect long term planning.

I also wonder if China, having more control and less ethos built up around inherent fairness of immigration (if that's true?) might be able to just say "10+ years in China as an academic or high end research position in X/Y/Z industries will get your pernanent residence."

I would expect that role to be filled more by Hong Kong than by the mainland, and in Hong Kong's case, that's how permanent residency works. If you maintain uninterrupted residency in the HKSAR for a period of 7 years, you get your HKID.

It's also a relatively open place for foreigners, English is commonly spoken (and an official language, so all government documents can be completed in English, and all laws translated). Except when meddled with, it retains a high degree of autonomy from the mainland, and very much follows rule of law under HK basic law. Due to it's unique situation, it's also fairly apolitical.

HK companies also have the advantage of not being taxed on non-HK source revenue and have no trouble doing business with/in the mainland.

Well, for one thing you'll need to learn to speak Chinese, and that'd be much harder than learning English. Also, it's close to impossible to immigrate to China at the moment.

Learning Chinese is not as big as an obstacle as you might think, especially when it's that or find a way to past US immigration and afford school + living in the USA. When I lived in Taiwan, I knew a tremendous amount of south american students that had come for the graduate programs because the schools were on-par with American universities, the cost of living was extremely low, and Taiwan is very open to immigration.

People are talking a lot about China in this thread, but I think Taiwan is the country to watch for. They already have a highly-educated population and are a major player in global high-tech hardware.

And they've got $2 beef noodle ^_^ not an easy place to stay thin.

On the other hand, a train ride to Fulong beach is 1hr and costs 1$, or you can hike Elephant Mountain or one of the millions of other mountains, or you can bike through the mountains, or climb at one of the hundreds of walls, or pay $.50 to get into a gym....

I've never been as fit as when I lived in Taiwan :P

Learning English is not easy, the language is among the hardest to pick up. [1] Much of the language is intuitive and difficult to explain. Grammar and conjugations are particularly irregular (to be: be/being/been/am/are/is/was/were/will be).

Chinese is hard to pick up for sure, tones are not easy to intuit as English speakers are used to discarding that information. Mandarin is easier due to the smaller number of tones. It's also easier in many respects than English as there are no verb conjugations.

[1] https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-ha...

Tones are almost the easiest part. The Chinese characters are much more difficult thing to tackle, which a lot of foreign learners skip, but in that way you'll never be able to read anything written in Chinese. The article you referenced mentioned you need to remember 2000-3000 kanji (Which is the Japanese pronunciation for Chinese character), well you need to remember a lot more for Chinese.

You need to deal with almost everything the article claims to make learning English hard, when you learn Chinese. And it's often a lot more harder.

When it comes to grammar, English has much more well defined grammar than Chinese does though it might seem too flexible compared to many other European languages.

In addition, if you actually live in China, you most likely needs to deal with local dialects, which could sound like a entirely different language. That's why there are Mandarin and Catonese. There are a lot more inside China.

> why wouldn't more talent pick China

Because China is governed by an authoritarian regime guilty of a wide variety of human rights violations.

Consider that a lot of the talent the US attracts is from China, and they're leaving for economic rather than political reasons. If opportunities open up at home, and the US's standing erodes, that can swing a lot of momentum in their favor. Given the recent spikes in violence against Indian-Americans and tightening of immigration policies as a whole, Indian immigrants might also move to China rather than the US.

Unsure how things are now btwn China and India, but they have not always been the best of friends and often compete against one another, so it remains to be seen if they view china as a viable option over their own country.

China and India are also deeply racist. I'm Indian, and I've been to China.

If you're brown skinned in China, you are treated far worse than you are in the US. Likewise, if you're Chinese (or look Chinese - people from the North East of India), most of India treats you very badly. And if you're a woman with Chinese features.. well let's just say that there's a (deeply pejorative) term for that in India.

In both countries, if you're white (occidental), you'll be treated MUCH MUCH better than a darker skinned person.

And if you're black.. it's even worse.

So it's not easy for Indians to move to China, or for a Chinese person to move to India. Of course moving back to your own country of origin is (usually) easier.

China doesn't have to be more free. They just have to make life comparatively comfortable for useful people.

Have no fear. Immigrating to China is basically mission impossible for people with no existing ties.

> People also seem to get stuck on "China" in my comment. If that makes you unhappy, replace that word with Brazil, Japan, Singapore, Estonia, whatever you want... the point is, viewed under the "startup lens", this new administration makes the dominance of the US in STEM/entrepreneurship ripe for disruption by a more nimble, flexible entity.

The problem is that for various reasons, none of those are credible alternatives. One of the things keeping US dominance of science/engineering/technology going is that there's no place quite like it.

"Where to next"? I'm stumped, myself. Europe doesn't look very good right now. Australia? Or just hang out someplace nice like Chile and hope things blow over?

The USA is a vast place, actually composed of a diverse collection of communities. Thanks to Federalism, there is still some diversity within the states, and even local communities can be quite different. Consider 4 cities: Fergeson MO, Santa Monica CA, Chicago IL, Las Vegas NV.

CA is currently considering universal healthcare, like HI has. It has also stated firm resistance to Trump's policies. NV has no state income tax. Some states have no DMV registration fees. Other states give out oil money (AK).

E.g. the US is probably still the best place to be, just in a different part of it.

We're actually in Bend, Oregon right now and pretty happy. I'm ... pretty nervous about how things might go, though.

Consider that Trump actually can't do much. The Executive branch has the most visible power is at border crossings, particularly at airports. It's the fundamental power of group leadership (ownership?): "Who's in, and who's out." Trump is intoxicated on the prospect of wielding that power.

"How things might go". Hmm. There are three ways things could go rotten. Some all or none could happen: a) Muslim registration, internment, expulsion, b) "Trump resistance" is redefined as "treason" and the NSA and FBI given full reign to detect, disrupt, and prosecute individuals based on digital evidence (or no evidence), c) new war, or multiple wars, started purely because it's one of Trump's biggest powers as Commander-in-Chief (although it shouldn't be, since Congress is supposed to be the only part of government that can declare war).

What disgusts (and frankly, surprises) me is the number of Americans who would shrug (or cheer) at all of these outcomes.

Sorry, I was going to argue that you're better off staying, and fighting, but anyone of good conscience has got to start thinking of themselves as Jews in Germany in 1936. Your conscience won't let you shut up, and your talk will get you in trouble. New Zealand is nice.

I don't think it's that bad yet, and it may well not end up that way. I think David Frum's article was pretty good in terms of how things might go badly:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-...

My wife has a green card though, so who knows. They've already shown they have no regard for things like that.

That was a really good read, thank you.

Taiwan has a low cost of living, highly educated population, fantastic universities, is deeply ingrained in hardware tech, has a relatively high immigrant population for students, and is very friendly to immigration.

Japan has phenomenal universities and many foreign-study programs.

New Zealand is pushing for international hires for tech and has several visa options available. It is has a very youth (20-30) oriented culture, is full of active people, and its natural resources are drop-dead gorgeous.

Where are people gonna go?

There's no evidence that China wants to open up like that.

Canada, or any of the Immigrant friendly European countries. In fact, I wonder if harsh immigration policies will see a resurgence of EU as the scientific center of the world...provided it survives through Brexit and the Greek debt crises.

"...fascist regime..."

Yes, the fascist regime everybody is so terrified of that they don't hesitate to criticize it in public.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-toughens-its-internet-s...

Comment Rating: 1/10: Just another Political post

> The lead the US has had in science/engineering/technology over the past 70+ years is in no small part due to the massive brain drain from Europe, and the rest of the world, due to fascist regimes.

Awesome! I was curious about hearing more about this.

> If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace,

You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory. Then you're making a comparison to someone and the party that is new to older established negatively impacting politics.

If something is going on at the moment that is relevant, name the specific thing. Trying to blame the whole group now is just silly pandering.

----

Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? I'm really tired of hearing armchair politicians or regurgitation of political pundits. This is hacker news not r/Politics.

> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this?

Because politics, especially what's happening now, affects all of our lives? Hacker News talks about politics all the time, just look at Bitcoin or Snowden threads.

> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this?

The notion that we can remove politics from all the discussions we have is just silly. Especially when we're discussing immigration, something controlled by the governments we elect and the politicians that represent us.

I'm not arguing that the OP's post was great and insightful ("fascist" is indeed not helpful to use without elaboration) but neither can we say "keep the politics to /r/politics please".

Never said to remove politics from the discussion. The point that you started with was how the technical topic had influence from politics (from another time).

My point, don't make blanket inflammatory accusations of a current political party that just came into "rule" [I'm letting you get away with that claim] in the last two months). If you're going to interpolate, make a claim to the political action that occurred and what you feel is going to happen.

Right now we're seeing a lot of changes, to make a bold statement there is a direct cause is reaching. (It's because of the "fascist party" we have.. they ran under the conservative/right-party) To blanketly label the party/group of people "in power" that corresponds to the labels being thrown at it leads me to believe that your comment was motivated to just repeat the same catchphrases that are pushed in the left/liberal media.

We already have direct cause: the religious based travel ban. to my knowledge there is no exception for a founders visa application if you are from this list of countries.

How can we talk about recent shifts in SV due to immigration issues without being political?

Sorry that people can't frame their interpretations of Trump's policies to make you comfortable. They very clearly echo past fascist regimes. That's Trump & co's fault.

Talk about directly the issues and what has happened, and what you think is going to happen (give reason, don't just emote out with fear).

Don't just blanketly throw the entire group under the bus.

Pretending you can ignore politics in any discussion other than a technical seminar about compiler optimization is in itself a political position: you are supporting the people who can afford to ignore politics at the expense of those who can't, endorsing the status quo whatever that happens to be.

This post is about people who are worried about being banned/being banned from the country who previously could enter and how YC is trying to help them. It's an explicitly political post. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Politics discussions are so unfruitful though. Everyone replies to everyone else with the exact same format:

"The problem with that way of thinking is [problem]. It's dangerous to think that way. In reality, my way of thinking is superior"

I don't find them unfruitful. I find them quite fruitful and enjoy and learn from political discussions with others. The problem with them is that they are not scientific or technical questions, and this forum is populated by a lot of people who naturally tend to look at things from a science perspective -- that there is a correct answer, and we just need to arrive at it. A discussion is only 'fruitful' if it gets us closer to that goal.

There isn't a correct answer in humanities/politics but that doesn't stop some answers from being very bad, and some answers being better than others, or from some answers being interesting and insightful and valuable regardless of how 'correct' they are.

There's definitely a range of quality in politics discussions though and the barrier for entry to having an opinion is very, very low unlike technical discussions -- it's very easy for it to quickly sink to the lowest form of human interaction that you're describing -- Breitbart, 4chan, youtube comments, /r/politics, etc. I find HN is markedly better than that almost all of the time.

And your quote isn't even so horrible. Pointing out problems with a particular point of view if new can be enormously insightful and helpful.

> And your quote isn't even so horrible. Pointing out problems with a particular point of view if new can be enormously insightful and helpful.

From what I see it just becomes a back and forth though that reaches no consensus.

"UBI will solve all of our problems"

"The problem with UBI is X"

"The problem with X is Y, so X isn't really a problem with UBI"

"The problem with Y is Z, so Y is not a problem and X is a problem after all"

"The problem with Z is..."

Consensus isn't a reasonable goal or even desirable when you're discussing things which are more complex than, say, cut and dried technical facts. I can achieve consensus among mathematicians by providing a proof. I can achieve consensus among scientists by performing repeated experiments. I can achieve consensus among philosophers by, well, killing all the other philosophers. But if I don't do that, I can learn a lot and better develop my own positions and thoughts by having discussions with them even if I'll never force them to agree with me.

You don't have to particularly care for 'soft' discussion and reasoning, but that's not a problem with it, it's a personal preference of yours which is extremely uncommon among the general population, however over represented it is on HN. Every discussion about anything nontechnical has this 'soft' property.

If you are curious to hear more about this, you can read the following articles, for a start:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/movies/european-minds-who-...

(and the related documentary)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1991-11-03/the-sovie...

>If something is going on at the moment that is relevant, name the specific thing. Trying to blame the whole group now is just silly pandering.

Huh yes, how about the current executive order ban on muslim countries, and the general eagerness of the current administration to purge the US of many kinds of immigrants who are there completely legally? Many of my Iranian coworkers - most with PhDs from US universities - are affected by this. Many academic conferences I participate in are experiencing problems because organizers or speakers didn't get visas. Several professors are telling me they had to pass on promising applicants due to visa concerns. Anyone in an academic/research environment right now will tell you these things.

> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? I'm really tired of hearing armchair politicians or regurgitation of political pundits. This is hacker news not r/Politics.

And I'm tired of techies thinking politics can be refactored into its neat own class, properly abstracted out of any other activity they take part in. Everything is inherently political, and aspiring to "change the world" through your startup or work is obviously so.

Regarding your unhappiness with me calling the current regime fascist... well, when the president in power has insinuated the assassination of his opponents, encouraged his supporters to engage in violence, been spinning outlandish lies about the former president wiretapping him, etc, well I call that fascism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> Huh yes, how about the current executive order ban on muslim countries, and the general eagerness of the current administration to purge the US of many kinds of immigrants who are there completely legally? Many of my Iranian coworkers - most with PhDs from US universities - are affected by this. Many academic conferences I participate in are experiencing problems because organizers or speakers didn't get visas. Several professors are telling me they had to pass on promising applicants due to visa concerns. Anyone in an academic/research environment right now will tell you these things.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's relevant, doesn't pander.

>If you are curious to hear more about this, you can read the following articles, for a start:http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/movies/european-minds-who-....

This is great, it also can be blamed on the government then.. because it's hindsight.. you've seen the lasting effects of what happened.

>when the president in power has insinuated the assassination of his opponents, encouraged his supporters to engage in violence, been spinning outlandish lies about the former president wiretapping him, etc, well I call that fascism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Consider looking up the definition, because the definition of fascism is not "having a leader who makes dumb statements".

Nor is this word a label for "a politician who makes you feel really bad emotions".

It means a certain type of government policy.

> It means a certain type of government policy.

Did you actually look up the word? All the sources I'm seeing[1][2][3] also say that it can be used or is commonly used to denote someone with authoritarian or extreme right-wing views.

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=define+fascism

2: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fascism?s=t

3: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fascism

Please don't provide comment ratings or dismiss comments out of hand as "Just another political post". The startup community does not live in isolation, it is part of a system which includes political factors as well.

> Awesome! I was curious about hearing more about this.

Albert Einstein is only the most famous immigrant. Enrico Fermi is yet another. These were people who emigrated willingly. And then you have operation paperclip [0]

A lot of the current lead of American Science and Technology has its basis in the contribution of European scientists, mathematicians and engineers. And once Immigration opened up to the rest of the world, you've had smart people from all corners come to US universities, part of what makes them "great"

> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory

He most certainly is not. The simple fact is that the Trump administration has shown alarming tendencies towards fascism, and the republican dominated Congress and Senate have been unwilling to stand their ground. The "Resistance" in encouraging and shows that Americans still care about their civil liberties, but this administration, the people that hold actual power, can be described as fascists.

The only real check seems to be the US judiciary... and that too cannot single handedly stop a determined WH and Congress + Senate.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory.

Neither is true.

David Neiwart, an expert on US far-right militia groups, wrote a long piece in 2003 about protofacism in the US and how its ideas were being gradually mainstreamed by a chain of pundits and media organizations:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160106001734/http://cursor.org/...

It's a bit wandering, but I think it has turned out to be remarkably prescient.

Trump specifically has been compared for a long time to media-savvy populist strongmen like Hugo Chavez. E.g.:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election...

Personally, I still think full-on fascism is still unlikely in the US, but it's no longer unthinkable. Previously, serious concerns about fascism in the US were the provenance of ultra-radicals on the right and left. But now you can find plenty of political science professors both in the US and elsewhere soberly discussing the possibility.

I concur, but have to admit there are correlations between political policies & funding. Many of these same assertions were made back during the GW administration"s decision to defund stem cell research. Would anyone directly involved in stem cell research care to shed some light on the current standing og the US in the field and how those 8 years affected progress in the US and elsewhere?

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