Of interest: the Social Sciences have been *flagged for review*

[Politesse]

Australians and Brits are okay, but my fellow Americans should be aware that the following words are now automatically flagged as suspicious by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health:

activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocate, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, bipoc, black and latinx, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity equity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equity, ethnicity, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, institutional, Igbt, marginalize, marginalized, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotypes, systemic, trauma, under appreciated, under represented, under served, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, women and underrepresented

As alarming as it is to imagine how one could possible to write or conduct psychological, sociological, economic, or anthropological study without using any of these words - a bit like that French novelist who wrote a novel without the letter E - at least the list itself is an interesting data point. They're on a hunt for "DEI", but often cannot or will not clarify what DEI actually is or isn't. Well, here's the list! A handy rubric for what they mean by those initials.

 

[Politesse]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

 

[southernhybrid]

So, free speech is gone now. It's getting worse by the day or maybe I should say hour.

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

I seriously doubt they will bother to read any studies. They just like to threaten and scare people, or perhaps AI will read the papers. Yes, I'm serious. Since AI can read texts, it wouldn't surprise me if it could be used to search for certain words.

 

[Politesse]

I'm sure grad students are already using GPT to scrub their abtracts of the no-no words.

 

[Shadowy Man]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to read all those proposals.

 

[Elixir]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to
read all those proposals.

Of course they will. The same AI (Meta) that I just saw confidently asserting that roosters lay eggs.

 

[Shadowy Man]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to
read all those proposals.

Of course they will. The same AI (Meta) that I just saw confidently asserting that roosters lay eggs.

Maybe that explains why eggs have gotten so expensive!!

 

[Bomb#20]

So, free speech is gone now. It's getting worse by the day or maybe I should say hour.

So if you use a word that was flagged for review do you get jailed, or only fined? Sent to Gitmo, perhaps? Or are we talking extraordinary rendition?

 

[southernhybrid]

So, free speech is gone now. It's getting worse by the day or maybe I should say hour.

So if you use a word that was flagged for review do you get jailed, or only fined? Sent to Gitmo, perhaps? Or are we talking extraordinary rendition?

We don't know yet how far they will take it. But, if the government can control which words someone writing an academic proposal or study are permitted to use, free speech is certainly no longer free. If someone could lose their job over the words they use, to me, that means that free speech is dead, at least for those who don't agree with the power mongers currently in control.

 

[Politesse]

So, free speech is gone now. It's getting worse by the day or maybe I should say hour.

So if you use a word that was flagged for review do you get jailed, or only fined? Sent to Gitmo, perhaps? Or are we talking extraordinary rendition?

That's frustratingly unclear, actually. Officially, the list doesn't even exist. They certainly aren't being transparent about what they ultimately plan to do with all the data they are harvesting. If you think they aren't least considering criminal charges against those who created DEI offices, facilitated DEI hires, or created DEI or trans-affirming curricula and school programs, you are both incredibly naive. They are planning a massive expansion of "Gitmo", actually, and are investigating several other options for overseas mass detentions as well. On record, those spots are for illegals, but they are already expanding the definition of that word beyond its constitutional limit, and there are plenty of other things they consider illegal regardless of what the law might say. When they take me, it won't be for publishing a no-no word as such, it will be for something scary and publically unsympathetic like "pedophilia" (being LGBT) or "terrorism" (being an academic). But that doesn't mean my published works might not be used against me at my show trial.

 

[thebeave]

Australians and Brits are okay, but my fellow Americans should be aware that the following words are now automatically flagged as suspicious by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health:

activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocate, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, bipoc, black and latinx, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity equity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equity, ethnicity, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, institutional, Igbt, marginalize, marginalized, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotypes, systemic, trauma, under appreciated, under represented, under served, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, women and underrepresented

As alarming as it is to imagine how one could possible to write or conduct psychological, sociological, economic, or anthropological study without using any of these words - a bit like that French novelist who wrote a novel without the letter E - at least the list itself is an interesting data point. They're on a hunt for "DEI", but often cannot or will not clarify what DEI actually is or isn't. Well, here's the list! A handy rubric for what they mean by those initials.

It is pretty dumb to focus on those words specifically when it comes to social science research. Certainly issues concerning race, gender, bias, etc have their place there, although I question whether its gotten a bit overdone and hyperbolic in recent years. I'm more troubled about how all that language is making its way into publications in the physical sciences, something I thought (naively) was immune. Case in point, Scientific American magazine:

How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science

But increasingly, during Helmuth's tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day's social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time.

When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that "Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented "his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior." That author also explained that "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against." But the normal distribution doesn't make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn't be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim.

Some of the magazine's Helmuth-era output made the posthumous drive-by against Wilson look Pulitzer-worthy by comparison. Perhaps the most infamous entry in this oeuvre came in September 2021: "Why the Term 'JEDI' Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion." That article sternly informed readers that an acronym many of them had likely never heard of in the first place—JEDI, standing for "justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion"—ought to be avoided on social justice grounds. You see, in the Star Wars franchise, the Jedi "are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of "Jedi mind tricks," etc.)"

You probably think I'm trolling or being trolled. There's no way that actual sentence got published in Scientific American, right? No, it's very real.

 

[Jarhyn]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to
read all those proposals.

Of course they will. The same AI (Meta) that I just saw confidently asserting that roosters lay eggs.

I have no doubt that it will do just as well at the task as humans who do the same.

 

[Shadowy Man]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to
read all those proposals.

Of course they will. The same AI (Meta) that I just saw confidently asserting that roosters lay eggs.

I have no doubt that it will do just as well at the task as humans who do the same.

Why do you feel that way? Have you sat on committees that read grant proposals and report on their merits?

On what basis could a LLM decide the merits of future scientific investigations?

 

[Politesse]

Oh man, who are these mysterious grantors who just give away research funds to any old project without review? Can I have their number?

Our lab has been waiting for this one stupid software upgrade for sixteen years. We put the license in our funding request every report cycle. It's just a few hundred bucks, but of course it's a recurring, and that's always a trick to talk the division into. And truthfully it is not a top priority for us either, so it's never the one we're really pushing with the dean on. So every single time it gets ignored, until now the students are plugging numbers on antiques. But I could for sure tie it in to a study of egg-laying roosters, if that's what gets the funding these days.

 

[Jarhyn]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to
read all those proposals.

Of course they will. The same AI (Meta) that I just saw confidently asserting that roosters lay eggs.

I have no doubt that it will do just as well at the task as humans who do the same.

Why do you feel that way? Have you sat on committees that read grant proposals and report on their merits?

On what basis could a LLM decide the merits of future scientific investigations?

Yours is an error of interpretation as much as mine is an error of encoding.

Meta AI will decode these documents as well as humans who classify roosters as egg layers.

I'm sure over the long span of time and history some "rooster" has "laid an egg", however this is not the heart of the class.

The joke I was making is that AGI has a low bar to hop over.

 

[Shadowy Man]

You know what's funny? This will result in some poor DOGE censor having to personslly read damn near every proposal submitted to the NIH since the Obama era, as explicating "barriers to progress" has been a required question on the grant proposal form ever since then. These chuckleheads hate reading, and they just assigned themselves an encyclopedia an hour.

They probably believe they’ll just use AI to
read all those proposals.

Of course they will. The same AI (Meta) that I just saw confidently asserting that roosters lay eggs.

I have no doubt that it will do just as well at the task as humans who do the same.

Why do you feel that way? Have you sat on committees that read grant proposals and report on their merits?

On what basis could a LLM decide the merits of future scientific investigations?

Yours is an error of interpretation as much as mine is an error of encoding.

Meta AI will decode these documents as well as humans who classify roosters as egg layers.

I'm sure over the long span of time and history some "rooster" has "laid an egg", however this is not the heart of the class.

The joke I was making is that AGI has a low bar to hop over.

Ok. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[Bomb#20]

So, free speech is gone now. It's getting worse by the day or maybe I should say hour.

So if you use a word that was flagged for review do you get jailed, or only fined? Sent to Gitmo, perhaps? Or are we talking extraordinary rendition?

We don't know yet how far they will take it. But, if the government can control which words someone writing an academic proposal or study are permitted to use, free speech is certainly no longer free.

Really. What form do this "control" and "permitting" take? If you use a word they don't like when writing an academic proposal or study do you get jailed, or only fined? Sent to Gitmo, perhaps? Or are we talking extraordinary rendition?[/sarcasm]

What you're referring to, of course, is that if you don't follow their rules they won't give you a grant to pay you to make the claims you want to make. Likewise, what the article in the OP was on about is that if you don't follow their rules they won't host your writing on a government website.

But I suppose the amount of people who think "free speech" means the government has to buy them a megaphone should have stopped surprising me a long time ago.

If someone could lose their job over the words they use, to me, that means that free speech is dead, at least for those who don't agree with the power mongers currently in control.

By that standard, free speech was never even born. Governments have never hired people to speak for the government and then systematically let them keep their jobs even if they say things the government doesn't want them to say. Do you think the Biden administration wouldn't have fired a government employee who said employers should avoid hiring black people? Hell, some professor at a state university lost her job just for saying everyone's life matters!

So the question is, if someone could lose their job over the words they use, to you, does that mean free speech is dead regardless of the words they use, or only if they lose their job for words you approve of?