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Science and society: what is the usefulness of knowledge?

(I note that this essay is primarily focused on my experience in the USA)

I've been thinking a lot lately about what impact I will be making in the world with my life. For a long time I had the view that all science is by nature "good" and that any pursuit of new knowledge is worthwhile. While this is a simple and straightforward view of morality and knowledge, it is something that is extremely prevalent among people I work with.

Now I completely understand the inherent desire to feel like you are doing good in the world. Anyone with empathy or even common sense hopes that they do more good in the world than bad. This is an intense desire in me, and due to my sample size of 1 (me) I have to assume that this is true for most others. People want to feel like they are benefiting society and those around them. I want to feel like I am benefiting society and those around me. This desire is strong and will allow people to pursue intense cognitive dissonance in how their career and life choices affect those around them.

In the course of my physics PhD so far, I have encountered many who intend to work for military contractors. There are several motivations given for this, however I believe the primary factor that actually drives so many physicists to military is the wide availability of jobs and the high pay. While I despise class reductionism and the ignorance of intersectionality, I do think class and economics is the driving factor in most of these colleagues decisions. Why spend 18 months searching around the country for a job that will offer 80k when you can go work for the military contractor down the street for 200k tomorrow. These jobs are extremely easy to get with an advanced physics degree, and their availability draws those who can not afford a long job search. The reasoning is straightforward and clear for many: it is the only high paying job available for them.

For many, I can accept this reasoning. I personally will never work for a military contractor (which I will elaborate on), but I can understand the desire for economic stability and the difficulty to reject an offer so prevalent and advertised. However, most, if not all, physicists I met who work with military companies will not use this economic argument as justification. There are instead a few other justifications that I hear. All of them I believe are symptoms of phantasm and cognitive dissonance. I will address them in the order of ascending danger and insidiousness.

First, is the classic neoliberal argument of national security and "the ability to defend ourselves". I will not address this argument. Many more qualified than me have written amazing essays on how the neoliberal idea of defense only perpetuates colonialism and capitalistic exploitation. While this argument is easily discredited by evidence, it is at least straightforward, if not honest.

Second, is the social credibility granted to those who work within the military defence industry. While only the poor proletariat is send to fight directly on the ground risking themselves, all involved in the military benefit by its deification in America. While veterans are ignored economically, the social credibility given to those who assimilate into the American imperialist project gives mobility to those who might otherwise be exploited. While it may be unexpected, a very large number of those working in the military industry are queer, neurodivergent, or otherwise ostracized by society. For many, the false-egalitarianism of the united states military industry gives those with the technical ability, but not the social ability, to climb the ladder of society. Lockheed martin doesn't care if you are a faggot, they just want someone to engineer their bombs. This is an extremely dangerous justification. Clearly, lifting yourself up by endangering others is no true liberation. It is the "liberation" promised by caplitalist society. "Put your boot on whom we tell you to, and we will have you live comfortably" says the Boeing executive, says the capitalist, says the imperialist, says the statist. This dissonance and rejection of empathy, creating a life of comfort at the cost of pain of others. Again, those more read and more impacted have said this in much more well written ways. However the message is clear: there is no queer liberation in America until there is queer liberation in Palestine. There is no acceptance of neurodivergence in America while we use our military to turn away asylum seekers at the border. There is no racial mobility while we use the fruits of our labor to kill the wretched of the earth. This justification is in reality entirely about economics and class. The classic method of elevation in capitalist societies: step hard on those beneath you and you may one day climb just an inch higher.

The final, and I believe most insidious justification I often see and hear is that of the universal good of science and knowledge. I myself used this philosophy for most of my life. While I have never personally done any work for the military industry directly, my justification for going into physics is that basic research helps all. Why worry about imperialism when you publish your research for any to read? Why worry about what your bosses are doing as long as you are advancing humanity's knowledge.

This is easily discredited by many. So much harm has been done to people in the name of "science" and "knowledge". Tuskegee, Nazi "science", eugenics, early anthropology, war chemistry, nuclear bombs. The list goes on and nearly anyone can easily list five failures of science as a guiding philosophy. All knowledge is not equally good, not all knowledge is good. Is the creation of the covid vaccine equivalently useful to humanity as a bioweapon made in a lab? Is the Haber-Bosch process equivalently useful as mustard gas? Is nuclear power equivalently useful as atomic bombs? Are solar panels equivalently useful as crytpocurrency farms? Clearly not. Each of these examples are intimately linked to each other. In all of these cases you can argue that the science discovered in the former will naturally lead to the latter. It is all just knowledge, neither good nor bad.

I find this argument disingenuous. While no physicist went out to discover the strong nuclear force, certainly it was a conscious decision to harness it as a weapon. Science is not a random selection of facts that you pick out of a hat. All science is pursued actively. Every day I go to my lab I make a decision that I am going to try to use magnetic materials as platforms for quantum information. I don't go into some random room with lasers and magnetic resonance machines and magically come out with a computational qubit. Those working for BAE systems do not walk into work and just randomly come out with a design for a missile system. Anyone who works in science knows: pursuing knowledge is an active process. You must envision what you want, and pursue it with vigor. Justification for knowledge is always either given before the science starts, or not given at all. No one accidentally creates a weapons delivery system, then has to decide whether they will publish it. No, this decision was made well before funding was granted.

This is a fact I have had to deal with in my PhD program. I will state, while accepting I myself may have some cognitive dissonance in this, that graduate students should not be held accountable for the science they do in the lab. Anyone in academia knows that 90% of PhD students do not pick specifically who their funding comes from or what the goals of their research are. These are decided between their primary investigator and the funding agency. I must tell myself this every day, knowing that my funding comes from the department of defence, knowing that my results will be used for technology I vehemently hate. Should I be held accountable that the science I do may be used for illegal spying and surveillance when all I want is to characterize a material? Should the blame that rests with the department of defense be passed onto me? I hope not, but I honestly do not know.

I sit here thinking about this as my close friends from undergrad go off to work in public defence, legal aid, and community-driven nonprofits. For a long time I thought that the pursuit of science was equal in worth to these careers. However it has been made clear to me that science can easily be one of the most harmful careers. So what is to be done? Personally, I am too far along my education to make a meaningful change. I have too much debt and have invested too much time to switch to a more directly impactful career. And I truly love physics. Discovering the nature of reality is a magical feeling that is addicting. Nothing measures with the experience to be the first person ever to learn something. Should I just accept that my own happiness is worth the career? Should I lay down and use my knowledge of semiconductors to build a weapons guidance computer? I still think not, but the way forward is uncertain.

I myself will attempt to, if not do good, at least not perpetuate the bad. While I sincerely thing quantum computing can do massive good for the world, it can clearly do harm as well. I hope I can find a position where I can do good, but at the very least I can avoid doing bad by working for Lockheed.

Science is grey. Much good and happiness has come from the pursuit of knowledge. Much harm has come from it as well. At best we can do what we think is right in the moment and attempt harm reduction in our work. I may not be able to choose who used quantum information science, but I can at least choose not to be the one building a quantum computer for the air force. I can choose to not do the harm that is clear to me. Does this make me a good person? A bad person? No. In addition to me not believing in "good" or "bad" people, science is just science. It is as good as what is done with it. While I can not be able to tell what will be done with my discoveries in 200 years, I can see what will happen in the next five. And I can choose to not work for those who will clearly abuse science for the sake of profit and power.

In closing, I am reminded of Darwin and his theory of natural selection and evolution. While a clearly complex person who has held both despicable racial views, he also created the most widely accepted theory of science in the modern day. The knowledge of evolution has been used to create medicine, and abused to justify eugenics. Can we blame or credit Darwin for this? I say no, the knowledge gained is only as good as it is used, and those who use it must be those who carry the responsibility of their actions. Can Darwin be blamed for the capitalist justification of "Social Darwinism?" Even without Kropotkin's takedown of it in "Mutual Aid", even if social Darwinism became a mainstream view, the responsibility remains only with the fascists who use it. Those who discovered the knowledge nessesary to formulate this argument had nothing to do with how it is used. We can not blame scientists for their discoveries when it is not them who abused them. We can not credit scientists with praise for their discoveries when it wasn't them who used them for good. Darwin did not invent modern eugenics, he did not invent modern medicine. Darwin is not good because of his discoveries, he is not bad because of them either. He is just Darwin.

I hope that, even if my discoveries are abused, that I will still just be me. I have given up on the idea of scientists as a universally good career, as people selfless and honorable. We are just people. Knowledge is just knowledge. It is how we use it that must be judged, and how we justify it that must be analyzed.

I hope this did not come off too verbose and long. In many ways this is me trying to come to terms with the fact my career is not the noble pursuit that I envisioned as a bright-eyed undergrad. I still think science is a worthwhile pursuit and worthy of public support and funding. However, I will no longer excuse the actions of those who ignore their responsibilities in their creations.

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thank u google thats exactly what i was looking for, not how many days she has been the prime minister of the united kingdom, her height in picometers. you can read my mind, google, its uncanny 

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This is literally the funniest interaction that’s ever happened nothing will ever beat this it’s time to pack it up we’ll never achieve this again

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Consider the relationship graph of a complete binary polycule (complete = every person is in a relationship with every other person, binary = contains people of only two genders). call an edge in this graph gay if both the people in that edge are the same gender, and call it straight if the people in that edge are different genders.

We will say that a binary polycule tends straight if it has more straight edges than gay edges and that it tends gay if it has more gay edges than straight edges.

Show that if a complete binary polycule contains an equal number of people of both genders, then it will tend straight.

In terms of the size of the complete binary polycule, what is the critical gender ratio for straight tendency? (when the ratio of genders is above the critical gender ratio for straight tendency, the polycule will tend straight)

Do there exist complete binary polycules that trend neither straight nor gay? What about binary polycules that aren't complete?

Research problem: are there other conditions on the relationship graph besides completeness that also result in the existence of a critical ratio?

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Honestly obsessed right now with the way all the BG3 romancable girlies are the most affection starved creatures on the planet

Shadowheart is just existing in a constant state of being manipulated and abused by Shar and Viconia on behalf of Shar. She has like exactly one friend who she can’t even remember when we meet her because even that has to be taken from her on Shar’s demands. She’s probably had lovers but she can’t remember them and Shar wouldn’t allow anything serious anyway. The two people would show her affection are her parents who she’s not even allowed to remember are her parents from one interaction to another and who she’s made to torture, again for Shar. And the way she talks about Shar, it’s clear that Shadowheart wants some kind of positive attention, but the only attention she gets is a shock collar that punishes her when she’s not being what Shar wants her to be.

Lae’zel is made to see affection as a sign of weakness. She can’t comprehend even treating kids in a way that can even be slightly considered coddling. She sees it as damaging to them, raising them to be weak, because she was raised to cull or be culled when it comes to her peers. If you romance her, she’s initially deeply uncomfortable with the idea of even just cuddling after sex. And even sex is a power struggle, even when she thinks it can’t be anything more than casual. She can’t be weak even while she’s fucking bottoming. You have to be nearly into act 3 before she’ll even admit that she wants you to touch her gently and she says asking for it is one of the most frightening things she’s ever done. The girl doesn’t even know what the word love means until the epilogue, if you romance her.

Minthara has spent her entire life looking over her shoulder for people waiting to kill her in some power struggle. The relationships she mentions to you either ended with death or at least had assassination attempts at some point. She seems close to her mother for a drow noble but still sees that as a relationship that has to end eventually in murder. And even though she has had her mind taken from her, she seems much more eager to pry into your mind than anyone else and when she does it’s because she’s looking for information on herself. How you see her. She wants to see everything laid out and to trust each other completely. Having access to each others’ minds is probably somewhat of a relief to her, because this way she can know exactly how you feel and exactly if and when you’re going to betray her. If you don’t intend to, then that would be the first time in her life she could ever not be constantly on edge around someone.

And Karlach. It’s sad because she’s absolutely the one that would be most willing to trust and open to affection. But she literally is not physically able to receive it. She was forced to fight in the blood war for a decade unable to trust anyone and not having a single friend. The closest thing she had was still a devil who enjoyed hurting her in petty little ways, who would still sell her out to Zariel. And when she’s escaped from the Hells, she still can’t physically touch anyone without killing or at least severally hurting them. She is clearly the most openly eager for physical affection, even the most platonic and casual touch, but she can’t get that. She will literally physically hurt anyone who gets too close to her not matter how hard she tries not to, because of how other people hurt her.

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"none of these words are in the bible" you're not even reading the secret part of the bible. with all my posts in it

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‘full movie watch free online’ was in the early 21st century a kind of prayer

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Never stop hating

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let's recap what we've learned about the United States in the last few days.

things that are terrorism:

allegedly shooting a healthcare CEO whose company generated more pure profit (not revenue, profit) in a year than the GDP of 94 countries, exclusively by denying coverage to people who pay for it

a 42-year-old mother of 2 using the wrong combination of 7 words during a heated conversation with a call center employee at a health insurance company who was in the process of denying her health coverage.

things that are not terrorism:

mass shooting in a Black church to incite a race war

going to a BLM protest specifically to kill protestors

a neo-nazi running over a crowd of people, killing a woman

targeting and killing 23 latinos in an el paso, texas walmart

killing 12 people in a theatre, shooting 58 others, rigging your apartment with explosives

a QAnon groyper killing 7 and shooting ~50 at a 4th of July parade

killing 3 people and shooting several others at a Planned Parenthood in defense of the unborn

stalking someone relentlessly and then killing them and their child despite months of the victim making police reports

any one of the 1,200 murders committed by US police yearly, the vast majority being minorities

tightening your border while ~100 immigrants (including children) drown every year in the Rio Grande

United Healthcare killing an unnknowable number of elderly people by using faulty AI to deny medically necessary coverage

Aetna killing a woman by refusing to cover her cancer care

Blue Cross killing a 6-year-old by denying her appendicitis surgery

Cigna killing a 17-year-old child by denying her liver transplant

the pharmaceutical industry killing half a million people with opioids in the name of producing revenues in 2023 that rivaled the GDPs of countries like Spain, Mexico, and Australia.

the United States killing 45,000 people a year because they can't access health coverage

make sure you keep this guide handy the next time you find yourself interacting with your insurance company or any other millionaire, billionaire, or an individual who is part of a protected class such as a CEO or president of a corporation.

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CNN suggested that Luigi Mangione stage a boycott instead of what he did. a boycott of the health care industry. exercising my right to protest by fucking dying.

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the firsteth rule of alchemy is to hath fun and beeth thy truest self. the secondeth rule is to think with thine pussy

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Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth’s insurance unit, was fatally shot outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel in what police described as a “brazen” targeted attack by a gunman lying in wait for him. What do you think?

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So, you know how certain Christian missionaries are trained to act in a very obnoxious way, so that most people they preach to will reject them outright, so they feel like the world hates them for being Christian and they can only be friends with fellow Christians? You know that thing?

I think as activists, we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves whether we're acting like those missionaries. I think this type of behavior is a little more ingrained into our society than some of us realize, and some of us have internalized it without realizing what it's actually meant to do.

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Every physics education paper is like:

Our teaching methods made students 50% more effective at identifying and using core physics concepts and usuing them without prompting. The methods also severly decreases student moral and death threats to the instructor went up 300%

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