Internet, answer my ethical questions for me

[winterkoninkje]

So I was recently made aware of the SMART award offered by the DoD and I'm considering whether to apply or not. Now, as those of you who know me fairly well, I may well have moral reasons for not doing so. The question I'm uncertain of, is whether and the extent to which accepting such an award actually would conflict with my morals.

Assuming I make the cut to get the award and pass the security clearance, the award in sum: 31k$/year stipend, full tuition, 1k$ book allowance, and random other things like health benefits. Never say the DoD doesn't know how to entice people in. The obligations in sum: DoD retains certain (unspecified) rights to any inventions, summers spent in paid internship with DoD laboratory or agency, post-graduation employment in DoD civilian S&E workforce (laboratory or agency) for as many years as award received for, and other random things I'm not too worried about. The post-grad employment may require "mobility", the internships are unspecified. Applicants can list agencies they'd prefer to work in, but ultimately it's up to what the DoD decides they want/need. If the contract is broken, then they want all their money back.

Naturally, other benefits would include continued employment opportunities with the DoD, though I have other plans for life (which may also benefit from the addition to my CV). Depending on where I end up transferring to, I'd be looking at one or two years until graduation, meaning one or two years working before I can start on my doctorate which would push that back from 27~28 to 28~30, which pushes getting the degree back to 32~34 if I stay on track— still not too late for a career as a professor, though getting perilously close unless I already have a number of publications by then. Another indirect concern is about that mobility thing; I'm not too concerned for my own sake, but I'm uncertain how it might affect things with my latest romance. Which is ultimately something only she can answer, and no doubt will depend on what her career situation is looking like at that point, but nevertheless.

To make my question more concrete, I'm a pacifist or more specifically nonviolent. To be clear, it's not so much that I have problems killing people per se, it's that I object to the use of violent force as a means of resolving conflict. Having seen some small portion of the depravity to which humanity can sink in enacting violence against itself, as with Einstein, I know that the only hope for our survival is to overcome that most base instinct to revert every conflict into one for blood. To be brutally honest, it's not even the survival of the species I'm concerned with so much as the survival of me and my own and our ability to discover great wonders such as settling the stars or whatever else may be out there. The use of violence to resolve conflict has always and will always be at odds with the desire for survival and exploration. Say what you will about whether the majority of humanity coming to abandon violence is possible, if it is not then we are doomed, if we do not try then we are doomed, consequently we can accept defeat or we can try.

Now, my employment with the DoD would be as a civilian and so I have no need to worry about my own direct actions, however the question is the extent to which my indirect actions and their indirect effects would encourage or discourage the use of violence overall. At one extreme, I could design a critical component for a weapon. Whether the weapon was used in actuality or used only to threaten, either constitutes reinforcing the use of violence. On the other hand, my research could be in something more benign and generally applicable like communications. For which there is a general trend that greater levels of communication tend to reduce conflict (even if only by homogenizing the communicants) though there can also be backlashes when one communicant feels they cannot stop the communication nor hold their own against the cultural influx. On the third hand, my research could also lead to something such as powerful AI, the effects of which could revolutionize the world in dramatic ways which would be difficult to label as either good or bad.

Certainly I'll be putting in for other grants and fellowships, and I have a while before needing to apply for this one as well as being able to decline the award. But I'm curious what my readership thinks of the situation, either those who are also pacifists or those who are not but are willing to consider things from that position.

Discuss.

Comments

[banalapercu.livejournal.com]

While the teenage boy in me is wowing over an opportunity like this, any type of work for the DoD unless it is in the creation of equipment that helps out the medical operations aspect is circumspect in my book. Communications systems can be seen as perhaps helping to eliminate the accidental deaths of civilians, but part of me thinks that they would be just more just to help improve the efficiency of killing people. I suppose my pacifism works on a different level, to me anything done to help another's demise that was avoidable should be avoided.

At the same time it's a fantastic opportunity. I guess I just wonder what happens if you end up working on a targeting system or something like that. Would your conscious be at ease? If so, go for it. If not, perhaps thinking a little more would be good.

I sound like I'm saying not to take it, which isn't what I'm trying to say. I guess I just wonder about what you'd do if you were assigned to a position that made you morally uncomfortable.

[xuenay.livejournal.com]

"If you want peace, prepare for war" is also one thing that you might want to consider. In other words, the improvement of new weapons technology can potentially reduce violent conflict - either by making people less willing to go to war with the possessor of those weapons, or by making the wars quicker and more decisive when they do break out. On the other hand, it doesn't sound very implausible to assume that wars getting quicker and more decisive will reduce the threshold for going to war...

Another point - I don't know how much influence the actual researchers working for those agencies have on the projects, but if you're working for them, there's a small chance that you'll get to influence their development towards more peaceful purposes. Like emphasizing the communication-enabling aspects of a new technology that could also be used for destruction, or something. Of course, gaining such influence would probably require a longer career for those agencies.

[sage-asunder.livejournal.com]

It would seem to me that you have hit one of those wonderful walls in the ethics of the inabsolute. It would seem that you need to conclude what degree to which you are comfortable being involved in a system of violence. While not ALL of what the DoD research does is violent, it is the formally sanctioned instituion by which we as a nation effect violence upon others. Now on another, but still related note, to some extent all Americans are involved in a vilent system of oppression, as we violently oppress others with our consumption and political strucure in either manifest or latent forms.

So in working for the DoD, in your perception, would you be participating in such oppression too greatly? would your involvement in the organization, regardless of involvement amount to adding to the violence? These are questions we cannot answer for you.

However, if you were asking me, I would never trust anything Rummsfeld ever ran. Violence, intolerance, homophobia, oppression, and evil aside. Hes creepy.

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

last year they gave it to Jennifer Lopez???