To Lessen War

Humility has been a theme of my thinking for this semester and I think it has strong implications as an ethical virtue. This is especially the case when talking about technology. I first started thinking about writing this blog post when I listened to the first of songs off of J Cole's Forest Hills Drive album. It struck me that I had not often heard a rapper talk about not being on top, and about a struggle that was relatable (something other than "started from the bottom, now we're here"). And I realized that it took a lot of humility on his part to rap about that. The chorus of the song that sticks in my mind is "no such thing as a life that's better than yours" and I think this is something that engineers need to hear, also, if they think of engineering as something that makes life better. I'm defining humility as "the acknowledgment of limitations on your ability to achieve or control outcomes". Defining it like this, it sounds r

What's my mission? My mission is to encourage engineers to reflect on their impacts on society . I've been thinking about missions because they accomplish a few things . They narrow down our pursuits - I find that my pursuits have been very broad and have seemingly only broadened since I started graduate school. I would like to investigate the neurology of engineering and the intersection of innovation and humanitarian design and do my own design for charitable causes, but I cannot do them all, and keeping them all in mind hinders me. Missions also give us purpose, as opposed to jobs - they motivate us, and I find I have been lacking in motivation, recently. What my mission means:  When I say engineers , I don’t limit that to engineering students. I would like to expand the definition beyond those who have degrees, but that might be too broad of a mission, so I narrow it back down. In particular I am interested in engineers that are on the job. This means that my wor

I've been thinking about this principle for a while, and I wanted to talk about it in the context of research. "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." - George Bernard Shaw It is obviously relevant because research is about discovering the truth and telling it to people. However, as the quote claims, just telling the truth is not enough. Take the example of climate change. There are whole centers created in order to communicate climate change in such a way that it changes people's behavior. Telling people that they are making the world a worse place for themselves and their children, building the mounting evidence of the truth that climate change is caused by human activity, it is not enough. It is not enough, to tell the logical truth. It is either eclipsed by some other more attractive idea (regaining your coal jobs), or it is easy to ignore. People don't want to be scolded, and just flat out telling someo

My heart is racing because I don't know how honest I should be. I don't know how much of myself I should put out here. The sharing of ideas on the internet is sensational. It is one big game of telephone. Things that travel are things that get scandalous attention, I know that. And regardless of platform, the internet is almost designed for us to take things out of context. By saying anything meant to provoke people's thoughts, you may provoke one person's ire, and that is all that it takes to rally the ire of many. This process does not regard the truth. Here is a great TED talk about it. I tried taking my own posts out of context and I got the following: " But what is the worst that could happen to me if I fail? Maybe I die young, or I can't make it through graduate school" - Doesn't want graduate school enough. Not confident? "curiously learning with little regard for what a good person it makes me, or how much impact I will have.&quo

I am nobody. No-one will remember me. I will not make a huge difference. This is a huge relief. Since I got to graduate school, I have been motivated by the desire to become somebody. To be a great researcher, to make an impact, to be known as someone who can challenge the militaristic and narrow-minded thinking that produces harmful engineering design. I think this can also be expressed as fear of dying, if the most final death happens the last time someone speaks your name. Like a pharaoh, I would like to truly become someone recognizable. In the heat of my desire to become someone, the fears of a fall from grace hound me. I imagine failing out of graduate school, or worse, getting a Ph.D. and not being able to make an impact once I graduate. I imagine the bridge to becoming somebody is burning, and so I try to run quickly across it. But what is the worst that could happen to me if I fail? Maybe I die young, or I can't make it through graduate school and I become a high schoo

Organ donation as a transhumanist technology can complicate our ethics. Take this somewhat classic utilitarian dilemma : A doctor has several patients who will die if they don't receive organ donations. Perhaps one needs replacement kidneys, another needs a replacement heart, or whatever. Now supplies of these organs have come short, and there are no spare organs. There are, however, a number of healthy people available who could be suitable donors, except that they are unwilling to sacrifice themselves to save the others. The number of people required to supply the organs is less than the number of lives can be saved by carrying out the transplants and, in this situation, it is suggested, utilitarianism supports killing some people to save the lives of those in need of replacement organs, since the harm of killing a few is supposed to be less than the harm of many dying. This does not always follow, depending on who is killed and who is saved by the organ donation, but someti