How President-Elect Trump Views Science | Hacker News Reader

How President-Elect Trump Views Science

scientificamerican.com

38 pointscogemotion16 comments

from the article:

> The Internet: The United States government should not spy on its own citizens. That will not happen in a Trump administration. As for protecting the Internet, any attack on the Internet should be considered a provocative act that requires the utmost in protection and, at a minimum, a proportional response that identifies and then eliminates threats to our Internet infrastructure.

from buzzfeed(o):

> Trump told CNN during a debate that he would “penetrate the internet” to prevent ISIS from using it to recruit fighters and “close down parts of the internet.” Trump has, at times, expressed an interest in enhancing surveillance of Americans, saying at times that government should be tasked with with monitoring mosques and that police should create “demographics units.” “We ought to start [surveillance] up again, and we ought to start it up this morning,” he told the Breitbart News Daily radio show last year.

(o) https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/silicon-valley-is-wor...

While I'm not here defending Trump, I expect to see a lot of the debate vitriol get completely reversed by Trump's advisers now that he actually has the Oval Office. I find this one scary as well, but I will wait and see just where they go with this now that they have their "mandate".

That said, it is likely to see sanctioned, commonplace profiling of minorities in a Trump administration. Rudy Giuliani seems to be one of his closer domestic crime advisers, and it is Giuliani that hired Bratton for the "zero tolerance" Terry stops (ie "stop and frisk") in NYC.

He also called Snowden a traitor and wanted to boycott Apple because of the 5C encryption incident.

Clearly Ivanka wrote this.

"We ought to start [surveillance] up again"

Implying it stopped after it started?

How do you solve energy problems? Markets. How do you fix education? Markets. How do you get food to everyone? Markets. Not a word about how those markets will be structured, which has a great impact on whether they'll actually solve those problems. Just another believer that markets alone - despite their well known systemic problems - are the answer to everything.

What well known systemic problems do markets have?

What's the easiest way to win a competition?

How does the prisoner's dilemma apply to markets?

Monopoly/monopsony, principal/agent problems, perverse incentives, information asymmetry, Baumol's cost disease, ..., the list goes on and on. Markets are great, but they are neither maintenance-free nor ideal for every situation. It's like proposing containers as the solution for every IT problem, without even saying how those containers will be built or deployed.

lowest-bidder engineering projects, cost cutting by employing slaves in other countries, setting fire to indonesia to plant palm oil plantations for cheaper ingredients. Markets reward greed and have no regard for ethics or common sense.

No way did this emanate from Trump himself. It contradicts several of his known, top level positions. The remarks on energy are particular howlers.

Are you just now realizing that Trump's entire platform is built on contradiction?

Seriously. I mean the guy may employ Newt Gingrich, one of the main proponents of NAFTA, in his cabinet. But wait there's more. He may also make a 17-year Goldman employee his Treasury Secretary. Because hey, who needs internal consistency anyway?

Improvisation of policy positions according to tactical convenience, and outright policy contradictions, have been a hallmark of anti-intellectual populists and fascists, so no, this does not surprise me.

It feels a lot like some staffer just filled the blanks with whatever sounded right. I doubt any of that will bear out.

> the federal government should encourage innovation in the areas of space exploration...

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