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What do capitalists get right? (self.askchapo)

submitted 11 months ago by janus2 to c/[email protected]

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I think one depressing example is innovation in weapons and other dangerous fields. "If we don't build it, someone else will first" is unfortunately historically been shown to be true, has it not?

Today's unsavory borderline reactionary doomposting brought to you by: my crippling fear that I'm isolating myself in a political echo-chamber (so naturally I gotta hop online and exclusively ask my fellow leftists)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

This reminds me of something.

I'll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists. Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature. Which is true, but that's not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.'

Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.

The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific.