The Duty of a Scholar

(daemonology.net)

57 points | by gslin 2 hours ago

7 comments

  • cperciva 2 hours ago
    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-...

  • ballmerpoint 30 minutes ago
    > 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.

  • Animats 1 hour ago
    The Intel claim it wasn't a problem: [1]

    Today, it would be a bigger deal. In the age of AI, exploiting hard to exploit holes is so much easier. AI has patience limited only by your budget.

    [1] https://www.itnews.com.au/news/intel-soothes-hyperthreading-...

    • cperciva 1 hour ago
      Linus said some silly things too. Fortunately the security and cryptography community mostly understood.
  • jruohonen 1 hour ago
    He sounds somewhat like R. K. Merton, and thus it was a good read.
  • logifail 1 hour ago
    I'm not sure modern academia has very much left to do with scholarship in the sense quoted in this article.

    This is unfortunate.

  • Dunewalnut22 56 minutes ago
    [flagged]
  • bix6 1 hour ago
    > 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.

    • leoqa 1 hour ago
      He would’ve likely qualified for Medicaid in the US if he was living in any liberal state that expanded eligibility.
      • jawilson2 18 minutes ago
        That's a lot of asterisks for a gotcha. We need universal healthcare yesterday. We are barbaric.
      • logifail 1 hour ago
        Q: How much does generic/biosimilar insulin cost in the US if you aren't insured? Does this vary by state?
        • ballmerpoint 37 minutes ago
          It varies by state. Many states by now have programs capping it at 35$/mo, but I believe that often entails being insured under their state public insurance or another plan operating in that state (and so may not count as “uninsured cost”).