[wek]

Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America. It is good for the world. It helps eventually lift the poor. It helps business. Its something the government can and should do that is hard for private business to do. It helps human knowledge. I'm motivated to reverse this trend.

[ryandrake]

Unfortunately, "Griefing people we don't like" is the central defining principle behind everything the current administration does. It's the promise that got them elected. And they really don't like scientists and medical professionals. This is not going to be reversed until we get griefing out of politics.

[dragonwriter]

> Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America.

“Good” is never an objective question, its always one dependent on values, and values are often not bipartisan.

Everyone believes everyone should share their values, but if they did, there wouldn't be different ideological factions in the first place.

[dmix]

I don't even think this one is a bipartisan issue. This just seems to just be coming from the White House.

The article said

> The Senate and House rejected the White House’s proposed budget cuts

Since WH can't control the budget they are changing how it's doled out by giving larger payments to a smaller group.

[spott]

> there wouldn’t be different ideological factions in the first place.

Maybe I’m just very jaded, but I don’t think this is true.

Our values are significantly more aligned than we generally believe, however as long as there is power to be gained by creating the illusion of a difference of values, there will be factions dedicated to ensuring that illusion is maintained.

[watwut]

> It is good for the world. It helps eventually lift the poor.

Not bipartisan. One specific party is literally against already existing medical progress, because it helps weak people they thing should die.

> It helps business.

Not bipartisan unless it benefits super rich millionaires businesses. The moment it benefits their competition, it ceases to be bipartisan.

[nphardon]

The republican party is explicitly anti-science. One of the ripple effects of the anti-science agenda is an anti-education mentality among republican civilians. An educated populace is the enemy of the U.S. right wing.

[esalman]

It is not a bipartisan winning issue.

Wife worked in a construction firm in South Texas. Firm owners were a half-hispanic family. It was a decent sized firm, millions of dollars turnover and recipients of millions more in PPP loans, special state contracts, and tax breaks due to being half Hispanic and "woman-owned". They also firmly supported T and believed in qanon stuff. They believed something to the effect of, scientists have sold their souls to Satan in exchange for technological progress.

It was not really shocking. What was shocking is that how similar vibes prevail within silicon valley, as it became clear days after him winning the election.

[mindslight]

So scientists shouldn't be allowed to hold their own political opinions, or organizational leaders shouldn't be allowed to exercise some autonomy with regards to the culture they foster, or educated people shouldn't tend to favor the political tribe that focuses on constructive solutions, or what? What is your specific critique here?

Whatever it might be, it seems like we could have instituted a targeted reform for that specific problem rather than self-immolating our educational institutions and continuing to hand the reigns of world leadership to China.

[spwa4]

I find it extremely hard to believe that basic medicine and searching for cures or relieving aging is either leftist or rightist.

[malicka]

That’s exactly the reason the research and development funded by government grants is rarely done in the private sector: It isn’t immediately profitable, and we don’t know for sure if it ever will. It’s important to put man-hours behind even theories that will seemingly never be useful (“trash”), both because it is impossible to know for sure, and because that is the underpinning of science.

Exploration for exploration’s sake, knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Not everything learned by the human race needs to be immediately useful; it all contributes to a vast tapestry.

Not to mention that if we focus solely on profitability and utility, we do bad science: Why do you think we have a reproduction crisis? Because reproducing experiments isn’t sexy nor profitable, so no one is incentivized to do it.

We need more arrows, full-stop.