This is orthogonal but came to mind: Hugh Gusterson went to physics professors as part of his weapon lab fieldwork, and asked them
-
whether they could predict which students would become nuclear weapon designers and which would go into academia.
And one of them said: oh, it's easy. The really nasty ones, the cutthroat ones, the ones who would sell their mother to a whorehouse...
-
-
they go into academia. The ones who like working in groups and steady jobs, they work for the weapons labs.
-
I think about that a lot, as an academic! And I think that has influenced my work (for better/worse) — more collaboration, less cutthroat.
-
But I'm only able to do that because my institution seems cool with that. If I was at a more "traditional" place, tenure wd be a problem.
-
I have always been grateful to have worked at a weapons lab, altho not as a designer, because I avoided the nonsense of academia.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.