Posted on by Gotamist

Science is…art?

I remember wanting to be a scientist since the time I was in kindergarten.  The people who advanced human knowledge.  They all seemed people highly deserving of admiration and respect. The ones who remained in human memory for hundreds or even thousands of years even as kings and emperors of the moment simply vanished from memory.

This remained unshaken, reinforced by everything I learned at school, everything seen in government messaging.  While, as a child, all adults seemed rich to me, I came to learn over time that some jobs pay more than being a teacher or even a scientist.  But who wanted that? Wasn’t that the same filthy lucre that we were taught to despise?  Going to an MBA program seemed like something that no one seeking a meaningful life would do.  Artists, leaders – meaningful.  Scientists and mathematicians too.  Doctor, nurse, engineer etc – noble enough and not evil, but basically not a creative person. And the rest, well blue collar and vocational, right? Not something to aspire to but fine, a way to make a living. And then the high-paying but professional careers such as lawyer, executive with an MBA – society had taught me that these were scum – greedy and soulless.

Over time, I came to realize that this is just a certain ideology taught to us.  In fact, engineers, workers and business people for the most part built the actual world we live in.  Nevertheless, I was not going to live that ordinary life, was I?  No, I was going to be a scientist, wear a tweed jacket, inspire children, be an intellectual, be a bulwark against the ignorant dogma of the religious right wing.  Of course, I believed in evolution – i’d have to be a bigot not to, right?  

As for material benefits, who cares about money.  I was not so deluded as to want to be rich! How much money do I need anyway?  I could easily be content with a permanent steady pay that placed me squarely in the middle class (yes, I told myself, this was a selfless acceptance rather than a craving for something truly elusive in the world – job security) and the title of scientist is far more prestigious than anything I could have with money.  All the people who matter would respect a scientist, right? In short, I know what it’s like to think that it’s the greatest job in the world and nothing else compares.  I also understood that a lot of people consider engineering to be nowhere near as glamorous as science.  But I never really understood or even probed why. 

The answer is simple.  I was taught to. By something in my education system even in middle school and elementary school. It is no different from PhD programs where everybody – profs, other students, graduates, all reinforce the idea that any career other than academia is a failure.  In a nearly circular argument, if it isn’t the greatest career, how come the acceptance rate is so low? And almost everybody who goes on to an academic role in the US also thinks, “I could easily have gone to the industry and made a lot of money”.  It may be true that from a sheer selectivity perspective, they could more easily have gone to the industry, but it’s not true that they could easily have made money. It is also not true that the people who can make it to academia are a strict subset of the people who can make it to the industry.  I do know a small number of people who did make it to academia, but would not have made it to certain industries. Making money in the world is hard – whether you came from academia or not.  A lot of people toil hard and never succeed.  

There was also romance associated with scientists.  All the scientists of yore, or at least of 18th and 19th century Europe, were gentlemen of leisure or so it seemed.  The same class that engaged in poetry, art etc.  The great engineers one hears about tend to be of the 20th/21st century and are just ordinary people who were trying to make a living.  Even people like Curie and Prandtl just felt so…elite.  I do recall thinking about how such a high-class atmosphere is declining.

But I have come to understand that many parents want to expose their children from a very young age to science – showing them dinosaurs by the time they are less than a year old – an animal they will never encounter in the world.  They do this in much the same way they expose them to art,, music, sport and other markers of high class that were simply inaccessible to lower class people. They raise them to be into science and they also raise them to be pro-science as in pro-scientist.  These are going to be the lady-and-gentleman class and not the apparently grubby working class of the engineer (only engineers don’t quite think that way).  Truly advancing science takes the same work and hustle as engineering.   Treating it as elegant artwork is either misleading or simply about guiding towards a lifestyle choice than towards what it takes to make an advancement.

In the US today, a majority (58%) of students in STEM graduate programs are foreign born. A majority of the students who excel at the high school level of the national talent search are children of immigrants (who don’t have disdain for engineering as a lower than science). We are frequently told that this is because scientists are not paid well enough. I contend that we should add to this that engineers are respected well enough.

People even walk away from engineers at a party at mere introduction while they are keenly interested in the work of scientists. In prestige, in the US, engineers come in after scientists, doctors, firefighters, professors, lawyers, military, nurses and other healthcare professions and teachers. Worldwide, scientists and doctors have significantly higher prestige than engineers. In the 20th and 21st centuries, most of the advances have been by engineers. Yet, engineers are not considered to be advancing the good of society or have some purpose other than earning a paycheck while all the other professions listed above are. Until this changes, forget about natively having the supply of engineers that the economy actually needs. Paychecks are not going to solve this.

I know this is almost a stream of consciousness and I may not have made any clear points or made a coherent argument for anything… just wanted to share things that crossed my mind in the past and the present.

Posted on by Gotamist

Why do liberal places want me to…hold it in?

Why is it that the most liberal towns and cities are the ones where it is hardest for me to find a bathroom?  Aren’t they the places that profess the most compassion? Many will say “Restroom are for customers only/No public restrooms”.  Some will have “restrooms out of order” signs permanently (clearly a lie since the employees do use something). Some even have no sign there is a restroom at all and if you ask them, they’ll even tell a customer, “Sorry, we don’t have public restrooms”.  Restaurants where you have paid are an exception.

This is very different from most other towns in America where I can walk up to pretty much any place and find a restroom.

You know who I am grateful towards in this regard? Walmart, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, Albertson’s – these will always let me use a restroom.   In addition, Walmart has made a commitment for decades now that if someone wants to park a car in their parking lot overnight and sleep there, they will not prevent that.  I have taken them up on that once when there were no motel rooms available one night during a long road trip and the hotel rooms were way too expensive for me and the Mrs.  We slept in our car at a Walmart lot in Paso Robles…and used their bathroom in the morning.

By quite a coincidence, these very companies are targets of liberals for vilification.  What’s the deal? What do liberals have against me peeing?

Posted on by Gotamist

The bearers of gifts and good tidings

Without spiritual practice, and even with considerable amounts of it, we all prefer feeling pleasant sensations and not unpleasant sensations and correspondingly, pleasant news over unpleasant news. However, there is also a preference for being the bearer of pleasant news and not that of the unpleasant.  

This is less about pleasing one’s own five senses, but more about the sixth one (the mind), related to views about oneself, related to the constant quest to manipulate other minds to view oneself in a certain way.

Consider this example – We might know of someone in our family or organization who loves to jump ahead and be the first to hand out the goodies, the resources – be the one that delivers the good news etc, announce a promotion.  The same person often hates to have the difficult conversation, ask the children to behave, bring news about layoffs in the company, send a fundraising email.

But also consider the broad example in the political field.  The Left is known for its agenda – give out more benefits, even if it means raising taxes. The Right is known for its own agenda – lower taxes, even it means having to cut benefits. Now, everyone likes more benefits for themselves and everyone likes lower taxes on themselves.  The difference in the two parties is just in which one they prioritize (and are willing to sacrifice the other). What is interesting is that it seems that when each party is in power, they are far more willing to give out goodies than do the unpleasant part. The Left is quick to announce (and implement) various spending measures – that tends to be their headline legislative achievement, but really drags its feet on raising taxes. The Right, on the other hand, bangs the drums about various tax cuts they quickly deliver and those are their flagship achievements. Cutting programs, if any, is done quietly*.

The thing is – this stuff doesn’t add up.  Giving out the goodies (whichever one is preferred by either party) without the corresponding sacrifice leads to deficits.  Both parties decry deficits, but they do so only when they are in the opposition (minority). When they have control of the government, they are too busy with goodie handouts and you would never hear a word about deficits.

They have two political solutions to that: One is to insist that the other side should be carrying out my agenda (the unpleasant part of it) when they are in power.  Listen carefully and you’ll hear the Left cry while in minority about the yawning deficit and the cliff that is coming unless the ruling Right raises taxes.  Likewise, the Right wants the ruling Left to cut benefits to make up for the benefits. This is most commonly seen with the Federal government asking the states of the opposite party to carry out the stinky part of the agenda.

The second political solution is more easily observed: It is to sell these ideas to the people by dividing them – most frequently on lines of racial identity, but here I will talk about economic identity.  The Left’s sales pitch is “We will give you the benefits, but will not raise taxes on you.  Instead, we’ll raise taxes on that section over there, the (evil) Rich. Vote for us”.  The Right’s sales pitch, on the other hand, is, “We will lower your taxes, but don’t worry, the benefits cuts will not affect you. Instead, we will cut benefits on that group over there, the (lazy) Poor. Vote for us.

‘* – Only talking about the more moderate elements here. The extremes are more than happy to ignore the deficit entirely, have their goodies and gladly sacrifice the other leg (because the sacrifice will fall entirely on people who are outside of their own extreme base – people who they never had a chance with – landing a punch on them is no problem. If anything, a source of pride).