I get a research grant after peer review. The grant funds my salary and propels my career. I criticize Trump publicly about his graft. Trump tells them to pull my grant. My career takes a hit, and I lose my house.
Or I can be a chickenshit, and praise Trump and have a career, however pathetic. I routinely ask them to approve my results before publishing, just in case. I apply for grants looking at vaccines and autism. Every Friday, I spend an hour talking about how Trump is America's chosen one.
Unfortunately, these are agency rules. Congress can intervene, but only with major legislative action, which is unlikely. There will be hearings and Senators will express great concern, but the Administration will probably be able to do whatever they want. If anything slows this down, it will be the courts.
If Congress wants to earmark that money for a particular purpose it can enact that into legislation. If it wants to empower the executive to make the decision, they can do that too.
Those are the only people who get to decide. Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable.
Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes. That's not a sign of the system not working, it's a sign of the system working as intended.
No, that's not accurate. Trump has subverted Congressional leadership to his dictatorship, and they routinely abuse their power to stop Congress from voting on things Trump finds politically inconvenient. The House is in recess right now to dodge a vote on the Iran War that Trump would be sure to lose.
The courts have truly been the last line of defense.
Congress being neutered is not an accident, hopefully it will be less fucked if the power balance shifts.
And as the OP is inherently political in what it's calling out, that is not the motivation -- it's the science. I get the fact that in the end, everything's political but partisanship itself is a cancer on the body politic. Just as we seem to be in late-stage capitalism, we are entering late-stage democracy. It pains me that we effectively arrive here by choice.
Congress neutered itself, largely because it has been politically less risky to let the Executive branch do whatever they want, then either cheer it on or rage against it depending on party and what drives donations so congress members can get reelected.
I agree that it's fundamentally broken but I've been around to see it work and watch it fail.
The executive branch obviously is going to wield as much power as it can, but only one party is actually advocating for the executive as king.
So yes, both parties are the same when it comes to the corruption of the party leadership, but there are distinctly different platforms and ideals espoused -- and that difference matters.
We are very much in uncharted waters and the rules have been thrown out the window. At the risk of repeating myself, wherever we are it is effectively collectively by choice. It's all about hearts and minds, but really hearts. I've come to the horrific realization that hate and stupidity are easily weaponized (I'm a slow learner), but hopefully that can be outnumbered.
> I've come to the horrific realization that hate and stupidity are easily weaponized
The FDR coalition was literally southern segregationists, immigrants, and black people, all in the same party. If "hate and stupidity" wasn't a barrier to people voting together in their material self-interest in 1936, it sure as hell isn't a barrier in 2026.
Wow man, FDR twice in a week and both cases awkwardly used.
But yes, he wielded populism masterfully. As you made a point about southern segregationists it should be noted that it was general economic populism without emphasis on race.
When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy where once race was a top tier issue that hate and stupidity was weaponized to move all of those segregationists to the Republican Party.
Rayiner, once again your point does not land because it is not cogent. Not only that, you missed the whole point of "hate and stupidity" as literally a unifying force as a tribal fury that is directed towards "others". In a contemporary case, it is against "liberals". I can only assume that you might have personal insight into this.
The executive branch does not hold the power of the purse, and the fact that you can casually use that phrase in reference to the executive branch shows how far we’ve fallen as a country in a decade.
This Congress has deferred to the president so hard, it's difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Based on recent primaries the R party is only becoming more sycophantic.
At times they don't even cotify their subservience through the usual measures like legislation and committees, except where needed to slap down any roadblocks to the unitary executive.
They (Republicans in Congress) are all terrified of Trump, with some good reason (not that this excuses their dereliction of duty in any way).
It doesn't matter how aligned you are with his worldview, how much you vote alongside his wishes, if you aren't 100% loyal to him personally at all times you're politically dead in the Republican party in much of the US.
While Trump's ability to sway normal elections is next to non-existent anymore (see: the vast majority of special elections held since his inauguration where Republicans are getting roflstomped by Democrats), his endorsement still decides Republican primaries because there's still a lot of brainwashed Republican cultists on the Trump train.
Even aside from who manages the purse, accountability doesn't need to mean being able to defend every single funding decision. That would be a sign of bad management in any business, for instance. To me it means competently managing an institution.
American moderates are amazing. "Let's see how suburban republicans feel about this that Trump has done! He's really spoiled his chances next election!" You guys have been waiting for the non-fascist republican voter for more than a decade at this point.
Science? Maybe in an ideal world. However, how science actually gets done has always been at the mercy of social, cultural, institutional, and/or economic pressures.
The country runs on the principles of the constitution, not the institutional principles of science. Control over spending of taxpayer funds always must remain within the political system.
Voters can always choose to turn over those decisions to scientists they trust. For much of the 20th century, that’s what voters did. But if they don’t trust the priorities of the current scientific establishment, they can also choose to put that control back in the hands of political appointees. The institutional principles of science cannot override the prerogative of voters to decide how their money is spent.
Only if voters remain loyal to the administration that does that, in which case that's exactly what should happen. If you want taxpayer dollars, you should make nice with the people taxpayers elect to represent them.
I do not intend to live in a country where supposedly unelected organizations think they have independent jurisdiction to spend public money independently of the political system.
That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. There are many reasons to suspect that the goal here is not just control of funding, but the defenestration of science more broadly because scientific findings tend to conflict with assertions politicians would like to make. I would submit that people flying on planes, using cell phones and computers, and going to the doctor don't want that, even if they think they do.
> That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science.
It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constitutional structure.
What you're overlooking is that everything is just people. Political appointees are people. But "institutions" are also people. "Science" is just people. And the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?
The only possible answer in a republic is that people accountable to the political system are allocated that power. People in the scientific establishment--people with degrees from universities and credentials from professional organizations--cannot be granted power to spend taxpayer money independent of the political system. They only have power over those decisions to the extent the political system chooses to confer that power.
The political system, representing the taxpayer (primarily via Congress), has always dictated scientific strategy--do we build the Superconducting Supercollider or cancel it; do we return a sample from Mars or not; do we sequence the human genome. How big a budget do we devote to medical research compared to physics, etc. Scientists advocate, but politicians decide.
However, the nuts-and-bolts day-to-day tactical decisions have before been made through expert peer review, by scientists. Given a fixed and finite budget set by Congress, what is the best way to make discoveries?
Having been on grant review panels, it's brutal--at 5 or 10:1 oversubscription rates, your peers will find any flaw in your proposal.
Political appointees are deeply unqualified to make these judgments. To take a very specific example: the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is headed by Michael Kratsios. He has a BA in politics and has never written a scientific publication. (Every prior OSTP head was a PhD scientist.) The OMB memo says he and those like him should decide what to fund without deferring to scientists. How is he going to assess which of 50 proposals on (say) "hypothalamic SH2B1 neurocircuits and SH2B1 signal transduction pathways" is the good one?
He can't, so he'll either choose AI or graft. Both are destructive to our once world-leading scientific enterprise.
The division of responsibility you describe has no legal significance. All decision-making authority ultimately rests and must rest with the political system. Of course, the political system may choose to delegate certain decisions to experts and panels and whatnot. But that's a choice. The institutional principles of science are irrelevant except to the extent the political decision-makers find those principles persuasive (which they often do).
Our laws actually are written to reflect more or less what I'm describing. The laws governing HHS grants, for example, provide for various expert committees and whatnot. But they also provide the appointed director of the HHS tremendous discretion to override those decisions. That's not new--those laws are decades old.
My take is that they shed their blood to have their own nation and they're entitled to structure their affairs however they please. It that's also what precipitated my family to leave. Just because Bangladeshis have the right of self determination doesn't mean we have to or want to live in a country with them.
The statement, "everything is just people" begs the question. That question is about appropriate roles.
No one is debating that Congress has the power of the purse. That is one of their primary roles. They appropriate, but obviously cannot and should not make every detailed decision, particularly where expertise is required and political neutrality is preferred. Accountability is another primary Congressional role. That comes through oversight, not day-to-day decision making on behalf of those being overseen.
Even if it were desirable to have politicians making decisions in place of scientists, granting that decision-making power to political appointees instead of Congress actually undermines the public's representation and further shifts the balance of power to the Executive.
That's exactly what I meant when I said: "the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?" The answer obviously is: political actors. Ultimately it's Congress. And sometimes Congress has delegated that role to the President.
Within that framework, the institutional principles of "science" are irrelevant, except insofar as those principles are persuasive to political actors and ultimately voters.
The problem scientific institutionalists face is that they've squandered a lot of public trust over the decades. The left is skeptical of revolving doors between expert agencies and corporations and corporate sponsorship of scientific studies, while the right is skeptical that experts' politics aren't coloring their work. And in such an environment, it's entirely within voters' rights to elect political actors who promise to delegate fewer decisions to scientists.
> It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution.
How many times has this administration blatantly ignored the Constitution, starting with, for a simple example, separation of powers?
You're all locked in on "scientists should be beholden to the government, as that is the lay and law of the land" which ignoring the rather large mote that is "this current government couldn't give one single fuck about following the laws of the land", like issuing directives to federal agencies to consider federal court rulings as "advisory" or "not final" or "not applicable".
When the corruption of the law of the land starts at the top, you're busy insisting that those trying to follow the stated intention of the institutions that employ them ignore that because, well, what RFK Jr or worse, Stephen Miller, are the way we do things now, law, constitution be damned.
It's never a valid argument to say that we should ignore the law in one context because someone isn't following the law in a completely different context.
The question of whether scientists should have independence from the political system in deciding how to spend taxpayer funds is one that can be answered entirely starting from the principles of our republican government, without any consideration of what else the current administration may or may not be doing.
It seems like your argument is proving way too much. If next President announces that he feels rural hospitals are an inefficient use of resources, and so all residency programs outside of major metro areas are cancelled, would you accept that as a legitimate use of funding discretion? To me it would sound like an obvious campaign of retribution against groups he finds it politically convenient to punish. (A campaign of retribution I will happily support, if Trump gets away with things like this - but I'd prefer to avoid going down that road!)
Sure, SQLite doesn't solve every problem -- but in many cases it solves the need at hand with the reward of one less piece of infra required to support it.
I see obsessions with tooling/solutions constantly from experienced devs who fall in love with the original solution and think it's the only way to do things -- so the experience part cuts both ways.
Why do you think this is an accurate characterization of how the Islamic Caliphates of the medieval world worked? How much of what we label "science funding" was happening anywhere at all then, why was this more important to the European Renaissance than traditional explanations like "an influx of Byzantine Greeks with ancient texts fleeing the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453"? (And how much of what we characterize as the European Renaissance involved" science" or "institutional science funding" as we understand it today?)
I think you're taking an extremely basic, high-level narrative of history - something like "During what westerners call the middle ages, European powers were backwards and the Islamic powers at the same time were flourishing and did a lot of scientific discovery" - and then immediately using your basic understanding of that narrative to argue for a policy position today, without thinking at all about any deeper historical complexity of what was happening across an entire civilizational sphere centuries before our time when the entire world was different - what would an ancient Islamic caliph have actually understood about the value of basic scientific research funding by the state, for instance.
And this bugs me mostly because it's such an unscientific worldview.
I was saying intellectual curiosity. As in one morning waking up and realising everything your ancestors believed in was a bunch of bullshit.
That attitude became heavily discouraged in the Islamic world.
Do you think that kids born in America (or anywhere for that matter) don't care about fitting in with the other kids? Did you? When you were a kid were you more concerned about your Bangladeshi heritage or not being an outsider amongst your peers?
And yet I'm sure you didn't lose respect for your family and background, because one can do both things simultaneously. But those other brown people are different and bad and have bad culture that ruins things, right?
Remember how he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Ave and not lose a single vote? Do you remember the shock and outrage (I was shocked for sure). But he was right. It's literally a cult and they'll drink the kool aid up till the end.
For any supporters upset with me calling it a cult, please note that I take no pleasure in that (it seriously depresses me). But the dynamics of his relationship with his followers is textbook cult behavior.
I think they expect a repeat of Venezuela, which was a tidy operation for what it was (and something I highly disapprove of). But even though these operations are done in the name of "regime change", it's just about giving Trump the opportunity to cosplay as a warrior and to further distract from the dumpster fire of his administration.
It was a coup, not an "operation". We provided assistance to a domestic takeover. The only Venezuelan forces acting in opposition were the ones who didn't get the orders to stand down in time.
Potato, potato. The administration said words about stuff it did and the reasons for it, and then there's the stuff that happenend for the reasons they happened.
It was about scratching an itch, not "spreading democracy".
Considering the US history of meddling south of the border, it was pretty low key. Fucked up, but low key.
The administration 100% did not say what happened, not correctly. The position of the Trump administration is that the US invaded and conquered the country and now runs it and is extracting its resources for our profit. None of that is remotely true. It's run by the same bureaucracy with a junta at the head of it that happens to be aligned with Trump geopolitically.
My only point was that the admin did whatever they did and, at least from the outside, appears to have been an "in and out" one-shot that worked in their favor.
And the only reason I mentioned that, is because invading a sovereign nation is a significant event and it would be safe to assume that they are emboldened by the success of their prior effort and think that Cuba may be a cookie-cutter repeat of that.
tl;dr -- Venezuela was easy peasy, so how hard can Cuba be?
The legality, morality, and value of this are separate matters (but I bet you can guess where I sand on them).
Venezuela was literally the only thing Trump has done that made me sick with a feeling of "this is going to be well received by most people". (Distinct from the feeling that something should be poorly received, but then seeing the useful idiots lap it up anyway. The instances of this have been unenumerable)
Hopefully if they do attack Cuba, it will play a little differently with one huge quagmire (or loss, depending on perspective) already on the table.
I don’t know how invading Cuba would be received. I feel like the biggest source of consternation about Iran is the effect on gas prices. That’s not at issue in Cuba.
It might not run afoul of yours, but I assume that deploying domestic terrorists to attack American cities impinges upon most people's sense of morality in a way that attacking foreign countries (unfortunately) does not. This puts it in the second category I mentioned.
I was actually surprised about that in the other direction. Police consistently poll in the top 3 most trusted organizations in the country. I would have thought ICE would get the benefit of that sentiment. But in the Harvard-Harris polling above, police are +39 net favorability, while ICE is -6.
The lower polling on ICE is odd because, as a policy issue, deporting all illegal immigrants (not just ones who have committed crimes) is polling at 55-45. What other way do people think there is to deport 20+ million people?
> The lower polling on ICE is odd because, as a policy issue, deporting all illegal immigrants (not just ones who have committed crimes) is polling at 55-45
Deporting illegal immigrants is not the issue with ICE. The issue with ICE is their killing of US Citizens, trying to cover it up until video evidence show they are absolutely lying trigger happy murders only to have the admin shrug and/or defend the agents actions and blaming the victims; also detaining and deporting US Citizens[0] doesn't sit well with other US Citizens.
Immigrants pulling up the ladder after themselves is a time-honored American tradition.
It's a complicated subject and has been weaponized by the Right, artfully so.
If you actually cared about the law being followed you would be consistent in that -- meaning that the immigrants who were/are here who have been completely legal in that should have been protected by the law, but weren't.
Likewise, you'd care that officers of the law themselves followed the law, and the courts have found egregious cases of that not happening.
And if it was about being fair in allowing immigrants in (specifically from south of the border, versus, say, whites from South Africa), the subject of fairness would have to examine the actions of the United States amongst it's southern neighbors and what impact it's had to cause those people to flee. AKA, "you break it, you bought it".
Now I'm not arguing for wide open gates either, but we had a system in place and the biggest problems with it were that it was poorly funded and staffed. After all, if you want them to be legal about it, there needs to be legal people to make that happen.
> Police consistently poll in the top 3 most trusted organizations in the country
And what about the demographics of such a poll? I recognize the need for some sort of law enforcement but if you had a family member having a mental health crisis would you call the cops? Do you think that the police are properly held accountable for their actions?
Man, the Federalist Society sure is good at their job.
> Immigrants pulling up the ladder after themselves is a time-honored American tradition.
Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you.
> what impact it's had to cause those people to flee. AKA, "you break it, you bought it".
You assume those countries are worth fleeing because of exogenous factors that cannot follow immigration flows rather than endogenous factors that can.
> If you actually cared about the law being followed you would be consistent in that
Like with any law, immigration law is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, i.e. limiting the flow of immigrants and the effects thereof. It's like fishing licenses. You could stop illegal fishing just by mailing everyone a license, but the piece of paper is not the point.
> Because it's rational. If you're from a dysfunctional country--sorry, I mean a "vibrant" and "rich" country--you don't want that following behind you.
That makes zero logical sense on a couple levels.
1. There's no real difference between the immigrants in Wave A vs Wave B, except Wave A happened first. Same shithole country, just an ordering issue. "I've got mine, Jack!" is not a compelling claim.
2. People bring their experiences with them but doesn't mean that they then apply their history to the present of their new home. America is the shaper, culture brings some flavor.
The other thing you missed was the tribalism of my statement about the latter being pulled up. It really goes like this:
1. Immigrants from Shithole A come as a wave to America and are met with hostility and oppression but persevere and a generation later are established communities; Americans.
2. Immigrants from Shithole B come as a wave to American and are met with hostility and oppression from current population, including the A Shitholers, because it' now their country.
> Like with any law, immigration law is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, i.e. limiting the flow of immigrants and the effects thereof. It's like fishing licenses. You could stop illegal fishing just by mailing everyone a license, but the piece of paper is not the point.
You mean like the laws that we already have? Not perfect but they are there and there was was bipartisan legislation address issues and enhance border security. It was spiked so that it could become a partisan political football.
Again, immigration is broken, but could be fixed if the powers that be wanted it. Look at where most of those undocumented workers end up and take a guess at the political affiliation of those employers. It's not a coincidence.
I'm going to try something different here. I'm going to respond to one of your points as I believe @rayiner would. Maybe showing him that I actually understand his argument might help him realize that every person arguing with him isn't a coming from some myopic partisan view. Or that it's possible to have read discussion about these topics, analyzed them on their own merits (not merely just rejecting based on progressive dogma), and still walked away not buying into them. Or perhaps even that my criticism of ICE isn't actually rooted in cloaked pro-immigration policy [0]
> 1. There's no real difference between the immigrants in Wave A vs Wave B, except Wave A happened first. Same shithole country, just an ordering issue. "I've got mine, Jack!" is not a compelling claim.
The argument is that the amount of immigration is too high and rate of assimilation is too low, and thus the larger quantity would affect the culture more than the lesser quantity. It is indeed a selfish argument for someone who was in wave A - and while this might invalidate it in your own worldview, that is not universal. So while it's not compelling for you, it is compelling for him (and others).
[0] I'm personally quite ambivalent on most immigration topics. Although I do believe strangling our educational and research institutions is an absolutely bone-headed move. But that has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
For starters they mainly don't. The whole reason TV personality leadership is en vogue is because most people don't actually think through the implications of what they're buying into. I sure wish they did!
But also, it's quite straightforward to envision a different ICE carrying out its goal slower, more deliberately, with transparency and legal accountability. There's zero need for them to operate as a masked terror squad that is above the law. For example Renee Good's executioner could be behind bars where criminals belong, while his former coworkers who didn't set up a pretext to execute a woman continue on with their job of deporting illegal immigrants. These things are not inherently in conflict.
(Yes, I am aware the rot in the organization has been brewing well before Trump. But terrible needlessly divisive leadership that aims to maximize cruelty (ie spectacle) has accelerated it, and has made it seem like these things are in conflict)
After the killings in Minnesota I tried reaching out to a MAGA acquaintance I've tried to engage with to find any sort of common ground (so far without any success). I was ignored, and I'm assuming that he's been taught that those were domestic terrorists and got what they deserved.
It would help if these fundamental disagreements were ever explained rather than just vaguely handwaved. Is this disagreement about whether governments should be subservient to the People, and the idea of Constitutional rights and the rule of law in general? Or is it more philosophical like the people who were killed are now in the afterlife so their deaths aren't really a big deal? Or is it less universal like the people who were killed are of a different tribe so their being killed is right and just? Those are the avenues I can think of. If I am missing one please volunteer it!
For example, if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? And how should the predictable consequences of such confrontations be weighed against the state's legitimate interest in carrying out the law enforcement priorities of the democratically elected government?
Similarly: Whether you think collateral risk is acceptable depends very heavily on your view of the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission. In a country the size of the U.S., fatalities are inevitable in any large-scale law enforcement operation. Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that. If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed. But I suspect many people would resist the argument that a few such deaths would be a reason to abandon the program.
> if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy?
This is still not a strong enough "fundamental disagreement" to explain it. In order for this to be load-bearing, it would have to be something more like whether a law enforcement officer should be able to dole out a punishment of summary execution in response to such actions, which was covered in the first possibility I listed about Constitutional rights.
If you were to openly champion this stance, then we could at least have a conversation! You could lay out your case for why it's time to go against some deep founding principles of this country, and at least we wouldn't be talking past one another! Whereas with weasel words like predictable consequences you're obscuring your fundamental political position.
> the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission
With this we're starting to get into the territory of "alternative facts", and it's disingenuous to call alternative facts a "fundamental disagreement" rather than say "disinformation".
There is no "urgency" here - this is a problem that has been growing for decades. That growth is completely stopped by different mechanisms (border security, visa security, and reforming asylum). Whether it takes two years or ten years to accomplish auditing the entire US population does not matter if there is really a political mandate here.
Narratives about Good's execution that start after her killer had already set up the pretext to execute her (in direct contradiction with ICE's own procedures, even!) fall in this same category.
> Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that
Once again, I have not made an argument that the goal should be abandoned. It seems like you're just trying to go back to conflating the two separate issues rather than staying focused on criticism of the methods. And for what it's worth, clearly many people do criticize the methods of how police respond to calls.
> If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed
My initial reaction was that you're trying to precipitate partisan strawmen here. But I would be arguing against the injustice of similar incidents happening under that as well! Also it makes for some quite tortured analogies - under the hypothetical, the pretext for executing Pretti would actually be bona fide illegal.
But on reflection, I think this might be a good way to illustrate the highly anti-American dynamics here. Perhaps not to you, as you were previously a Democrat and I don't think you've since adopted a strong 2A stance (correct me if I'm wrong), but to any actual conservatives who are still holding their nose at what the Republican party has now become. Let's imagine the partisan mirror image here:
Hillary Clinton is elected president, running on a central issue of gun control. She issues executive orders to the ATF/FBI to the effect that the 2A is to be interpreted as applying to only government-chartered militias, and summarily fires anyone who seems like they might resist her mandate. ATF declares that an unobtainable tax stamp is required for every firearm. ATF proceeds to create databases of suspected gun owners, pulling in in data from IRS about businesses, social media surveillance, transfer paperwork that had previously been legally off-limits, etc. Congress is silent, except for pushing through gobs of funding for ATF for its new operations. The Supreme Court is packed with Democrat partisans who might not agree with Clinton's methods, but agree that gun control has been an issue for a long time and are willing to let it ride by sandbagging any substantive cases. As one of their approaches, ATF goes house to house busting down doors in neighborhoods with a high concentration of suspected gun owners. When residents predictably respond by defending themselves in their homes from an unknown intruder, they are summarily executed. There is a whole political movement cheering this on, saying that it's right for those people to have died because they were "interfering with law enforcement".
Would this be at home in a Free society based around individual Liberty and the subservience of the government to the People?
Like most people, unfortunately. But most people aren't entrusted with so much power and duty, and done so ostensibly for service to the people of this country.
I recall a comment that Sam was talking about selling AGI to the highest bidder, including hostile foreign governments, so not literally planning to destroy civilization but definitely selling it out.
And for any equivalencies of the current US regime and Russia and China, yes, that's a fair point but the implication is that they'd be selling to our enemies.
Science should be guided by science, not ideology.
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