People do not graduate with a STEM PhD with hundreds of thousands in debt; that is not how the education system works pretty much anywhere in the world.

This is the truth. I would love to go back to school and do research to get my PhD. But going back to living on sub-minimum wage to work 80+ hours a week is just not something I can do at this stage of life.

> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.

Reinventing the universe every time you create something is expensive and impractical. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.

That's not remotely how any progress has ever been made in the history of the human race. Newton himself said he stood on the shoulders of giants. Or as Sagan said, to bake an apple pie from scratch, you have to first invent the Universe.

A clever patch to an existing thing is exactly how you get to the next big thing after enough patches.

> that sounds like extending capabilities of something that already exists.

> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to.

The former is how almost all innovation and invention works. The latter is a myth.

Yes, incremental improvements is how most science gets done.

They do, on paper, but many countries hardly enforce them. For example, the EU has more caveats to its section-1201-style insanity; China simply doesn't care at all. These copyright treaties are useless in practice and harmful because they ossify a bad system.

I think some people overblow the lawsuit risk in the US. It really does suck here, however one of the benefits to certain types of innovation is that the US has a lot of IP protection infrastructure. Which stiffles innovation in a lot of ways, but also makes investment easier in some cases.

Legally risky research, but if it has high enough rewards will eventually end up in the hands of extremely large companies that have the legal backing to do anything they want.

We have a lot of money. Smart people can make more money by working here.

Momentum is a large part. I also do think there's somewhat of a motivation that once you've gotten to the top you can sue people who try to displace you into oblivion - ye olde classic "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" syndrome.

Ignorance, incompetence, indifference --- it's how empires end.

Seems like an arrogant American take. The United States primary and secondary schools are middling at best, and that has been showing through to its universities. Foreigners were already choosing Chinese universities. It's not like the recent administration could just "keep pulling", what do they have to appeal with? Obviously shutting off the flow of any and all talent is stupid, but it's a little arrogant to pretend it was not already diverting to better systems.

Unfortunately it changed from "best and brightest" to "whoever could make it over the border" and "whoever would do the same job for less money".

> think you are confusing the current climate of immigration enforcement and reform with being anti-immigration.

If this was true, Repubs would be handing out green cards at graduation ceremonies, at least for STEM fields. Instead, they are rolling out more pay to play schemes.

Here’s one: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking...

Science creates the seeds, and what you’re citing are the fruits of seeds that were planted decades ago. Big tech only exists because of random science investments that were made long ago.

The metric isn’t how much fruit you have now, but how well you’re preparing the soil and planting the seeds for the next generation.

> at least the next 5 years

That's not much of a flex. The people who are worried about China taking the lead are looking at velocity and acceleration, not position.

STEM is harder. 25% of undergrads seems like a reasonable guess of who would be capable of attaining a STEM degree without lowering standards.

No, of course, but the issue comes in the next step. How do they put their "support" of science into practice? For some, that means supporting increased budgets for grants, education, or basic research. For others, that means "restoring trust" by adding partisan steps. "Trusting the experts is not science", as RFK said.

I find these types of survey questions almost useless - of course people will say they support science, or democracy, or freedom, or increasing support for families. The devil is always in the details.

No. And that is exactly my point: we're considering to be pro-science the opinion of people that are actually against it.

To be fair, one religious group invented science.

Well, then you didn't pay attention.

"It is sound science", "be open to debate", "studies show" is the kind of arguments they use a lot. They use twisted arguments from science's language.

Whatever man... I wanted to provide examples, not a catalog.

I’d buy that if the winning party had presented a coherent plan fix the problems.

to be fair universities nowadays are more interested in supporting identity politics and liberal ideology than supporting science

Examples?

In a regular political cycle, where there is sanity, normally Im actually for people not voting when they don't know much about politics.

In this case, given how public all of Trumps things were prior to 2024, with him being a felon, him trying to coupe the government (even if you are completely unaware of that, you should at least know that the coupe happened under him), and all the other disgusting things he have done, non voting carries a different meaning. You either don't care if US falls into decline, or you are just as deluded as any MAGA in thinking that Kamala would have been worse - in both cases, you deserve no respect.

They're (still) Americans.

And how does this claim contradict my initial statement?