As a M.Sc. student from Europe with some ambition to move to the US to directly interact with both the rationality community and the cutting edge innovation (work on either lifespan extension, intelligence enhancement or AI alignment), I got really worried about recent news of science funding cuts in the US.

To better understand what is going on, I had written this post. On the one hand I am hopeful that it might be helpful for someone. On the other, this community is very thoughtful and many of you probably know much more than I do about this situation and its implications for the future. I'd be happy to hear your opinion on what do these events mean for the long term competitiveness and attractiveness of the US, especially given my motivations.

https://open.substack.com/pub/rationalmagic/p/us-science-funding-cuts-and-implications?r=36e5vn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

I’m currently reading Bryan Kaplan’s “The Myth of the Rational Voter”. He talks about the tendency of people in any time period to be overly optimistic about the “good old days” and overly pessimistic about contemporary, decaying society. Does anybody have recommendations on additional reading about this?