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Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

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41–50 of 91 posts

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#41

How's Israel this time of year?

Don't think it's Israel, he would have already spent time in the military if he was Israeli.

Or there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherut_Leumi or a psychiatrist willing to give you the right kind of mental health diagnosis

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#42
post #2

The standard advice I've heard is: Work for defense companies to learn the technology, and then leave to transfer this technology toward peaceful (and often lucrative) applications. Swords into Ploughshares.

My experience in the aerospace/defense industry suggests that this isn't really practical. Organizations that make aircraft and rockets and weapons tend to be incredibly conservative: they don't really innovate much. They have incredibly risk averse institutional cultures...no one wants to be the guy that decided to launch Challenger.

I know of one aerospace company that occasionally has its rockets explode on the launchpad because they use battery designs from the 1970s that are known to explode with fairly high probability. They could easily get much cheaper much more reliable batteries with more modern designs but they don't because the exploding batteries "have flight heritage". This particular aerospace company is considered agile and nimble and innovative compared to its competitors.

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#44
OK, below is my honest, if a bit blunt, opinion.

You're not a rocket scientist, your skillset as described won't make a difference for Israel (?) military power. Either go for it and enjoy your pay, or if you have your principles, don't go for it and try finding a boring civilian job as all other non-rocket-scientists do . But the drama, it's not there.

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#46
post #12

I'm trying to think of "famously aggressive" and "little", and all I can come up with is one of them Koreas.

Yeah, aggressive and little is a recipe for disaster without larger allies.

Or nuclear weapons.

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#47

I'm trying to think of "famously aggressive" and "little", and all I can come up with is one of them Koreas.

Or Venezuela. But most likely Israel.

Or Iran, or one of the [blank]-istans. There are a LOT of aggressive little countries.

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#48
Good move. I had a girlfriend whose father worked designing guidance systems for rockets. He couldn't speak a word about his job to his family, and it was apparent that his conscience struggled with the fact that his engineering handiwork was only good for killing people.

Re: Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

#50
post #3

You should hire me instead of him. I've been using python to do statistics and machine learning in a bioinformatics context for the last 15 years. Plus, if you don't, I'll kill this puppy. Isn't he cute? You wouldn't want to be responsible for his death, would you?

Your criticism is right, this is a sensationalist appeal. Do you think I shouldn't have made it?

Do you think my satire contains a moral judgment?

(I hear you like to answer questions with questions over there.)

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