Trump's Federal Funding Freeze and Mean-Field Game Theory
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Why do you think there aren't incentives at play here in whats being cut?
Because it seems across-the-board with some limited exceptions.
> Any program not implicated by the President’s Executive Orders is not subject to the pause.
The Executive Orders listed in the guidance are:
Protecting the American People Against Invasion
Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid
Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements
Unleashing American Energy
Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
Enforcing the Hyde Amendment
Sure does seem like it's across the board...
1) Do nothing 2) Try to have detailed review of different programs 3) Stop everything
The latter is the most beneficial.
Oh really? And who was executive then?
I doubt that in the long run. This is just a grab of control that will likely result in one set interested parties being replaced by another.
Such grants are funded on a reimbursement basis (or at least mine is): each month, I submit an invoice (via the scientific software 501(c)3 of which I am a part). Then NASA pays it. When the EO was announced, my guidance was simply that NASA was not going to pay out for a while and my February paycheck was just going to not show up for a while. To my knowledge, this was basically the guidance for every NASA, NSF, NIH, etc. grant. (I believe DARPA grants are not frozen.) These do not just fund what the more conservative among us might call 'mathematical wankery', they fund all kinds of things across science.
The issue is not whether some of these grants should have been issued in the first place. The issue is that suddenly, a large group of researchers is either not going to get paid, or their organizations are going to have to float their salary themselves on behalf of the federal government, because the federal government has just said that they plan to renege on their agreements. How many will miss rent or mortgage payments?
Although the order has been blocked for now, it is still unclear what it will mean for me and others. (I would submit an invoice on Feb. 1... would it be paid?) It's not like I just got laid off and can go look for other work now: the funding is likely to come back, I just get the joy of having no idea when.
For those of you who seem to have little problem with the EO itself: please take at least a few moments to consider whether your principles outweigh the real human costs here, and whether there might have been a less brutalistic way of achieving the same principles.
The cruelty is, and has always been, the whole point with these people.
You’re trying to appeal to decency in a desert of decency.
[Edit: I initially confused the NSF and the NIH. Have now corrected the link]
> Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13, issued on Jan. 27, 2025, directs all federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of their financial assistance programs to determine programs, projects and activities that may be implicated by the recent executive orders. Therefore, all review panels, new awards and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis.
The Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13 lists a series of 8 different EOs none of which seem to be relevant to the NSF (although I haven't looked into them). It also says:
> The guidance establishes a process for agencies to work with OMB to determine quickly whether any program is inconsistent with the President’s Executive Orders. A pause could be as short as day. In fact, OMB has worked with agencies and has already approved many programs to continue even before the pause has gone into effect.
It would be good to know exactly which EOs are blocking the NSF's grants. Also, it sounds like the government are willing to approve spending as long as it has been through an internal review process which presumably if those grants were all but confirmed they should have already been through an internal review process.
As an example, say I want to hire a asylum seeker who will be returned to Syria and wants to go anywhere else, is there a list of anywhere else we could agree to make a contract and done?
There's always Svalbard
"we just don't know" is a non-answer.
If Tao's point is in predicting rapid change from a game theoretic perspective, perhaps it would behoove university executives to court industry for research dollars, instead of an ouroboros of invented problems and federal tax dollars.
Even state tax dollars are more likely to have a clear purpose.
We really need new terms for our political spectrum.
I ask because the parties have functionally flipped at the moment. Democrats are doing whatever they can to keep what was already in place (i.e. "conserve") while Republicans are on a bit of a war path trying to change everything (i.e. "progress").
This is precisely the issue I have always had with considering oneself "progressive". The end goals you are aiming for are the important factor to call out, the fact that you are simply progressing means only that you don't want to stand still.
My understanding of progressivism, as it is commonly used in the US, is that its based on often unspoken assumptions that the goals being progressed towards are "good" or "right" and that others' goals, therefore, are not. That isn't really a progressive ideology in my opinion though, and sounds more like an elitist approach to authoritarian rule.
I still don't get what the underlying ideology is though (sorry if I'm being obtuse here).
> seeks to advance the human condition through social reform – primarily based on purported advancements in social organization, science, and technology.
"Advance" here has the same issue as "progressive" - it needs direction to be meaningful. This doesn't say what we would be advancing towards, though it does say a few ways we may be able to get there.
For comparison, liberalism and conservativism are much more clear.
Conservativism can be (very roughly) boiled down to "don't break a good thing." Said differently, keep a high bar for change and default to trusting the people before us got here for good reason.
Liberalism can be similarly boiled down to prioritizing individual freedoms and liberty.
With wither of those two there will be a slew of political initiatives or programs that are based on those principles, but the underlying principles are clear.
That's what I've yet to grasp with progressivism, when you peel away all the programs and initiatives what is the underlying principle and what is the specific direction to progress or advance towards? As far as boundary cases go, what does progressivism look like once that goal is reached - does it become conservative?
> While many ideologies can fall under the banner of progressivism, both the current and historical movement are characterized by a critique of unregulated capitalism, desiring a more active democratic government to take a role in safeguarding human rights, bringing about cultural development, and being a check-and-balance on corporate monopolies.
Is the core that goal to progress away from capitalism towards more governmental control?
If so I guess that is at least defining a directional goal, but using the blanket term "progressive" there is effectively blocking out anyone who wants to progress towards a different goal.
It seems like federalist or anticapitalist would be much more clear. At least then the goals they want to move towards are the distinguishing factor rather than the act of changing from where we are currently.
I don't think its really word games when talking about progressivism today. Trump could claim the banner of progressive in the sense that he's trying to progress towards a future he believes is better for all of us, while Democrats are attempting to conserve what they built. Personally I see that as a bullshit word game, but that doesn't mean the words are actually used improperly there.
If someone tells you they are progressive, what is the end goal you expect they mean? Its totally possible that banner is shorthand for a specific goal or direction and I just completely missed the boat there.
He could, but he hasn't.
> totally possible that banner is shorthand for a specific goal or direction
It is, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
Let's face it, we were squarely within crazy territory and that's why everyone is having a knee-jerk reaction. The left or democrats or "the woke" as they are named have taken us too far, and if you ask me, way too-close to a societal-level precipice.
What the Democrats are doing at the moment is pretty textbook conservative, preserving the institutions, customs, and values that exist today. And there's nothing wrong with that, best I can tell that's just how it goes when parties flip - you're in charge for long enough to make major change and when you lose power you cling on to holding your ground.
Republicans are doing more than just undoing some of the progress made by Democrats. They are doing some of that for sure, but they're also trying to define some new path that they think will be better by whatever metrics they care about.
Now for another example of the flip, Democrats leaned to state's rights as soon as the election was over. Republican states already seem happy to welcome federal intervention, for example with federal enforcement and military on the southern border.
Are you arguing that Democrats are trying yo conserve the demographics of today? Or that Republicans are trying to conserve, or really regress back to, the demographics of the past?
As far as countries go, how do you define them if not with maps and paperwork? The distinction between countries and nations or nation states may be important here, I've always understood it to be that countries are all about borders and laws where nations and nation states are much more focused on the people.
Not at all - that would require closing the border.
> Or that Republicans are trying to conserve, or really regress back to, the demographics of the past?
Yes.
> As far as countries go, how do you define them if not with maps and paperwork?
I think we agree on this point. Yes, countries are defined with maps/paperwork/borders, but when I said "what makes a country", I meant it in the sense of what makes it unique or different, what gives it its character. Certainly territory is part of that, but the larger, much more important part, are its people, i.e. the nation.
I find myself wanting to blog again all the time but I tend to just post to Mastodon or bsky because at least then I know someone might read it.
Has the author considered the possibility that there may be an misallocation of resources directed towards academia? If the work is valuable, individuals in the private sector will voluntarily pay for it. Decentralized market pricing is the method by which dollar values are assigned.
He could equally say, "My colleagues in the dig holes and refill them field have not received their grants for their important research. Think of all of the missed opportunities. This disruption may result in individuals leaving the dig & refill sector."
Especially when it comes to something like fundamental hard science and math that underpins most of our technological progress over the last few centuries.
Is capitalism a cult?
Because that was an amazing achievement orchestrated almost entirely by government, but then once the geopolitical factors motivating government to support it faded, the entire human space program was defacto cancelled.
Over the next 50 years progress in human space sharply regressed and, if not for Elon and SpaceX, we would very likely still be on that trajectory.
Governments can be whimsically unpredictable in a way far beyond how companies can normally behave. In fact this is exactly what this topic is about!
Only if the work is valuable to the private sector. There are other types of value - academic, social, environmental, long-term - that often don't or can't motivate the private sector. That thing about governments being there to solve the collective action problem.
I'm not saying we get 0 valuable output from Academia, I know better to say extreme statements like that.
I have seen the people who get PhDs and they are not A or B students... They are the ones that Industry wouldn't accept.
I have read what is deemed 'science', and more time is spent calculating statistics, than understanding their dataset was a terrible. It looks really fancy.
I have read what is published in 'Prestigious' journals like Nature, and there doesnt seem to be a correlation between replicable and predictive science and trendy ideas.
What recently irked me, I was talking to a a tenured/post-doc/professor, and we pulled up some scientific study that seemed like it contradicted the empirical evidence I observed. He looked at the publisher, 'Nature', accepted it, and moved on instantly. I immediately scrolled down to the Data. It seems like Academia is more of an Authority than Science.
To be fair, in all of industry, academia, and politics this stuff happens. The leaders, CEOs, and presidents rarely have any knowledge of the technical matters at all and will BS their way to conclusions in the same way.
Jokes aside. Research is ~ 5% of US budget https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf25313 and mathematics is 1% of the that.
Also, yes, clearly just stopping all the funding is the best way for people to get the most 'enriching career'.
A private sector org could find that fermenting tensions and selling bullets is a very valuable activity vs say studying the financial impact of war / conflict resolution methods.
The latter is unlikely to bring in much or any money but the latter clearly leads to an overall better / more valuable market for everyone.
The private sector is very good for determining what widgets to put on shelves for Christmas for people to buy, but it’s decidedly short term / shallow in its actions and thinking.
Here we have demonstrated the essentially religious belief in The Power And Majesty Of The Free Market. And when it's proven to be false, well, you can always tell yourself that the market works in mysterious ways.
Congress passed a spending bill instructing research agencies to distribute funds to researchers. Academics applied for funding through these agencies and had their grants approved by experts within these agencies. This is generally a highly competitive process, with most grant applications being rejected.
Then Trump shows up, issues an unclear order with the seeming intention of rooting out DEI-related stuff, and shuts down everything in a way that creates absolute chaos and uncertainty for everybody. Surely this is not the appropriate way of addressing misallocated spend.
Even if "industry will pay for it instead" were true, it obviously isn't the case that industry will replace the lost funding this month so that grad students can get paid and make rent.