The Duty of a Scholar

8 hours ago (daemonology.net)

Wow that showed up quickly.

Readers might also consider my 2020 post "On the use of a life" to be an interesting companion piece: https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-09-20-On-the-use-of-a-...

  • All this talk of "truth" and "duty" implies some larger context in which such abstractions would be evaluated.

    One continues to be fascinated by the very human dichotomy in which (the global) "we" want to allude to, or leverage, these concepts, while stridently avoiding evaluating them in any way that might lead to behavioral conclusions.

    For a specific example, consider: International Law, in all its emphemerality.

    • > All this talk of "truth" and "duty" implies some larger context in which such abstractions would be evaluated.

      I suppose not engaging with these principles however vague would reduce down to an immediate, might makes right cause-benefit analysis for any given situation. I think it's probably good that people still hold themselves to some standards, regardless of how universally comparable they are across different people.

  • Are you aware of a program down south called Medicaid?

    In my state it covers anyone making below $1,799/mo, with no asset test. The details do vary, that's for adults without dependent children or disabilities. I believe you were unemployed at the time?

    I mention because:

    > Had I been living in the USA, I would have needed to prioritize seeking employment and medical insurance and likely would not have been able to discharge the duty which fate had thrust upon me.

    Normally I just shrug this kind of cheap dig off. Most people don't care about what's true, and that just has to be accepted. But surely the duty of a scholar includes a duty to the truth? I know you would prefer to keep that bit, since I'm certain it correctly reflects your rating of our country's respective approaches to health care.

    But it isn't true. Is the thing.

> Members of the IEEE commit, for example, "to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public..." without that duty being limited to hazards arising from projects employing the Engineer in question: The duty "to disclose promptly" vests in any Engineer who recognizes that the hazard exists.

As an active member of the IEEE for over a decade now, I have never seen anyone (aside from the author here) take this duty seriously. There are plenty of IEEE members working on things that directly cause such hazards.

Intel's response was:

> Timing exploits has been known to the security community since the mid-nineties. From a real world standpoint the attack is not practical.

And this is basically the state of the art today, even with Spectre. You can demonstrate the vulnerability under controlled conditions but having those conditions arise in production is not practical in the engineering sense.

> While I had some bills to cover — being a type 1 diabetic, I had to purchase insulin — living in Canada meant that I didn't need to worry about the risk of extraordinary costs from a hospital stay. Had I been living in the USA, I would have needed to prioritize seeking employment and medical insurance and likely would not have been able to discharge the duty which fate had thrust upon me.

God bless Canada.

I'm not sure modern academia has very much left to do with scholarship in the sense quoted in this article.

This is unfortunate.