alt Hacker NewsThis was the most one-sided article I’ve seen in a while.
I didn’t see one word describing why the administration felt this was the correct decision.
All I saw was moral judgment and condemnation, as if describing the actual motivations of the actors would have been a pointless exercise.
I’m not defending the administration. I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project or the groups that operated it. But I do know that there are two sides to every conflict.
This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision. And the one-sided presentation makes me much more suspicious of the motives of the publisher and therefore of the validity of their position.
Replies
This may help https://www.workboat.com/white-house-budget-would-slash-noaa...
The administration wanted to eliminate everything ocean-related, seems like they are doing it program by program and this is yet another. Probably explains the lack of context, this is like article 20 about program closures (and maybe 200+ more to go)
You're correct that, generally speaking, policy debates should not appear one-sided (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...). We should put very little prior weight on the hypothesis that one side is actual cartoon villains, from a children's TV show, with the simple goal of looting the system and no concern for how much of the future they destroy while doing so.
However, to be effective reasoners, we can't assign that hypothesis 0 prior probability; and once sufficient evidence has come in, our posterior distribution must shift.
I don't think there's any reasonable case for shutting down an early warning system which costs around the price of the new white house thunderdome every decade, and instead waiting to find out AMOC has collapsed when Scotland is hemmed in by year-round ocean ice and agriculture is impossible in Western Europe.
Stranded assets alone, in the latter case, will easily run to hundreds of billions. Knowing when to change crop profiles, reinsuance schedules, etc., would save much more.
> I know nothing about Atlantic currents or this particular monitoring project
That's the problem.
> This article failed on any level to help me make an informed decision.
You shouldn't rely on just one article to make an "informed decision." Indeed, anyone who genuinely wants to make "informed decisions" must cultivate the habit of actively seeking out to be better informed rather than passively relying on a single article.
There's an entire chain of events that the links in this article lead to...
...The NSF is descoping.
...It's descoping because of federal funding cuts to science projects
...Federal funding cuts are due to the pro-fossil-fuel biases and climate change skepticism of the rightwing Trump admin and its backers. Their ideological strategy to redesign American society, Project 2025, specifically mentions disbanding this very monitoring project.
I was able to find that all out in about 15 minutes though I'm neither American nor reside there or anywhere close to it.
A performative pretense of informed decision making is not the same as genuinely making informed decisions.
https://archive.is/fZ9CN
> Michael England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the decision to dismantle the network, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, “aligns with N.S.F.’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
1) it's not hard to do your own research. If you're here, I assume you know how.
2) does that answer satisfy you? The bullshitty word salad doesn't surprise me. With this administration I expect incompetence and double speak and am rarely disappointed. I wonder why at this point in time you choose to give them so much leeway.