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

[xuenay.livejournal.com]

I don't have at hand any actual research per se, but an obvious example would be nuclear weapons and the fact that the USA and USSR never ended up in a full-scale World War III (even if there were close cases). http://homepage.mac.com/msb/163x/faqs/nuclear_warfare_101.html is a more general essay on the topic - the logic seems sound to me, though I'm not qualified to truly criticize it.

Of course, it's admittable that nuclear weapons are an extreme case, and it could be that the principle doesn't necessarily always apply on smaller scales. Still, I'd believe any nation to seriously take the opponent's armament level into consideration before going to war. I'm limiting myself to discussion of nation-to-nation wars here - obviously the principle is less applicable to terrorist groups and fanatics who have less to lose.

[sage-asunder.livejournal.com]

What you are talking about its the hypothesis of mutually assured destruction. while the USSR and the USA never went into full scale nuclear war, they did both escalate their arms and came dangerously close too many time. Honestly the logic of having a bigger stockpile to rpevent your neighbor from attacking you is fundamentally flawed. More over there is nothing to say that the amassment of arms on either side is what prevented nuclear warfare. It could have been (and more likely was) any number of other factoers including economic pressure, the UN, frnce, oil negotiations, iran, chinese economic instability. etc...

Not a Hypothesis

[autumnfalling.livejournal.com]

It was a doctrine that was put into effect. The arms race in terms of nuclear warhead stockpiles persisted because each side had to maintain the ability to destory the otherside's second-strike capability.

I also think that the "Cold War" is a bit of a misnomer. As you pointed out, things got pretty warm. :) I also think you made exactly the point of the doctrine.

they did both escalate their arms and came dangerously close too many time.

I think the point is that they never did, and MAD is quite likely the reason why.

Re: Not a Hypothesis

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Well, the hypothesis is that if you can ensure that another's aggression will lead to mutual destruction then that other will never initiate things for fear of their own survival.

Certainly the hypothesis was assumed true and used as justification for the arms race, and it so happens that full-scale nuclear warfare never came to pass, but neither of those two points verifies the hypothesis as true. The military stockpiles of the modern world and the ability to inflict grievous damage on anyone who would dare to attack first far outstrip the materiel available in earlier eras, however military aggression still occurs. While we don't tend to have the rampant border conflicts from earlier eras, that can be explained by other sociological changes in global structuring of the world more accurately and effectively than applying the hypothesis of mutual assured destruction.

It's still a hypothesis, just one which was acted on by assumption of its validity.

Re: Not a Hypothesis

[sage-asunder.livejournal.com]

i said hypothesis of in the sense that it was the hypothesis of that doctrine that in such a state of events mutual destruction would assured. this however cannot be backed up by historical data suggesting that either side first had intention of using arms or force, or that either side had the technological and governmental resources to assure the annihilation of either side.

mutually assued destruction was a misnomer, there was nothing assured about it.

Re: Not a Hypothesis

[sage-asunder.livejournal.com]

moreover, one cannot make a logcal case for MAD being responsible for the tenuous arms reservation in the cold war. there are so many confounding factors and poltical pressures outside of MAD, that one policy structure and theoretical standing cannot be said to have klkept the peace in that conflict.