Terence Tao is an inspiring person in a field we all find compelling. He's formalized the plight of such field here as a result of the administration's approach to cost-cutting. That doesn't mean that it isn't necessary. Sure, there are better theoretical ways to reduce spending, but it doesn't take a tremendous amount of experience to recognize the incentives just don't align with accomplishing that goal. A cross-the-board stop/cut also neuters the pork-barreling and self-serving political advocacy that would kill more nuanced reductions.
A great question! I can't think of anything that will. I think one idea would be to trim the budget broadly every year in a similar vein to align with receipts and let the people periodically decide anew what to fund.
Definitely not, but there don't seem to be any structures which counter the political incentives to continuously increase spending. And only one federal government in the last 50 years has run a balanced budget.
So a party which has almost absolute control of the political system but can't be trusted in setting up said structures is the party you trust with slashing and burning spending in a way that "balances" the budget.
Why do you think there aren't incentives at play here in whats being cut?
> A: No, the pause does not apply across-the-board. It is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President’s Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest.
> Any program not implicated by the President’s Executive Orders is not subject to the pause.
The Executive Orders listed in the guidance are:
Protecting the American People Against Invasion
Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid
Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements
Unleashing American Energy
Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
Yep. Sure, call it what you want, but (1) and (2) have proven not to work. The federalist political system has a weakness in that it incentivizes politicians to advocate for endless spending on behalf of their constituents. That means a perpetual state of either higher taxes or inflation. Over the last 50 years only a single federal government has operated with a budget that didn't increase the national debt.
Even if this take has merit, the approach taken here is simply cruel. There are ways the Administration could have implemented a "cross-the-board stop/cut" that would not be so devastating to so many /millions/ of people. The fact that they chose to execute in this chaotic, "effective immediately" manner suggests a certain un-seriousness to the whole thing. In other words, this is less about reducing spending and more about deliberately destroying institutions, which is the stated goal of many in the Administration.
I was surprised to not find the funding freeze discussed on HN yesterday and I am speechless today at some of the comments I am reading in here. Are readers not aware of the scope and impact of this? I will tell you my story: I am funded by NASA to develop and maintain open-source machine learning software that they use directly on satellites. I am not the only one: many open source scientific software projects that are in widespread use are funded via federal grants of one form or another.
Such grants are funded on a reimbursement basis (or at least mine is): each month, I submit an invoice (via the scientific software 501(c)3 of which I am a part). Then NASA pays it. When the EO was announced, my guidance was simply that NASA was not going to pay out for a while and my February paycheck was just going to not show up for a while. To my knowledge, this was basically the guidance for every NASA, NSF, NIH, etc. grant. (I believe DARPA grants are not frozen.) These do not just fund what the more conservative among us might call 'mathematical wankery', they fund all kinds of things across science.
The issue is not whether some of these grants should have been issued in the first place. The issue is that suddenly, a large group of researchers is either not going to get paid, or their organizations are going to have to float their salary themselves on behalf of the federal government, because the federal government has just said that they plan to renege on their agreements. How many will miss rent or mortgage payments?
Although the order has been blocked for now, it is still unclear what it will mean for me and others. (I would submit an invoice on Feb. 1... would it be paid?) It's not like I just got laid off and can go look for other work now: the funding is likely to come back, I just get the joy of having no idea when.
For those of you who seem to have little problem with the EO itself: please take at least a few moments to consider whether your principles outweigh the real human costs here, and whether there might have been a less brutalistic way of achieving the same principles.
I completely agree, the whole type of decision making wrecks people's life. Fine, if the government wants have a discussion of what programs to fund, lets have that, but this id.otic 'stop funding' orders is just horrific for people involved. There could be people on grants, who are just planning to move to the US from some other country, who finished their previous contracts whose lives will be suspended.
I remember the same thing happened last time with the 'travel bans'.
Obviously this new government does not give a sh.t about people and rational decision making, but it's bizarre how some people in this thread are trying to justify that...
This article is about funding freeze for the NIH (National Institutes of Health), not the NSF (National Science Foundation) but I suppose the situation is very similar.
> Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13, issued on Jan. 27, 2025, directs all federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of their financial assistance programs to determine programs, projects and activities that may be implicated by the recent executive orders. Therefore, all review panels, new awards and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis.
The Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13 lists a series of 8 different EOs none of which seem to be relevant to the NSF (although I haven't looked into them). It also says:
> The guidance establishes a process for agencies to work with OMB to determine quickly whether any program is inconsistent with the President’s Executive Orders. A pause could be as short as day. In fact, OMB has worked with agencies and has already approved many programs to continue even before the pause has gone into effect.
It would be good to know exactly which EOs are blocking the NSF's grants. Also, it sounds like the government are willing to approve spending as long as it has been through an internal review process which presumably if those grants were all but confirmed they should have already been through an internal review process.
I imagine anything involving "game theory" and "equilibrium" could be construed to involve "equity" and hence trigger DEI eviction protocols. Let's see if we're living in an Orwellian McCarthyian dystopia or not.
Yes, I did scroll through the list of stopped federal programs (listed by NYT), and didn't see much science in my area at least (physics), but according to Terence it is clear that some things in STEM are stopped despite that.
The uncertainty alone is already stopping people from making job offers this year in physics. Will the department of Energy keep funding fundamental physics research, for example? Will the NSF or NASA? No one knows. The rational response under these circumstances is to pull back on hiring.
For fields like academia it is interesting to see them impacted, but other areas don't even relate to any meaningful government financial sponsorship. I've been wondering for a few decades now if we shouldn't create a rendezvous site outside of all the countries that require a visa to work. It's my understanding that some countries try to make special economic zones that fit the bill, but I'm a little sceptical these are that independent.
As an example, say I want to hire a asylum seeker who will be returned to Syria and wants to go anywhere else, is there a list of anywhere else we could agree to make a contract and done?
For me the question is the Nash equilibriums if people with libertarian interests don't at least trust governments to be a little predicable on some topics.. Hiring someone remotely doesn't really give them a visa where ever they want to be there are I think odd ideas of bilateral agreements to whatever state owns their nationality.
Is it also a disaster that many math education programs don't hinge on automated proof assistants?
"we just don't know" is a non-answer.
If Tao's point is in predicting rapid change from a game theoretic perspective, perhaps it would behoove university executives to court industry for research dollars, instead of an ouroboros of invented problems and federal tax dollars.
Even state tax dollars are more likely to have a clear purpose.
Generally speaking, conservatives are ambivalent on the topic of education and research. Why they may benefit from uneducated voters, they understand the value of qualified labour for their businesses.
Do you actually mean conservatives here, or Republicans?
I ask because the parties have functionally flipped at the moment. Democrats are doing whatever they can to keep what was already in place (i.e. "conserve") while Republicans are on a bit of a war path trying to change everything (i.e. "progress").
Not all change is progress. Make America Great Again is a fundamentally reactionary platform, and nothing about the goals of Project 2025 is "progressive". Cute wordplay, though, good job using denotation to oppose connotation.
"Progress" as a goal is only meaningful with a defined direction. But I disagree with you, definitionally any change is progressing towards something.
This is precisely the issue I have always had with considering oneself "progressive". The end goals you are aiming for are the important factor to call out, the fact that you are simply progressing means only that you don't want to stand still.
Progressivism and the idea of being "progressive" or "a progressive" are defined ideologies. Within the political spectrum they have their own meaning. Arguing semantics in this way is not particularly different than saying "I saw a Republican turn left coming out of a doorway, so are they really on the right?"
Mind sharing, or linking to, what the defined ideology is?
My understanding of progressivism, as it is commonly used in the US, is that its based on often unspoken assumptions that the goals being progressed towards are "good" or "right" and that others' goals, therefore, are not. That isn't really a progressive ideology in my opinion though, and sounds more like an elitist approach to authoritarian rule.
It was a genuine question, thanks for assuming that.
I still don't get what the underlying ideology is though (sorry if I'm being obtuse here).
> seeks to advance the human condition through social reform – primarily based on purported advancements in social organization, science, and technology.
"Advance" here has the same issue as "progressive" - it needs direction to be meaningful. This doesn't say what we would be advancing towards, though it does say a few ways we may be able to get there.
For comparison, liberalism and conservativism are much more clear.
Conservativism can be (very roughly) boiled down to "don't break a good thing." Said differently, keep a high bar for change and default to trusting the people before us got here for good reason.
Liberalism can be similarly boiled down to prioritizing individual freedoms and liberty.
With wither of those two there will be a slew of political initiatives or programs that are based on those principles, but the underlying principles are clear.
That's what I've yet to grasp with progressivism, when you peel away all the programs and initiatives what is the underlying principle and what is the specific direction to progress or advance towards? As far as boundary cases go, what does progressivism look like once that goal is reached - does it become conservative?
If you read just a bit further in that article it is rather specific:
> While many ideologies can fall under the banner of progressivism, both the current and historical movement are characterized by a critique of unregulated capitalism, desiring a more active democratic government to take a role in safeguarding human rights, bringing about cultural development, and being a check-and-balance on corporate monopolies.
Sure, that's still not really a clear ideological underpinning to me though.
Is the core that goal to progress away from capitalism towards more governmental control?
If so I guess that is at least defining a directional goal, but using the blanket term "progressive" there is effectively blocking out anyone who wants to progress towards a different goal.
It seems like federalist or anticapitalist would be much more clear. At least then the goals they want to move towards are the distinguishing factor rather than the act of changing from where we are currently.
I agree. Conservative is a slightly less manipulative term than progressive. Progressive implies "we're the goodies"; conservative "we want to keep the current state of things".
But the "Make America Great Again" movement is explicitly regressive because they want to return America to its "past glory". All of trumps messaging has been about how great the US used to be, before it was hijacked by communists/the left/transgenders, and that he will protect you from the cultural changes taking place. This is reactionary/regressive. You can play word games with "progress to the goal of returning america to the past" but it's just spin. People know what "progress" means.
I don't disagree at all, I think many of Trump's talking points could fit with a "regressive" label.
I don't think its really word games when talking about progressivism today. Trump could claim the banner of progressive in the sense that he's trying to progress towards a future he believes is better for all of us, while Democrats are attempting to conserve what they built. Personally I see that as a bullshit word game, but that doesn't mean the words are actually used improperly there.
If someone tells you they are progressive, what is the end goal you expect they mean? Its totally possible that banner is shorthand for a specific goal or direction and I just completely missed the boat there.
Except conserving the country's demographics, i.e. its population, on the fashionable assumption that peoples are interchangeable, and that what really makes a country is cartography and paperwork.
I'm not actually quite sure what the connection here was, but I am curious.
Are you arguing that Democrats are trying yo conserve the demographics of today? Or that Republicans are trying to conserve, or really regress back to, the demographics of the past?
As far as countries go, how do you define them if not with maps and paperwork? The distinction between countries and nations or nation states may be important here, I've always understood it to be that countries are all about borders and laws where nations and nation states are much more focused on the people.
> Are you arguing that Democrats are trying yo conserve the demographics of today?
Not at all - that would require closing the border.
> Or that Republicans are trying to conserve, or really regress back to, the demographics of the past?
Yes.
> As far as countries go, how do you define them if not with maps and paperwork?
I think we agree on this point. Yes, countries are defined with maps/paperwork/borders, but when I said "what makes a country", I meant it in the sense of what makes it unique or different, what gives it its character. Certainly territory is part of that, but the larger, much more important part, are its people, i.e. the nation.
My take is that the "Democrats" are doing their best to "conserve" the direction they were "changing" things towards, and the progress they made in that direction already. Whilst the conservatives are finally getting enough oomph and ability to stem and reverse the direction of the slow tide that the Democrats were dragging everyone towards.
Let's face it, we were squarely within crazy territory and that's why everyone is having a knee-jerk reaction. The left or democrats or "the woke" as they are named have taken us too far, and if you ask me, way too-close to a societal-level precipice.
There are other ways the parties have flipped in my view, but let's stick here for a moment.
What the Democrats are doing at the moment is pretty textbook conservative, preserving the institutions, customs, and values that exist today. And there's nothing wrong with that, best I can tell that's just how it goes when parties flip - you're in charge for long enough to make major change and when you lose power you cling on to holding your ground.
Republicans are doing more than just undoing some of the progress made by Democrats. They are doing some of that for sure, but they're also trying to define some new path that they think will be better by whatever metrics they care about.
Now for another example of the flip, Democrats leaned to state's rights as soon as the election was over. Republican states already seem happy to welcome federal intervention, for example with federal enforcement and military on the southern border.
Maybe traditional conservatives, but they're functionally extinct now, and the only time Trump supporters are "pro-education" is when they can rage about how DEI is ruining education. At least, from what I've seen so far.
Maybe a supremacist mindset is appropriate when the other side has deteriorated into something pretty close to nazism. It is actually not very hard to be better than nazism. Your 'flip around' statement actually makes zero sense and the statement you are responding to is pretty accurate.
We've banned this account. You can't attack another user like this here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I'm inclined to agree on some points. You'll have a hard time communicating your ideas with this audience. Firstly, it is something that many here do not agree with or want to hear. Even the ideally formulated message containing these ideas will inspire a negative reaction. Understanding that, you will get more mileage by tailoring your message. Plainly saying these things is too blunt for most to even consider.
Mastodon has, for years now, a large math community. "Mathstodon". Tao posts there, Greg Egan posts math stuff there, many others. Just how it is; it's not something new. And it's not really a blogging platform so much as it is a social networking platform, for those who participate in it. Real-time peer-review.
>...this thinking again assumes an oversimplified linear model: in practice, the rest of the world would not be able to absorb all of the lost opportunities in the US in a single job cycle, and some mathematicians may end up leaving the field entirely, or not obtain as enriching a career as they would otherwise have been able to achieve.
Has the author considered the possibility that there may be an misallocation of resources directed towards academia? If the work is valuable, individuals in the private sector will voluntarily pay for it. Decentralized market pricing is the method by which dollar values are assigned.
He could equally say, "My colleagues in the dig holes and refill them field have not received their grants for their important research. Think of all of the missed opportunities. This disruption may result in individuals leaving the dig & refill sector."
Fundamental research shows progress on timescales that are incompatible with most "free market" timelines, i.e. the stock market does not want a company to spend 10 years developing the science for something that only pans out after that time period and vastly prefers short term success.
Yes! Let’s direct all research by the behest of large corporations! Of course there is no intrinsic value in research unless it’s producing value for the market! Absolute dollar value is the only measure of value! The market is well known to accurately favour niche research and development that can accumulate over time to fundamental breakthroughs instead of short term profits!
> If the work is valuable, individuals in the private sector will voluntarily pay for it.
Only if the work is valuable to the private sector. There are other types of value - academic, social, environmental, long-term - that often don't or can't motivate the private sector. That thing about governments being there to solve the collective action problem.
Yes, the market is very well known to price in future breakthroughs or externalities.
Especially when it comes to something like fundamental hard science and math that underpins most of our technological progress over the last few centuries.
Your example of men on the Moon is precisely what drives people to support more privately driven progress.
Because that was an amazing achievement orchestrated almost entirely by government, but then once the geopolitical factors motivating government to support it faded, the entire human space program was defacto cancelled.
Over the next 50 years progress in human space sharply regressed and, if not for Elon and SpaceX, we would very likely still be on that trajectory.
Governments can be whimsically unpredictable in a way far beyond how companies can normally behave. In fact this is exactly what this topic is about!
I don’t buy into the idea that because money was brought in that is valuable and anything else is not.
A private sector org could find that fermenting tensions and selling bullets is a very valuable activity vs say studying the financial impact of war / conflict resolution methods.
The latter is unlikely to bring in much or any money but the latter clearly leads to an overall better / more valuable market for everyone.
The private sector is very good for determining what widgets to put on shelves for Christmas for people to buy, but it’s decidedly short term / shallow in its actions and thinking.
Given Psychology has invented the word 'Replication Crisis', it makes me quite anti-academia.
I'm not saying we get 0 valuable output from Academia, I know better to say extreme statements like that.
I have seen the people who get PhDs and they are not A or B students... They are the ones that Industry wouldn't accept.
I have read what is deemed 'science', and more time is spent calculating statistics, than understanding their dataset was a terrible. It looks really fancy.
I have read what is published in 'Prestigious' journals like Nature, and there doesnt seem to be a correlation between replicable and predictive science and trendy ideas.
What recently irked me, I was talking to a a tenured/post-doc/professor, and we pulled up some scientific study that seemed like it contradicted the empirical evidence I observed. He looked at the publisher, 'Nature', accepted it, and moved on instantly. I immediately scrolled down to the Data. It seems like Academia is more of an Authority than Science.
Having done both academia and industry, my experience is that the amount of wrong conclusions and bullshit delivery in industry vastly outweighs what exists in academia.
To be fair, in all of industry, academia, and politics this stuff happens. The leaders, CEOs, and presidents rarely have any knowledge of the technical matters at all and will BS their way to conclusions in the same way.
We’re watching the Protestant reformation 2.0 play itself out. The role of the Catholic church is this time being played by the technocratic establishment of NGO’s, academia and mass media.
> If the work is valuable, individuals in the private sector will voluntarily pay for it.
Here we have demonstrated the essentially religious belief in The Power And Majesty Of The Free Market. And when it's proven to be false, well, you can always tell yourself that the market works in mysterious ways.
Congress passed a spending bill instructing research agencies to distribute funds to researchers. Academics applied for funding through these agencies and had their grants approved by experts within these agencies. This is generally a highly competitive process, with most grant applications being rejected.
Then Trump shows up, issues an unclear order with the seeming intention of rooting out DEI-related stuff, and shuts down everything in a way that creates absolute chaos and uncertainty for everybody. Surely this is not the appropriate way of addressing misallocated spend.
Even if "industry will pay for it instead" were true, it obviously isn't the case that industry will replace the lost funding this month so that grad students can get paid and make rent.
