Gregory's ServerI mentioned in that post that the war in Ukraine had changed my views about my ties with the department of defense in my capacity as faculty. This is true. I used to feel very torn about accepting any money from the department of defense for my verification work, or giving the department of defense advice about anything related to my research area of expertise, but recently I have been a lot less torn because of this war. My point with the previous post was that maybe feeling a lot less torn is shortsighted on my part. Maybe this was obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn't obvious to me.
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@jonmsterling @TaliaRinger I I’m a staunchly anti-war libertarian and am WELL aware of the shit show that is the last 70+ years of American foreign policy but like…I also have friends who serve in the National Guard and doing work that could result in them being less likely to die because of bad equipment or planning is something that I would be proud to contribute to @jonmsterling @TaliaRinger there aren’t clear cut answers here, and as Jon says it matters what specifically your work is being used for. In particular, I went into this movie expecting to hate Oppenheimer. I instead found that I related to him a lot. That scared me, and made me think more about what this means for me right now as a researcher. It is something I need to sit with for a while, and I wanted to express that. Anyways, if you're going to dig through my past, here's my undergraduate honors thesis (under Larry Washington) if you'd like a bit of entertainment: http://honors.cs.umd.edu/reports/ringer.pdf  @TaliaRinger Thank you for sharing. This is the kind of thoughtfulness I appreciate. Politics of purity that was demanded of you is not a path that is good or productive and instead the messiness of everyday life and choices we make is what we all live with.  @TaliaRinger <3 welcome back! damn, we saw the discourse around it but we didn't realize it was you. glad to have found you again quickly. And just as a bit of context: For all the things we know about NSA post-Snowden, we also know that Google and Facebook are doing worse things on privacy. In many cases, Facebook has far more data on private citizens than NSA does. For that reason, it’s hypocritical to give others a hard time about connections to NSA, unless they are even more strongly criticizing those who work for Facebook. @protecttruth @TaliaRinger Personally, I think the novel 1984 has focused people on government surveillance to such an extent that we are completely blind to the fact that corporations are collecting more data than Big Brother even considered acquiring.  @protecttruth @TaliaRinger the US three letter agencies have at least some ideals and some decent people in them and are ultimately answerable to elected officials. Facebook has Zuckerberg, who seemingly glories in genocide, and Google apparently wants to own everybody's mind. And then there's Thiel and Musk. The naive anarchism and socialism I have encountered here on Mastodon disturbs and infuriates me. I am old enough to remember when some US socialists trusted the Soviet Union. @ravenonthill @protecttruth @TaliaRinger seems like a real "let he who hath not supported a dystopian tech entity cast the first stone" situation. @protecttruth I'm all In favour of criticizing government over business. But we absolutely don't know that Google and Facebook are doing worse things. We've got no idea what the NSA is doing now. All we know is they've got better at prosecuting whistleblowers. @TaliaRinger seven out of eight of us who graduated with undergrad math degrees in 2001 at my university got NSA recruitment letters. i did not. (i am a dual citizen of the USA and France and it was right before the freedom fries era). in the end i'm glad i found my hacker family and didn't work for the NSA. but it's so strange to me that you got banned with no ability to migrate mastodon instances over interviewing there years ago? also, hi. @TaliaRinger glad to have found your new address! Would you be willing to share the puzzle here? @TaliaRinger Thank you for sharing. It’s a good reminder that feelings are complicated and that it’s actually good to reevaluate our view of things by thinking about what is happening around us.  @TaliaRinger isn't it about short-term vs. long-term, and about immediate needs vs. broader issues? Short-term, Ukraine needs help. Immediate need is to stop Putin. Long-term, I would love to live in a world where way less money is spent on military. Broader issue being the military-industrial-complex. @rysiek @TaliaRinger Which of course is pretty orthogonal to whether or not someone should get the boot for having interviewed at a three letter as a young adult. “We ban anyone with any connection with the defense industry no matter how tenuous” is one of those things that makes ideologues feel good, but doesn’t do squat to achieve the states purpose. (Also, cynically, I don’t think a world free of defense industries is possible). @TaliaRinger Teller is easier to hate although Oppenheimer was irresponsibly delusional about the bargain he was making. @vyodaiken To be fair they somehow managed to make Teller look like the lead singer of My Chemical Romance which definitely didn't help his case @TaliaRinger I haven't seen the movie, just read a biography by Kai Bird. Still astonished at how much oppenheimer drank though. Never heard of my chemical romance, but looked them up, and yes. @TaliaRinger Norbert Weiner was the most serious of that generation in thinking about consequences. Also he really looked the part @TaliaRinger I haven’t seen the Oppenheimer movie yet. We have read Heinar Kipphardt’s play on Oppenheimer in school and it gave a clear idea that he had become a victim of cold war politics. @TaliaRinger It's difficult. I used to work for an actual defence company - as we slightly euphemistically call them - and left in large part because of arms sales to dictators who were bombing civilians with "trainer" aircraft. But I recognise that Ukraine needs arms and modern weapons to avoid being genocided. |
@TaliaRinger I think it is indeed a little shortsighted but it is important we have a venue where it’s possible to talk about it ;-)
(Meaning, i don’t think Ukraine is a good reason to change one’s mind about defense funding; but generally, i do not have a problem a priori with defense funding and it matters a lot what you are actually doing.)