More Brennan Lee Mulligan This Time on Ask Hank Anything

📺 Brennan Lee Mulligan Asks Hank Anything

In the discussion of the question “When did it start to feel like science and technology were two separate things, and am I crazy or does it feel like they have started to appeal to and attract the interest of very different types of people?” at ~9m30s…

Brennan: …these CEOs posit themselves as a bunch of Tony Starks when what they are as salesman…it feels like every day I open a news article and I see: “The one woman studying a type of frog that could maybe cure cancer has been stuffed into a rocket ship and fired into the sun by the current administration.” Meanwhile, a guy has come and said, “I have a way for you to download my app to park your own car at your own house.” And you go, “That’s hell.” And he goes, “No, it’s a great innovation.” And you go, “You are a con artist, you’re twiddling your mustache right now.”

…I think like Sam Seder had a great thing that he talked about essentially being like, “Even the well-meaning.” It’s like back in the ’90s, Bill and Melinda Gates…“Oh, we’re gonna change how the United States education system works.” And you go, “Is that your call?” Do you know that?…Is that your expertise? But it’s like for a billionaire, it gets to be because they have the power to make it so¹, and 🎶 I think that’s wrong. 🎶

Hank: So what this question clarified for me is that it’s actually very important to try and bridge this gap, to have people who are in academia thinking about, and doing stuff with the engineers, to have the engineers thinking about, and building bridges with the academia, or else if these things are set up oppositionally, it makes no sense to set them up oppositionally. It’s like very, very good for these things to work in concert with each other, especially because if you don’t put science as part of it, it is so easy to just blunder straightforward into massive mistakes.

Brennan: Well, that’s the thing is that the technology is not necessarily at issue other than: Is there anything to the idea about looking at technology as a sphere of economic activity and looking at science as a sphere of economic activity? It feels like an assumption that I would arrive at that technology offers quicker means to short-term profit. So as a result of that, it seems like, I would say that if you’re talking about bridging the gap between the engineers and the scientists, that the issue is that technology has been captured by forces of privatization that fundamentally…if all of these great engineers are turned to the task of being like, “We need to make videos that children literally can’t look away from. Don’t worry, I assume their brains will be fine.” And you go capturing that for profit motive is the thing that makes you go, “Make sure that the children literally cannot shut their eyes lest they miss a single instant.” …it’s not necessarily anything intrinsic to being an engineer or a technologist, but if you are captured by those venture capital forces.

Hank: Because there’s this idea that the surrogate for the value you create is the money that you generate. And your investors are definitely gonna want you to believe that.

Brennan: An old friend of mine, who’s great wise mentor of mine, said:

If the only lens through which you can view life is value in currency, that which is priceless becomes worthless.