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Comment by glitchc | Hacker News Reader

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The parent commenter is not speaking about science as a whole, they are speaking about US dominance in science.

You state that "hiccup won't stop or even slow down science in the US. All it will do is take government out of the equation." I disagree and I would suspect most scientists reading that statement would also disagree. I too have seen many bright people turning away from the US because of this. I am personally certain that these policies will significantly slow down science in the US.

After all, when David Hilbert was asked in 1934 "How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?", he replied “There is no mathematics in Göttingen, anymore”.

Germany could have invented the atomic bomb and decimated the world if it wasn't for the Nazi stupidity.

That they didn't is not only because of German antipathy to origin of some of the ideas. Despite official condemnation, the Germans remained interested in the technology. One of the lesser-known allied successes in the war was a series of commando actions on a Norwegian power plant which was the largest producer of heavy water in the world at the time.

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

You are aware that scientists have to eat and pay rent, right? A lack of funding in the US will draw scientists to places that do have funding. You're confusing "science in the US now" with "all science globally."

Science will do fine. The US enjoyed the benefits of hosting most of the scientific progress. Americans are worried that we won’t be at the forefront anymore.

It is an evergreen sentiment at this point—maybe a multi-polar world will be better. But I’m an American, I want the US to be winning.

The advancement of Science as a whole will suffer because its largest funder is massively reducing funding. A multi-polar world where the same amount of resources goes into science could be great, but it is not the case that other nations are rushing in to fill the funding gap.

And obviously, there are entire experiments that are (quite literally in some cases) dying right now due to sudden cutoff of funds. It could be years before those get back on track.

It sounds to me like you might not understand the highly interconnected pipeline of scientific research. Additionally, this is much more than just a "funding cut".

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01146-4 https://archive.is/TOvAo

That's because the gloom and doom isn't about science itself. It's about funding no longer being taken from taxpayers and transferred to groups and organizations that are supported by those spreading the doom and gloom.

There are people in my life alive literally because of government funded research. It's about the science. It's about the scientists themselves and their livelihoods. It's about the people their research helps.

>All it will do is take government out of the equation.

The middle-class professional scientist is an invention of post-war governments to create an engine of progress.

Pre-war science was a gentleman's hobby, funded by the bored rich. Corporations largely do not perform any basic science and simply reap ideas sown by academics and bring those ideas to market. Without government funding of basic science the engine of progress stops. No new discoveries or new scientists, at least not in the US.

> Corporations largely do not perform any basic science and simply reap ideas sown by academics and bring those ideas to market. Without government funding of basic science the engine of progress stops. No new discoveries or new scientists, at least not in the US.

Does Google Brain and their paper that birthed all these LLMs fit this description?

Standing on the shoulders of giants, the growth LLMs is built on a foundation of government funded academic training and research without which it would not have been possible. Also, I didn't say there is no corporate basic research. Things like Bell Labs and googleX have existed but they are the exception and not the rule and are dependent on a company being highly lucrative and culturally open to basic research. Certainly not reliable as a primary source of funding and almost completely lacking in training.

Even something like the latest explosion in LLMs is applied science and profit motivated.

please refer to a chart of scientific progress that encompasses both those years and the post WWII expansion of the US science state

In your "long-term" world view, apparently the lives of scientists in the here and now doesn't matter

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