So yes, we all want fair, but what we think of as fair can be wildly different.

The truth is that it is a hell of a lot easier to lower the bar for everyone than to raise it. I.e. it's a lot easier to make dumb kids than to make smart ones, so in the name of equity we shall have dumber ones.

A reminder that aviation regulations are written in blood.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_820

The government isn’t “picking” the research topics. It’s the scientists in places like the NSF that are. No system is perfect but some system is better than nothing, which is where we are going.

You got the pipeline backwards. The government picks the research areas/priorities then allocates funding for those, and universities apply and compete to get grants. _Then_, once a grant is given to a school, is funding for labs and graduate students allocated.

If the government has no interest in doing research and provides no funding then schools don’t have projects to work on and no money to hire graduate students.

They paths will differentiate and split. Probably SOTA models will eventually be locked down and only accessible to state actors because of how expensive they will be to run (already started with Mythos).

You captured my imagination as a teenager when I read The Cuckoo’s Egg. I’m so sorry to hear of these terrible news but I appreciate the update. Here’s hoping to a _prompt_ recovery!