Hacker News Reader

Comment by HarvardThrow123 | Hacker News Reader

This user is a serial fabulistic spammer, so presumably none of this is true.

The value of life isn't your work. Work can be turned off any moment, due to tyrant or recession. Work is fleeting. The value of life is your personal relationships, your family, your own character and ability to deal with difficulty. We don't know what the future will bring, but stay strong, we all have an uphill climb ahead.

The human race has benefited greatly from individual researchers who made their work the main source of value in their life, and from societies, patrons, and government institutions who gave these people the stability and financial support to pursue such a single minded focus.

Two fascinating examples:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M

Not everyone agrees with that though. You absolutely can make your work the pride of your life. People valuing work above all else are sometimes the reason for humanity’s advancement.

not to mention that he is the one who originated the research. It can start again with the right foundation.

At least they let you keep your fancy researcher keyboard, with the em-dash key near the home row.

Sorry, what's the implication here? are you saying this was LLM-authored?

My lips are sealed; but by now you've probably noticed numerous comments from others to that effect.

Great catch!

Isn't Harvard ultra-wealthy? Surely they can continue research for decades without external funding.

They only spend a small percentage of the endowment so they don't eat into the "principal." So, technically yes, but practically no.

As large as it is, income from the endowment covers about a third of the total operating costs of the university. There are contractual limits on what different funds can be spent on, though you can bet that as we speak, accountants at Harvard are going through ledgers to see what funds can be shifted around. You can bet that calls and letters are going out to donors and alumni. In fact, this is incentive to make the endowment bigger, so that it can cover more.

Unfortunately a lot of the endowment is probably donated by people who are no longer alive.

And even if they have a trust that’s allowed to make decisions for them, the trusts are unlikely to change the principal’s choices.

And if you divert income from one fund, or liquidate it to raise cash, that comes out of someone's budget one way or another--as the saying goes, you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. And in the long run, it leaves them with less. The feds are trying to force them to choose to cut programs they don't like--they've been explicit about that in the demand letter.

Also, regarding endowments: They can, and often do, come with strings attached.

I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the endowment is not legally available to them.

At least when I was heavily involved in the finances of a school with a much smaller endowment, less than 5% of it was general funds. The rest had tremendous restrictions on how it could be used.

>Projects that were stopped after Harvard rejected the government’s demands include a $60 million contract supporting an international study of tuberculosis, a $15.2 million project to develop treatments for long-term radiation exposure like the kind cancer patients experience in radiation therapy, a $3.2 million study on the effects of microgravity and radiation in space on human cells, and a $700,100 project to detect ALS early.

https://archive.today/latest/www.wsj.com/us-news/education/h...

Whether you mean to or not, you are parroting one of Trump's talking points. He wants people to think universities are full of rich liberals sponging off taxpayers to do silly science experiments. The reality is different. Endowments aren't just a slush fund you can spend on anything you want.

That work is in you now. It isn't gone. It has been converted into knowledge and experience that you will bring with you elsewhere.

I agree with your sentiments regarding the canceling of funding. It is tragic and criminal and we must organize and protest against it if we are going to save this country.

Genuinely sorry your funding dried up, but going on the internet a d talking about how you might try to kill the president is whacked out. You need to get ahold of yourself.

And maybe write a letter to the president asking them to comply

I'm not in any position to judge you or the work you've done. Don't end it though. You are far and away more valuable than lab work or the tantrums of a child-king. If you need someone to reach out to, I'm here. I've been on that precipice, for entirely different reasons, but I imagine the feeling is much the same.

Hang in there.

The 2030s-2050s are going to have a poverty of cures. There are many diseases that we could have gotten closer to figuring out, and we're just deciding not to bother anymore.

Thank you for pushing your line of inquiry as far as you could. I hope this is only a temporary interuption of American science, and not permanent.

The knowledge gained from the experiments and the knowledge to do the experiments themselves has not gone anywhere. It’s with you.

As the dust settles over the next couple of months and years, it’s very likely other countries will come looking for you, if that hasn’t started already.

Come to Europe.

This

it’s obviously not all that’s left of you. You’re the one who originated the research. Do you think scientists and science were created by Harvard?

I'm sorry for all the cynical responses you're getting here. I feel for you, OP.

All this is a part of a coordinated attack on the United States.

As an old man, this song has gotten me through one more day many a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAd93jEFdjw

Make a playlist of music, and give certain songs/bands (not all) meanings (Tom Petty mean todays going to be a good day, Daft Punk means next week everything is magically going to be fixed, Madonna Holiday means your going to get a break from it all). The point is to get you past this phase. When those certain songs come on, your giving them meaning can give you a little space to breath in that moment. When my life had fallen apart, I lost my careers/family, and then my mom slowly died of cancer, I needed this playlist trick.

today it's politician making you cry, tomorrow it might be war or death of your relative or economical depression. But I guarantee all of this will be over sooner or later, constantly thinking about how bad things are fuels your anxiety. The best you can do is to starve it, not to feed it.

despite it's solipsism, a post like this would be meaningful if it weren't a throwaway account.

There's so much independent wealth in this country you'd think it would be easy to get Bill Gates or Zuckerberg or Paulg to bankroll it.

That would require a culture of civic responsibility which uh... is the reason we're in this mess to begin with.

Like when Notre Dame burned down and suddenly all the billionaires in the world had immediate money to pay to fix it.

>I don’t even know if I’ll be alive long enough for it to matter.

Why's that, though?

Have you been threatened physically because of this?

They said they want to commit suicide

It is unclear. But then he just posted this and disappeared, not sure what he expected to get out of this.

I flagged this submission, it's pretty much on par with a troll post.

If I said that I am an aboriginal self-reassembling time travelling robot scavenger trying to prevent a world wide disaster, would you take my word for it?

Maybe they should fire some of the administrators instead of cutting research. There are 1.35 administrators per undergrad at Harvard. https://www.thecollegefix.com/at-harvard-there-are-2600-more... Many ”work” in DEI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com