NSF to Science: DIE! Science to NSF: Bye!

A committee of the US Senate scanned all the grants doled out by the National Science Foundation over about three years, and discovered (with my emphasis) “3,483 grants, more than ten percent of all NSF grants and totaling over $2.05 billion in federal dollars, went to questionable projects that promoted diversity, [inclusion, and equity (DIE)] tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.” (Thanks to Thanatos Savehn for the tip; link to the report.)

Science is determined to DIE. We look at the consequences of this at the end.

There was some overlap in classifying the kind of DIEing, but over 3,000 of the grants, for some $1.9 billion, went to increase the Status of Official Victims: “The Committee defined Status as grants that described persons based on their membership in a population deemed underrepresented, underserved, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or excluded.”

Would it help to point out shoveling money to people because they are of a specific race is illegal? No, it would not. Because the law is what the law does, so suck it up, white men. And because “Beginning in 2021, the White House and NSF created scientific integrity policies to require that agencies “[i]ncorporate [Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility] considerations into all aspects of science planning, execution, and communication.”

About a third of the DIE grants went to women because they were women. The Committee didn’t say what these women’s feelings were about this, but it’s a good bet the papers they write funded by this largess will fill us in in great detail.

The other grants went to the categories of Social Justice, a.k.a. Grievance Hustling, Race, and Environmental Justice, which surprisingly (to me, anyway) only scooped up 362 grants. Could interest in “climate change” for persons of color be waning?

It’s worse than the raw numbers say, because the amounts going to DIE are increasing year by year, with most of it coming in 2023, and 2024 looking like it will be a banner year. A full 16.5\% of all NSF grants in 2022 were for DIEing, almost 19\% in 2023, and it’s projected to be about 27\% this year.

Over a quarter of “hard” science money is now going to DIE. It turns out to be more than enough.

If, as now seems increasingly likely, The Cackler flames out and the left can’t muster the will to fortify the election sufficiently, that 27\% will likely be the apex of DIE funding. Though given how independently the managerial state, i.e. the Expertocracy, operates from formal governance, it’s likely that some amount would still flow to DIE even if The Fascist Dictator-On-Day-One retakes office.

Consider that because most of the NSF’s money goes to academia, and academia is determined to DIE in ways unconsidered by NSF, all of this increases the likelihood that the best science will be that which comes from outside the government.

More evidence comes from this post (and subscribe!) by our friend John Carter, the very Martian Warlord himself: “Academia is women’s work“. All that money spent to DIE has its effect. Women now dominate almost all university departments, with the exceptions, so far, of Engineering and Computer Science. For the obvious reasons. But, as Carter says, these fields cannot remain untouched:

Sadly for the prospects of academia, there is almost no prospect of universities letting well enough be. The persistence of a few small pockets of patriarchy in the midst of the gynocratic hegemony is an affront to everything the longhouse stands for. We endlessly hear about the crisis of female underrepresentation in those departments that have not yet been conquered, principally STEM. There are special recruitment programs for women, special scholarships for women, special mentoring programs for women. STEM departments are under constant internal and external pressure to bring in more women. This has led to a culture inside STEM departments that shows immense favouritism to women…

University faculties and administrations are packed full of activist girlbosses for whom admitting, mentoring, hiring, and promoting other activist girlbosses is their entire animating purpose in life. 

Where are engineering and computer science doing well in real life? Not the academy. Didn’t we this week see the marvel of a rocket blasting to earth? And aren’t the better parts of AI (modeling) all in the hands of private companies?

Companies are hampered, though. Minute they touch any grant money, they allow oversight by government DIE masters. Plus there are all the civil “rights” laws which insist every aspect of life DIE. Imagine creating a company position called “Our Most Awesome Engineers”. It will, if left alone, be filled with mostly white and Asian men. That’s when the “disparate impact” lawsuit hits, and the department must legally DIE.

Still, if you can keep quiet, and hire Victims in proportional numbers and give them busywork, a sad but necessary expense, good work can be done. And is being done.

Maybe even better are private foundations. Not extant think tanks. They are almost all captured, and few are science focused (as opposed to “science education”). Small groups dedicated toward singular tasks can accomplish wonders.

Do not forget science got its start among men — many of whom were priests or in religious orders! Not groups of men: just men. Some were independently wealthy, some had patrons. It will probably take individuals working on their own to restore the broken foundations, the metaphysics on which all physics must build, before science can again become a group activity and be great again.

Though be careful giving that theory too much weight, since as I find myself in the situation of being out on my own, I may be glamorizing it overmuch.

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