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I understand the need to frame arguments in an objective and clinical way. At the same time, it's frustrating because it just feels like being so distant emotionally doesn't drive deep enough into the way the current environment shakes so many people to their cores. It's an egregious assault on individual experiences and there's no real way to sugarcoat that.

You can deport illegal immigrants without taking away their dignity and without frightening the ever living shit out of everyone. But this isn't that. The intention is fear.

We're starting to see the impact. A number of our older peers have kids beginning to graduate high school or undergrad. I personally know of 3 situations this fall/next spring already where very talented kids have chosen European schools this year over Ivy League admits

And, more critically - if foreigners are deciding to take up faculty positions in their home countries.

Countries like India, Vietnam, and South Korea have begun replicating the Chinese Thousand Talents program to attract their diasporas back to domestic academia.

Significant domains of CS such as HPC/Systems, Networking, OS internals, etc are heavily dependent on faculty, graduate students, and post-docs who are all on some sort of visa. And increasingly, at least amongst Indians, becuase the backlogs for US citizenship are insane, a number of those people have been taking sweetheart positions at INIs like the new IITs with almost US$100k in public-private lab startup grants on top of a $20k salary (tax free due to the income tax changes) with free housing and car and complete autonomy to consult with private sector players without IP entanglement (one of the biggest headaches for public private STEM R&D partnerships in the US).

Vietnam is doing something similar as well to attract Vietnamese diaspora in SK and Japan, along with Viet Kieu in America and Australia.

A nativist academic culture in STEM in the US would completely destroy any R&D capacity that even exists today.

Why would moving to an even more authoritarian country be good advice? What?

Kids may want to learn Chinese for the same reason they may want to learn Arabic or Spanish. It helps doing business in some parts of the world.

But China is not going to be the dominant superpower (except maybe if they manage to beat the rest of the world in AI). Their labor force is already in decline, which means they must gradually shift their focus from building the future to maintaining the society. Like Europe and Japan are already doing.

Looking at the history of US leads to the depressing conclusion that this administration is not an aberration but is instead a return to the same old shit from 150 years ago.

Just curious, but is there any evidence that Chinese/Indian/etc will even be as open to US students as the US has been to them? I have no knowledge of what their intentions may be, but I think it’s a pretty large assumption that they would even take American students at all

IMO it depends on the field and her scholarships. If it's tech, just go to waterloo, it's a great school, has a great reputation and you get the Canadian discount, if it's not, you have more research to do. With her professors not having as much grant work to do, they might actually focus on teaching for once! As an undergrad, research doesn't matter much and no 17 year old is certain they want to become a PhD researcher type at that age.

Otherwise as dual citizens it's overblown. There is a lot of hot air in Canada that doesn't match the on the boots on the ground reality of life in the USA (for citizens / green card holders) because Canada is pissed off that America caused a downturn in Canada's economy and Canadians feel the pinch because the downturn is about 25% worse in Canada as a result.

But IMO it's self inflicted wound and has been a very, very long time coming. Canada has kept on kicking the economic can down the road for decades now and it's toll is collecting interest more and more.

The political worker class in DC is also very pissed off because the administration there initiated the equivalent of extreme mass layoffs in a sector that is not used to that.

In the USA, people are kind of mopey about the downturn, but in democratic areas the level of emotion is far less than it was with trump was the first time, while in Canada, it seems like it's more intense than it was in California with trump for the first time.

The most eminent institutions in America are older than the United States. Trump has been president for 6 years, and he's 79 years of age. I don't know if you're a betting man but my money is on the colleges winning this fight in the long run.

She already has offers from eminent institutions? Has early decision/action even happened yet? Or is she a recruited athlete?

Trump will be gone in 3 years, possibly fewer given his age and health confounders. Don't make long-term plans based on the direction of short-term political winds.

This is the first in a very long time that I’ve seen my thoughts written down by someone else. Unfortunately I didn’t get out and thanks to 2 burnouts & counting I’m stuck in a shithole country doing shithole jobs.

If you’re young and want to get out, get out. Don’t take my path of studying and working until a path emerges. If I could do it again I don’t think I’d even finish secondary education and just pack my bags at 17.

There are certainly a lot of people like you describe, but there also many "hippy" types that just like to grow plants or DIY makers. Often they have to do more with less, but cheap land can give people the freedom to do stuff like loud metal working or space to repair older equipment for cheap or grow large gardens.

One of the biggest problems though is just the poverty, options are limited and wages are shit and like you mentioned innovations don't make their way into rural areas until like 10+ years later. And if you don't move away to a big city the majority of people are never going to make a lot of money and will often be ignored for most everything except as a source of revenue for podunk courts and cops. Of the highly intelligent and aspirational few that are left, most end up severely stifled by lack of financial opportunity even if they are doing great work because most of their potential customer base are poor too.

What's surprising to me is that internal migration in the US is actually down from its peak. People today are more likely to live in or close to their hometown than they were in the 20th century. Part of this is simply because urbanization goes only one way.

>Dark forces are working hard to discourage discourse and diversity.

Yeah and they just shot a man in the neck for speaking.

Oh you meant the guy that was speaking is the dark force.

BOOOOOOOOOOO

As a global citizen of Earth, I would agree. But I'm also a citizen of the United States, and have a vested personal interest in its academic and economic superiority. And I think that's normal. You don't even have to be nationalistic or patriotic about your particular country to feel that way. Academic and economic declines in any country will cause problems for everyone who lives there.

Of course there should be. However, those nations should worry about that on behalf of their citizens. No other nation is going to concern itself with whether Americans can live close to their parents.

Yup, the author is in a fairly rare fortunate situation for someone who is good in his field. A lot of us moved countries or continents to be good at our jobs, and there is always a personal cost.

Although, for grandkids, I guess that when you are far you are also more intentional with making sure you spend time with their grandparents when they are far.

There are plenty. The author is over exaggerating the prestige of CMU compared to other institutes outside of the USA.

Just in the western countries:

Toronto, Cambridge, ENS in France, the many max Planck institutes in Germany (eg Tubingen), the two federal institutes in Switzerland.

Faculty positions in any of those are likely to be better than CMU (in terms of start up package, funding, quality of students, quality of faculty, and ability to hire people).

This is the sort of attitude that allows nations to fall. If a nation isn't protecting it's most valuable resources, they will be taken away by others who want them.

> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's at least a contender

There are several premises:

1. CMU needs immigration to remain a top school.

2. His children will be in the top 1% of 1% of 1% to qualify for top schools.

3. His children will move away if CMU does not remain a top school...

4. and that would be bad, so bad that it justifies perpetual rent stress for 100 million Americans, an actual impact of immigration.