Grad School Quandary, Part 1
Oct. 27th, 2009 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jrisingWhat does it mean to serve humankind?
The great challenges of the next century revolve around the environment. Billions will die as a result of climate shifts and dried up resources. By 2050, 40% of species, most wetlands and reefs, the sugar maple, Louisiana, and southern Florida will be gone, and there's nothing we can do about it.
But we can stop the damage there, with work (take last Saturday's 350 day). "How do I help?" is a question with many answers.
I'm a card-carrying computer geek-- I make web pages for fun, I read xkcd, and some of my favorite foods are chips and cookies. But the world does not need computer geeks. Certainly scientists, engineers, and technical others help people, and we need some of their work. But I believe our impact on the world's poor and climate is largely negative, and our efforts are at best tangentially directed at people.
To enter grad school in international development or environmental policy would be to voluntarily let my talents rot and my computer go cold. I might be able to use technical tools to help-- to bring opportunities to developing countries, inculcate lifestyle change in the West that will diminish our impact, model the effects of projects on the needy and nature. But to pursue an education or more experience in those things is irresponsible without a deeper delving in the world of salmon-saving, bungalow-building, and AIDS-aiding.
I think I have the obligation to do it whatever the world calls for, and my background is mostly a curse. But how can one know?
Socrates dedicated his life to corrupting the youth of Athens, in willful misinterpretation of his reoccurring dream the he should "make and cultivate music." I wonder sometimes where we'd be if he had decided to learn the lyre.
The great challenges of the next century revolve around the environment. Billions will die as a result of climate shifts and dried up resources. By 2050, 40% of species, most wetlands and reefs, the sugar maple, Louisiana, and southern Florida will be gone, and there's nothing we can do about it.
But we can stop the damage there, with work (take last Saturday's 350 day). "How do I help?" is a question with many answers.
I'm a card-carrying computer geek-- I make web pages for fun, I read xkcd, and some of my favorite foods are chips and cookies. But the world does not need computer geeks. Certainly scientists, engineers, and technical others help people, and we need some of their work. But I believe our impact on the world's poor and climate is largely negative, and our efforts are at best tangentially directed at people.
To enter grad school in international development or environmental policy would be to voluntarily let my talents rot and my computer go cold. I might be able to use technical tools to help-- to bring opportunities to developing countries, inculcate lifestyle change in the West that will diminish our impact, model the effects of projects on the needy and nature. But to pursue an education or more experience in those things is irresponsible without a deeper delving in the world of salmon-saving, bungalow-building, and AIDS-aiding.
I think I have the obligation to do it whatever the world calls for, and my background is mostly a curse. But how can one know?
Socrates dedicated his life to corrupting the youth of Athens, in willful misinterpretation of his reoccurring dream the he should "make and cultivate music." I wonder sometimes where we'd be if he had decided to learn the lyre.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-28 04:44 am (UTC)Have you heard all the buzz in the last few years about prediction markets, how the wisdom of crowds, in essence betting on securities that pay X if condition C is met in the future and 0 if C is not met, very often proves to be a highly accurate predictor of C's likelihood?
Well... I've read more than one scientist who claims that Miami will be underwater in a few generations, and so my question is, why haven't we seen the market for south Florida real estate take a gigantic dive?
Either the scientists making this prediction, or the wisdom of crowds buying and selling land in south Florida, are wrong. The disparity is curious to me.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-28 06:13 am (UTC)Climate change is a classic boiled-toad phenomenon. Our senses are evolved to recognize rapid changes, not ones that inch up on us over decades. So I do expect them to fool public opinion.
Plus, they're a bit outside the 20 year maximum time window of the commercial world. Eventually we will see market effects as the ocean reclaims reclaimed coastal city land, but the worst loss in Florida will be the Everglades, which markets won't track.