Comments on: Quickies

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 07:15:00 +0000

Well, if you learn enough geophysics to be able to teach chadians how to find and recover their own water and oil resources, then they can figure out all the pesky facts themselves.

By: yami

yami — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 06:06:00 +0000

Oh, you and your pesky facts!

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 05:27:00 +0000

What is the current political reality in Chad? Did Lybia ever give back those oil fields it borrowed back in the 80’s?
The other question, of course, is whether Saharan groundwater is too saline to drink. ‘Cause if it is, drilling wells isn’t going to be all that helpful, unless you are trying to reinvigorate the Saharan Salt trade.

By: yami

yami — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 04:39:00 +0000

In this political reality, or a different one?

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 04:35:00 +0000

Would the people of Chad be better off if you were drilling water wells or oil wells?

By: yami

yami — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:28:00 +0000

Yebbut I’m not guaranteed to be successful in my quest to invent a wellamadriller or a fabulously applicable scientific theory, while I am reasonably certain that laboring in the third world would pay off. Maximizing the expected value of one’s social contribution means making some estimate of the odds that higher-level efforts will succeed. Also, directing your efforts to the problems you think are most likely to pay off - as a junior grad student I feel like I’m still acquiring background knowledge and learning how to do that. But I’m not learning it any faster than I would if I were drilling wells in Chad, where I could see firsthand what the problems are.
That’s a nice speech, thanks

By: b

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:42:00 +0000

Does laboring in the third world maximize your social benefit? Suppose that, instead of flying off to Africa or Pakistan, you sat at your desk in Berkeley and invented the Dows-o-matic wellamadriller, or some sort of quake-proof Insta-shelter kit. Assuming your inventions are ten times as efficient as you and your hammer, you’ve ten-timed your social benefit.
Now suppose that, instead of inventing those devices, you create some tool or scientific principle that lets someone else invent them… and lets nine other inventors invent nine other things. That’s another 10x. Now suppose that you create the tool that helps create tools. Meta-meta-meta.
I kind of think that it’s a person’s responsibility to go as high in the pyramid as their intellect will take them. Often that means not directly working on the problem of interest, but on some abstraction or generalization.
There’s a great speech by Richard Hamming which I try to reread every year or so. One of the great passages ends with: “Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.”
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

By: yami

yami — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:15:00 +0000

That’s a good question - and I don’t really know yet. I mean, obviously I have the stock answers that all earth scientists fall back on, that figuring out the basics will help us be smarter about avoiding geologic hazards and using geologic resources. My current project is doesn’t have much in the way of direct applications to resource or hazard management, though.
Doing it interacts with my well-being, of course, and that’s fundamentally why I’m here. If I were maximizing my social benefit I’d be drilling wells in Africa, or building cheap earthquake-resistant structures in Pakistan, etc., instead - or abandoning earth science entirely in favor of politics and economics. Even if I move to something with more practical earthquake engineering applications (which I’d like to do, at some point), investing in fancy new mitigation in the first world seems like a waste when there’s still so much low-hanging fruit, so to speak, in the rest of the world.

By: b

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:07:00 +0000

How would you describe how -your- research interacts with human well-being? Or do you not know yet?
I don’t mean to be snide — I’m genuinely curious. It’s something I’ve been struggling with since grad school.