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Comment by throwawaymaths | Hacker News Reader

just two days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829

the problems that led to these frauds are structural--no amount of patching the system will fix this.

maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor, which is often painful, but especially painful for people (or code) with an entrenched incentive to continue existing.

i dont mean to defend what the administration is doing but I'm warning that everyone crying doom and gloom and threatening to move abroad, etc. might be eating crow. ironically, the very people most likely to move abroad (in it for the career, not for the principle) are biased to be the types bringing down our system of science. bad science is the science equivalent of a zirp.

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> no amount of patching the system will fix this.

> maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor

People in tech need to stop with those analogies. A government is not a codebase. You can not apply the principles of "refactoring" and "patching" in the same way. It just doesn't work like that. But the problem is we have a bunch of people (some malicious, some clueless) trying to do exactly that.

Precisely. There’s no wisdom in the approach. “I’ll try refactoring - that’s a good trick!” is a poor approach.

You can try it, but the consequences of a poor refactoring? Look to the planned economies and five year plans.

The government is not a codebase; that mistakes its artifacts for its process. And the importance of process - in politics, in government - cannot be overstated.

yes you most definitely can apply these to government, what an insidious comment.

not only does it NEED to be done, people VOTED for it :)

Government is exactly a codebase. Government bureaucracies is essentially constricting human judgement to more robotic code-like behavior, that's the only way to build large systems.

You say government is not like code, then what exactly is it? Can you describe it in an effective way? Or are you just going to raise your hand up and say there's nothing we can do about it, nothing we can do about the $2 trillion/year titanic deficit?

Historical governments often needed little beyond an army and a tax collection system. And tax collection system was primarily data gathering and analysis, since if you knew how much property someone owned, you can easily tax them for an appropiate amount.

The tech way of thinking has proven extremely successful in many industries already. That's why tech companies (and tech adjacent ones, like say quant trading, or even index fund trading) have been so economically dominant, and utterly kicked out the traditional MBAs from their pedestals.

Stop being a self hating programmer who despises the mentality of tech.

This is so naive.

Not all of government is the DMV.

Government has a massive policymaking function, which is not "robotic code-like behavior". It's about solving nuanced, challenging problems. Government has a huge research function.

And tech has created some great things, but it's also created some really terrible things, mostly because of this "move fast and break things" mentality that doesn't consider the consequences of its actions.

>You say government is not like code, then what exactly is it?

Government is mostly individuals deciding goals and attempting to convince others. Then rules are added to prevent harm to others or using corrupt methods of convincing. That "code" part is more like a moderated forum: necessary for the huge task, but it's just the framework for the actual content.

>Historical governments often needed little beyond an army and a tax collection system.

And historical computers used vacuum tubes. What's your point?

>The tech way of thinking has proven extremely successful in many industries already.

Even in tech companies, the richest people are almost always the smooth talkers. Because the best, and really only, way to get money is convincing somebody else to give it to you. You can do it by offering a better product or charming them.

Most government goals aren't technically difficult and certainly don't require advanced algorithms or fast computers. The real work is aligning people.

i hate to break it to you but it's literally called "the federal code".

I hate to break it to you, but 2 million people engaged in an endless list of activities that encompasses repairing tanks, making grants, building bridges, supporting citizens abroad, distributing pension checks, performing surgery, making sure airplanes don’t crash and conserving forests is not the same kind of thing as a codebase and requires a different skill set to effect change in.

and yet the structure of the federal code is generally designed to be read as a recipe. judges are instructed to be as objective as possible. disbursers of funds are expected to justify decisions in as mechanical a fashion possible (this maximizes accountability) perfection is impossible, but the idea of running government like code is a quasi-ideal, or else you cant go back to the taxpayer and say "hey we did good by you".

Your discourse screams delusion or next-to-none experience in any mid-sized life and collective/team work.

Maybe try first to spend some time and speak with the actual people (judges, administrators, clerks, etc.) that do this daily, to understand how it works in reality.

For the love of God. How old are you?

If you cannot make the distinction between computer code and law/regulation, that get applied by humans in humans time and humans circles…?

« Refactoring » an org or a government like you project to, like Elon and his boys is doing, it is going to cost actual lives. People killed.

- Part of government is the legal system which a Judge's whole thing is being endless nuanced in understanding and applying what the law means; I would not considered this constricted robot like behavior even though the law is literally a bunch of written down rules.

- Part of government is funding research that involves people doing real experiments collecting real data? Are novel experiments those of constricted robots or LLMs?

- Part of government are the dedicated every day folks who are doing the best they can despite being overworked and under resourced who have to make life and death decisions in the moment every day (air traffic controllers), who monitor and coordinate relief and management of disasters big and small in a very interconnected world (we just had a global pandemic, are culling record numbers of chickens, had a bad hurricane season, and large wildfires) these are not people behaving like robots they are just people following laws and regulations primarily passed via efforts of lobbyists, or else are those that are written in blood.

Don't like the way a part of government works? Reform it. Don't try to burn the whole thing to the ground by doing shit like emailing the people responsible for keeping planes from crashing into each other that if they want to they can fuck off for the next 8 months on the tax-payers dime and then find a new low-stress job. Don't like certain regulations or the ways laws are weaponized against everyone but corporations and the wealthy? I get it, me neither I'd like to see affordable housing too. Unfortunately, congress has the responsibility to fix that, not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, nor any of his former SpaceX interns. If they want to make those changes they should get elected to congress or hell maybe for shits and giggles use some of that lobbying money for the common good they claim to care so much about.

> Don't like the way a part of government works? Reform it.

at what point does that become disingenuous? how many years have people bern trying to do it incrementally? just tell the reformer: oh try harder, knowing every feature of the bureaucracy is stacked against them and they wont succeed. in the meantime people are hurt, dollars are wasted.

> Unfortunately, congress has the responsibility to fix that,

that's not correct. congress has ceded execution of these things to the executive in many cases with broad leeway to do or not do (thats why it's called discretionary spending, any spending that is by law congress' responsibility is statutory spending)

You are mistaken. Discretionary spending is spending that Congress allocates during the annual appropriation process, while mandatory spending is spending that is required by prior law. See https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

I'm very pro some systematic auditing/cleaning of out sclerotic waste, but I don't see how anyone can look at the way this is being handled and not be incredibly worried

I think it's the second-order stuff here. Even assuming Musk were to do a fantastic job at just clearing out inefficiency in a smart way (which seems unlikely given the actions he's taken/leaks around cutting funding based on key-word matching etc.), the higher-order point that someone can just buy their way into the President's inner-circle and have complete free-reign to seize government operations and make changes with 0 transparency/accountability seems like it does just stupid amounts of harm to the integrity of the system

> make changes with 0 transparency/accountability seems like it does just stupid amounts of harm to the integrity of the system

pray tell who was accountable for the grant issuance in the first place? was congress approving every disbursal? could the citizenry vote up/down on every RO1 or SBIR that went past the NIH desk?

Hey man, if you wanna make a point just make a point - no need to try the whole snarky rhetorical thing

Ofc not every decision is fully democratic, but the people making them are beholden to rules and systems which are - or at the least, have a clear chain of command back to individuals who Congress has direct authority over. No one ever said you needed 100% democratic oversight on every action, as long as those actions are obeying the system that was democratically established

The problem is doing it in an extra-legal way, where the Executive Office is giving a crony power his branch doesn't/shouldn't be able to bestow, where people telling this crony no when he tries things he shouldn't be able to do all seem to get put on leave etc

the executive has broad leeway to spend as it sees fit. i 100% guarantee you that disbursal of funds to grant recipients involves calling on extralegal outside-the-government "experts" making advisory recommendations without direct consultation of congress or the voter.

point is, live by the sword, die by the sword. it's hypocritical to whine about cutting funding by the exact same mechanism that is used to give it out because you dont like the political party of the cutter.

and you can't say "keep politics out of science". because when you're pulling from the public purse, it is inherently political.

there are ways to fund science that are apolitical. HHMI, ACS, ADA, AHA, etc.

Executive branch has leeway to decide on what to fund within the parameters set for the program by Congress. It can evaluate grants and set processes but not completely change the acceptance criteria or scope, which is under the jurisdiction of Congress - USAID is jointly under the purview of the executive and legislative branches. This isn't a "team" thing - Congress sets the scope of what USAID should be doing, and anyone changing that - or dismantling the program altogether - without their authority is overreaching

And again, my main issue here is that under any reasonably interpretation, Musk would qualify as a Principal officer, which as the Appointments clause of the Constitution clearly lays out requires Senate approval. It is beyond ridiculous that the head of a new "Department" who seems to have unilateral power over other departments now, is not subject to any kind of oversight or accountability to other branches of government - this is exactly the kind of shit the checks and balances were designed for

Whatever rational refactor/rewrite you want does not start with `find . -iname 'dei' -delete`.

Refactoring means incrementally changing things in a non-destructive way.

> ironically, the very people most likely to move abroad (in it for the career, not for the principle) are biased to be the types bringing down our system of science.

What the hell are you talking about? I chose to get into science for the benefit of the masses, rather than, for instance, helping some corporation abuse human psychology to sell more ads. If there is no money to do the science, I have no choice but to emigrate.

edit: And to give you an example of the science being targeted by these early moves: pulse oximeters have a racial bias leading them to overestimate the oxygen saturation of minorities, which led to deaths during the pandemic. All the work toward addressing that issue at the FDA has now been terminated, because it's related to DEI.

> I chose to get into science for the benefit of the masses

why do you suppose most science benefits the masses?

a stunning amount of science is negative. homme hellinga cheating and claiming a triosephosphate isomerase, for example. stripey nanoparticles, as another. Thousands of western blots that were cleverly edited by unscrupulous postdocs. everything by diderik stapel. anil potti.

those are the ones that got caught. so many more got away with it.

and yes, if you can't tell, i know what the fuck I'm talking about.

> And to give you an example

why dont i give you an example. NIH is responsible for 80% of the budget of an NGO that collaborated with WIV and advocated for GOF research. on the grounds of likely being responsible in part for the deaths of millions worldwide maybe we should suspend funding to the NIH until all of its policies can be reviewed

Luckily those things never happen in the private sector. Theranos?

what does being the private sector have to do with anything? We're talking about use of taxpayer money.

I'd like to make the point that private and public are coupled, in a way that if you dismantle everything public/tax funded, there is effectively nothing left except private by definition (with all it's upsides and downsides where the latter will be amplified in the absence of public oversight bodies funded by public money based on public law).

Now I (as a non US citizen, but one of a country that has it's fair share of needless bureaucracy) wholeheartedly agree that there is waste, a lack of oversight/transparency and probably a need for more say of the common taxpayer on how their money is spent.

But as someone who learnt the meaning of the Terms "Gleichschaltung" and "Ermächtigungsgesetz" in school, I wholeheartedly disagree with the current measures and how they unfold right in front of our eyes.

The small fraction of people perpetrating fraud does not warrant leaving science for private corps to pursue. The end result from that is companies sitting on their IP and suing anyone who comes up with something similar--with the cost passed on to consumers, and the pace of technology development slowing.

You still haven't explained how this is biased toward people "in it for the career, not for the principle."

You might be on to something here.

Yes there is structural issue.

When researchers see that appealing to DEI and inclusion make is easy to gain finding for, allegedly, research that is wasteful and not meritorious, everyone will attempt to do it.

Conversely, when appealing to "equality of white people" becomes more likely to get you funded, everyone will also attempt that. Which is going to be the case going forward. If you do not believe me, DJT has appointed someone at the helm of EEO commission who explicitly does this in their LinkedIn bio.

So the issue is structural, it is not dei or white power.

scientific fraud is absolutely a problem -- a universal problem, because it's inherently a human problem (it's inextricably tied to academic careers, so it's not really a money problem, it's a career problem--in other words, people aren't doing it to get rich, they're doing it to further their career or prestige; that doesn't make it any better, it just makes the context more complicated)

but what the admin is trying to do has nothing to do with "making science right". it has a very clearly stated goal of 1) rooting out anything remotely related to DEI; 2) rooting out anything related to previous investigations into Trump and the Jan6 attempted coup (see purges at FBI, DOJ); 3) cutting government spending (so there's money to pass a promised tax cut); 4) whatever Elon decides he wants to gut

None of these have anything to do with making science more honest and accurate. If that were the goal, you'd probably need to _increase_ funding because you'd need more reproducibility studies.

Refactor. Ha. This is just randomly and mindlessly deleting large chunks of code because you think it's woke.

Not a single personal alive thinks these institutions are perfect. But only morons think haphazardly defunding shit without understanding what you're breaking or what the real-world ramifications might be is a way to fix problems.

The past couple of weeks have historically stupid.

no not because it's woke. because it's broken. this is literally the system that let a person become the President of Stanford a federally granted research professor with years of fabricated data that absolutely fucked some people that i personally know. lets say, negative man-decades of research just among people in my limited circle. i guarantee you this was not an isolated incident

the sooner we cut this shit out, realize consequences, and start over, the better.

But the scientific community identified this failure. They published the evidence against it. And shed light here.

And heck, they did a lot of unrelated great science at the same time.

Science is a process that will have failures, mistakes, errors, and these are subject to natural selection. We can work to make that process sharper, more rigorous, but that's obviously not what the administration is doing. They're attacking science with the full intent of replacing it with a system where lies and fraud reign supreme. In the world of RFK and Donald Trump, lies are just what people do every day for breakfast.

RFK Jr. gets a dozen things wrong on science and tells a dozen lies and funds and pals around with major fraudsters and charlatans every week.

> "They"

they did not. in the case of tessier-levigne, who was responsible for getting him out of there? not the NIH. it was a fucking Stanford undergrad journalism student.

let that sink in. a heroically persistent undergrad had to do the job that the NIH was morally and legally obligated to do.

this "science is self correcting" trope needs to stop being propagated right now. and you can claim eventual self consistency if it resolves a hundred years from now, which would obviously be too little too late. how many people were hurt, how much research dollars were wasted in the meantime. "well, Eventually" is not good enough, and the self correcting slogan is just running cover for entreched interests in the face of their misdeeds.

Yeah, but that's actually not really true, the undergrad just reported in the campus newspaper what other scientists had found and reported in pubpeer: https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Tessier-Lavigne

Here's his original reporting where he describes this: https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/5-tips-for-using-...

Kudos to the kid for breaking the story before other media sources, but the actual scientific investigative work here was done by people with scientific training

This.

I'll add that all systems are self-correcting given sufficiently long timescale. (Or they die out and we're none the wiser due to survival bias)

Science isn't any special in this regard. Even the Catholic Church was self correcting (it doesn't do Inquisitions or sell indulgences any more, does it?). As was Nazi Germany (WWII fixed that, hurray for... whatever that was).

To be honest the real "self-correcting" mechanism is some kind of Darwinian survival system where you have to ensure the wrong things don't perpetuate. Government funding really doesn't help with that unless the mechanism deciding which projects/people to fund have a really good model of the real world (i.e. "truth").

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