You're right, they used to care or at least said the right things. Then I guess they realized that they could get more voters by simply importing them lol...
>What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
This destroys their entire argument about the necessity of the imports, even if it is relatively rare. (Note that I don't think it's rare to be replaced by foreigners. I think it's rare to be forced or incentivized to train them, especially with knowledge that you will actually be replaced.)
Recently I heard something crazy like 9 of 10 new jobs since the pandemic is held by foreign-born people, even as many US-born are unemployed. 20% of US-born men is unemployed. This is not a primary source but it should get you started if you're interested: https://www.numbersusa.org/blog/nine-out-of-ten-new-jobs-hav...
It's funny how the loyalties of imported "talent" are not front and center in any discussion of how their presence is "strategically important." I think we are getting strategically shafted by lax immigration laws.
That isn't what it means to have a shortage. In many cases Americans are discouraged from applying for these jobs. They can overspecify the criteria or be overly skeptical about your resume, write the job listing poorly, or hide the job listing entirely. What a shortage really means from their perspective is that they can't find enough workers for the price they want to pay (as opposed to what they can afford). However, I don't find that satisfying. I might have a legitimate business idea that would work only if I could find 100 great engineers willing to work for far below average. That would be considered insane in isolation, but if several large companies get together and issue the same complaint like "We can't move ahead because there are not enough engineers in our price range" then they call it a shortage. But I don't think American workers should have to tolerate these people flooding the market just because they can make money by doing so lol...
We are mostly in agreement. I'm pretty sure we need to sympathize with employers in situations like this, at times, though. It doesn't help anyone to reduce every shortage to a supposed moral fault in the employers lol. At what point do we become sympathetic to them? When their business is crucial to society and can't function without the workers at the given price? Or is it when the market rate for a job is offensive to other kinds of workers at jobs of similar difficulty? I think the societal need is a plausible reason, but it leads to this slippery slope we started off complaining about. It boils down to: who's to say how expensive is too expensive, or that a business should fail because of a politically imposed scarcity of labor?
> we need to sympathize with employers in situations like this, at times
Of course, at times, yes. Not at this time in American history, clearly.
> When their business is crucial to society and can't function without the workers at the given price
Yes, absolutely, if by "given price" you mean "the price Americans should reasonably be paid". But this particular combination of two things is probably nonexistent.
> a business should fail because of a politically imposed scarcity of labor?
Again, probably not what would actually happen. If businesses are forced to hire Americans, they would not "fail". Rather, investors/leadership may choose to go do some other more-profitable business, but not because the business can't survive. We are talking about the lack of socially normal humans in US leadership, not economic constraints. I.e. the kind of person you have to compel to be a non-negative force in society via legislation. Not every country, now or in history, has to deal with this problem. It's definitely a weird one. But it's what we're dealing with right now. Yes, there have always been unscrupulous Scrooges among those running things, but often their goals happen to benefit society as a whole enough that we don't have to step in this dramatically.
>>When their business is crucial to society and can't function without the workers at the given price
>Yes, absolutely, if by "given price" you mean "the price Americans should reasonably be paid". But this particular combination of two things is probably nonexistent.
That isn't really what I meant. It is conceivable that there could be a critical business for which there are simply not enough workers to meet demand at the price customers can afford. I think there is an underlying assumption that if the money is there, the workers will be too. Generally, that is how things work in the long run, but in the case of skilled vocations there can be a long lag before qualified people step in.
What I'm describing here is just acknowledging the demand curve for labor and its implications. It's very basic economics. If the input costs for a product go up too high, it will necessarily reduce the consumption regardless of how badly wanted the product happens to be. I don't think it is tenable in the long term to have have a majority of people in society clamoring for something that is too expensive because of labor, especially to the benefit of a cartel of workers who these people also regard as overpaid. I think the immigration of medical doctors is one of these in the extreme. Most people think doctors are paid well, and do not care if doctors don't like immigration because they perceive the prices to be too high. There may be many reasons that healthcare is expensive, but a tight supply of qualified labor is obviously one of these.
>> [Who's to say that] a business should fail because of a politically imposed scarcity of labor?
>Again, probably not what would actually happen. If businesses are forced to hire Americans, they would not "fail". Rather, investors/leadership may choose to go do some other more-profitable business, but not because the business can't survive.
I think you are forgetting that businesses can and do lose money all the time. Most businesses fail, in fact. The point of investing is to make a profit. If that cannot be attained after a reasonable ramp up period, then investors will eat their losses and go away. That is the definition of a business not surviving. If you can't show that your expenses (including labor) will eventually result in a profit, then you don't have a viable business idea and no investor would sink money into it.
The classic case of this happening is all the factories that closed due to competition in China and elsewhere. Those factories indeed had to hire Americans for their physical proximity, if nothing else, and at that price point they could not sustain themselves. Even having higher quality did not save most of them. Consumers didn't care enough about quality or patriotism to sustain those factories.
>We are talking about the lack of socially normal humans in US leadership, not economic constraints. I.e. the kind of person you have to compel to be a non-negative force in society via legislation.
It is totally an economic problem: oversupply of labor driven by market dynamics. The solution that helps American workers is to slow down immigration by a lot. It has knock-on effects though, such as higher prices and potentially lower quality for a lot of things. It would also shift people around within the domestic economy.
>Yes, there have always been unscrupulous Scrooges among those running things, but often their goals happen to benefit society as a whole enough that we don't have to step in this dramatically.
Profit-seeking behavior lowers prices for everyone in the long run. If I were to summarize the problem I would say: Extreme exchange ratios and rapid/easy movement of resources internationally are causing threats to certain sectors of the workforce, including national security threats and impoverishment of skilled workers in wealthy nations (especially the US).
I think everyone (or virtually everyone) is OK with actual world-leading researchers coming to the US. But what we don't want is the labor market flooded with foreign "talent". The system is designed to try to get the researchers and noteworthy people, but corrupt people have found ways around all of it. There are paper mills, degree mills, cheating rings, etc. Plus firms that exist solely to funnel foreigners into the US for a fee.
There is always an economic argument to be made for importing the cheapest or allegedly "best" labor, but it's mostly about saving money even if it means destroying domestic workers. It sounds better when we're talking about a scientist instead of a construction worker or meat packer, but it's kind of the same problem. There are many cases of American workers being forced to train H1-B replacements, or being blatantly discriminated against for being, shall we say, obviously American.
If foreign researchers are able to prove themselves abroad and contribute as you say, I assume they can continue doing that in most cases without coming to the US to take jobs. If immigrants are such a great resource, why are poor countries not trying harder to keep those people from leaving? Why doesn't China import a bunch of Indians for IT work, or vice versa?
Agree with your first two paragraphs, disagree with the last.
> If foreign researchers are able to prove themselves abroad and contribute as you say, I assume they can continue doing that in most cases without coming to the US to take jobs.
They can't prove themselves abroad. Consider the example of "Attention is all you need" paper. That paper came into existence thanks to talented people from around the world coming together in one place and then collaborating. It would not have happened if the contributors stayed in their own countries.
> If immigrants are such a great resource, why are poor countries not trying harder to keep those people from leaving?
>They can't prove themselves abroad. Consider the example of "Attention is all you need" paper. That paper came into existence thanks to talented people from around the world coming together in one place and then collaborating. It would not have happened if the contributors stayed in their own countries.
I think this is a stretch, especially now that we have the internet. I also wouldn't be opposed to non-immigrant research visas, perhaps a specialized type of H1-B visa (since most of these people are not independently wealthy). But what I don't want is any random foreigner who has their name on some academic papers to be considered top talent. There are paper mills that crank these people out (putting their names on papers without any involvement), and besides that most research is just not that good. Why would we want a bunch of mediocre foreign researchers to come and take jobs away from mediocre American researchers? As we know, getting jobs in academia is very difficult as-is.
You got me on China trying to stop talent from leaving. It's an authoritarian country though. You can't even travel around freely inside the country lol! I threw China in there because a lot of H1-Bs and students are actually Chinese, but China is not where most of them come from.
You also got me on China allegedly trying to get talent to move to China. Their people seem to have had a predictable reaction. That's really something, considering that they can get in trouble for criticizing their government. I guess they thought it was worth the risk, because doing nothing would screw them even harder.
I'm surprised you can't find something to agree with in the first paragraph. I feel compelled to restate and clarify points I glossed over, to see which one you disagree with:
1. Foreign researchers can communicate with colleagues fairly well over the internet (in real time, even). Physical presence is not required to do academic research, at least in mathematics or CS.
2. Degree mills, fake credentials, paper mills, etc. exist to get names on stuff for a fee. This is used to game the immigration system.
3. Many US degree programs are used as a vector for immigration more than education, and people who immigrate this way usually try to meet the minimum requirements to stay in the US and do little beyond that.
4. Even when it comes to research, most research just isn't that good and doesn't contribute that much to society.
5. Getting jobs in academia is difficult.
6. Immigration lowers wages due to the basic laws of economics.
7. Given the fact that we have mediocre researchers in abundance, such that they can't find work in academia, there is negligible societal benefit to importing mediocre foreign researchers en masse. Additionally, this is devastating to the local labor market.
8. All other things equal (to the extent it is reasonable to determine), a country should try to ensure that native citizens get priority in hiring, rather than importing replacements.
If you disagree with #8, perhaps you should consider who is going to be willing to spill their blood and give up their treasure to defend a country that undermines them at every turn.
It wouldn't be 95%. The US is like 5% of the world, but it disproportionately contains the most qualified workers in many fields. Also, in many cases, even if a worker was somehow qualified, they would be lacking some basic skill like English proficiency or basic cultural compatibility, that would make them actually unqualified on net. But your overall sentiment is right. There are hundreds of millions of people who want to come to the US and make less than you.
It is also a fact that "most qualified" is fuzzy. It comes down to something more like, performance per dollar, or "culture fit", or some other thing. Unless you are trying to absolutely have the most advanced shit in the world at any price, "qualifications" or "talent" are not the ultimate factors. Having been in this industry for a while, most foreign workers obviously aren't "the best" like that. They're not even more talented or hard-working than the average American worker. But they usually work for less and the job gets done (roughly speaking), and their mere presence drives down everyone's wages.
Well, it's a fit for visual processing only in simple cases. If your graph looks like spaghetti, you need other ways to think about it. If the `git log --oneline --graph` view (or whatever options trigger it) is not good enough, then a full-blown GUI won't do it for me either.
It's still specialized, but looking it up has gotten easier. It's better to use the right tool for the job. What's next, are you gonna tell ChatGPT to list your files too?
It's mighty pretentious to say that one needs all that theory to simply answer the question lol. For many questions, only the most rudimentary theory is plenty to get an answer, that is exactly the same answer as a more elaborate theory would yield.
If you just want to do some stupid computations: sure.
But this is not what mathematics is centrally about. The central point is the kind of thinking about the respective topics (and understanding it) which these more abstract definitions encode.
Understanding the topic just enough to do some elementary computations does not give you the kind of thinking that is often near a transcendental experience.
Just to give one example: the reason why the localization of a commutative ring (a generalization of the field of fractions) is introduced is that many properties of ring hold if and only if they hold for all of its local rings; see for example [1]. This means to understand some property of a commutative ring R, we "just" have to understand its (simpler) local rings.
This is an example why one wants to study such ideas; on the other hand, I can imagine sooo many more exciting things to do with my life than dividing numbers by each others to form fractions. :-)
Those "stupid computations" comprise the bulk of useful work in the world. If one learns enough to do that, there may be no reason to go further. You're proving my point about the pretentiousness of insisting on the theory when one doesn't need it.
Nothing in your comment makes me want to go learn more theory, and I would argue that it's nonsense to anyone who is not a mathematician.
Imagine arguing that the only way to understand or appreciate basic set logic is to know all about infinite sets and ZF axioms... Most people, even mathematicians, will not understand all of that and have only heard about it in the most basics if at all.
A similar phenomenon happens with philosophy. Imagine arguing that simple logic is "stupid" and that one can only reason well if they have a total understanding of epistemology. I happen to think epistemology matters, and that people can benefit from at least being aware of it, but it is really a separate topic from actual mechanical logic and argumentation.
> Nothing in your comment makes me want to go learn more theory, and I would argue that it's nonsense to anyone who is not a mathematician.
What a coincidence this came up today.
I'm not a mathematician. I minored in math, but even the undergrad work was honestly difficult for me.
For most people, this might be nonsense. But it doesnt have to be.
I'm trying to learn about Fast Fourier Transforms because they're relevant for an embedded device system I'm investigating. I'm also not an Electrical Engineer so it is mostly new to me.
To understand the language of FFTs, linear bases and the like, I've started working through Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right.
First, just learning more theory shows me we can learn and grow in our old age.
This week I worked through linear spaces. I'm actively asking myself questions and working with other fields besides the reals and complex numbers so I can understand coding theory in general more.
And the parent's comment about quotient rings is directly related to an active learning question I asked myself about whether the set with only the zero element is a linear space. I don't think it is a field if 0 is the multiplicative identity, 0 can't be 1, so it can't be a linear space, right?
But it works. I guess the set of the field for the scalar in a linear space is always assumed to contain more elements. It's a different set than the linear space. It seems like, duh, of course it is. But you don't see it until you work through it. And I'm guessing my experience can inform teaching others.
It's confusing to me, maybe because the notation is sparse in explicitly defining the set of the linear space and the set of the associated linear space.
But this helps me truly understand linear codes down the line, and Linear Feedback Shift Registers and FFTs. It's not just theory to me, I can now understand what my peers are saying and contribute my own thoughts.
OK now you're getting into some more useful topics. Linear algebra is a great one with tons of applications. But if you want my advice, prioritize useful stuff and spend less time on theoretical baubles or bedrock-level boilerplate. This is unless, of course, you enjoy puzzles and hard work with little application.
> This is unless, of course, you enjoy puzzles and hard work with little application.
Wouldn't that be great? If we could teach our kids that learning for the sake of learning is awesome? If only that was all this world was.
But you're right, you and the thousands of others posting, it's not. You have that voice, and the hundreds of online stories about college losing value have that political voice.
In the post-AI future I can imagine recreational mathematics being a socially approved past time. It helps with age-related cognitive decline, etc.
But I can also understand people in that post-AI future who had smart political ideas that were more important to them than smart math ideas.
Impactful ideas.
Just getting snapshots and puzzling out that post-AI future I don't know if we'll have the right space to encourage positive care for our mental and physical landscapes.
I'm not making any political statement here, or at least that was not my intention. Life is short and there are infinite things we could be learning about. The advanced math I'm talking about avoiding here is not recreational math, but you could potentially apply the same logic to recreational math. Personally I see a big difference between "routine" abstract/advanced math and recreational math, though there can be some overlap. People have written books about what makes a pleasant puzzle, for example. Some puzzles are deceptively simple to state and impossible to solve without elite level theories. I think one of the characteristics of a good puzzle is that it can be solved with reasonable effort and not consume your whole life. Another is that it not be so contrived and abstract, that you need to be heavily initiated to even understand it. The worst are the ones that require a ton of mechanical computations even after you figure out the key insight. I don't think those are very fun either. But then again, there are people who don't get tired of Sudoku lol...
> Nothing in your comment makes me want to go learn more theory, and I would argue that it's nonsense to anyone who is not a mathematician.
What a coincidence this came up today.
I'm not a mathematician. I minored in math, but even the undergrad work was honestly difficult for me.
For most people, this might be nonsense. But it doesnt have to be.
I'm trying to learn about Fast Fourier Transforms because they're relevant for an embedded device system I'm investigating. I'm also not an Electrical Engineer so it is mostly new to me.
To understand the language of FFTs, linear bases and the like, I've started working through Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right.
First, just learning more theory shows me we can learn and grow in our old age.
This week I worked through linear spaces. I'm actively asking myself questions and working with other fields besides the reals and complex numbers so I can understand coding theory in general more.
And the parent's comment about quotient fields and rings is directly related to a question I asked myself about the
>
Nothing in your comment makes me want to go learn more theory, and I would argue that it's nonsense to anyone who is not a mathematician.
You are free to ignore mathematics that is not completely trivial. I prefer (and would rather recommend) to understand it, and use this understanding to build a >1-billion-USD/EUR application out of it. :-)
I often ignore mathematics that is not completely useful to me these days lol. I get the appeal of learning neat theories and feeling like you got it all figured out, but I'd rather limit my studies to topics that are likely to bear fruit in my life. Complication and abstraction does not necessarily deter me, but it has been my observation that overly complicated or abstract ideas rarely pay off in my endeavors.
26% slower could turn into a huge hardware bill, and could render the library unusable for some purposes. There are many applications for which 26% is negligible, but it ain't nothing...
>What I've seen is a local workforce (typically, then a mix of 1st gen Americans) being asked to train their replacements. Some replacements on Visas and some remote. But what gall to ask you to train your [cheaper] replacements.
This destroys their entire argument about the necessity of the imports, even if it is relatively rare. (Note that I don't think it's rare to be replaced by foreigners. I think it's rare to be forced or incentivized to train them, especially with knowledge that you will actually be replaced.)
Recently I heard something crazy like 9 of 10 new jobs since the pandemic is held by foreign-born people, even as many US-born are unemployed. 20% of US-born men is unemployed. This is not a primary source but it should get you started if you're interested: https://www.numbersusa.org/blog/nine-out-of-ten-new-jobs-hav...
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