The NSA and GCHQ need mathematicians to function and are some of the largest employers of mathematicians in the world. An article in New Scientist by a mathematician describes some of the math behind mass surveillance, and calls on other mathematicians to refuse to cooperate with the NSA/GCHQ while they continue to surveil the entire population. From the article: 'Mathematicians seldom face ethical questions. We enjoy the feeling that what we do is separate from the everyday world. As the number theorist G. H. Hardy wrote in 1940: "I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world." That idea is now untenable. Mathematics clearly has practical applications that are highly relevant to the modern world, not least internet encryption.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Saturday May 03 2014, @12:21PM
I thought this was already discussed in my earlier submission: http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/04/28/151 3200 [soylentnews.org]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Saturday May 03 2014, @08:06PM
(Score: 2) by hubie on Saturday May 03 2014, @12:49PM
First off it is pretty easy for an established professor with tenure to tell new and upcoming mathematicians that they should avoid the largest employers in their field. However, what was left off the summary was the next sentence:
Well, welcome to the real world. If you are a mathematician working for one of those agencies and your work isn't contributing directly to any particular project, then just like at any other research lab you are doing "basic research," and who knows where that might lead? An undergrad working in a solid state physics lab may work on investigating the properties of some material substance and five years down the road that might end up being useful for something like, say, better land mines. Should the undergrad feel betrayed by physics? As von Braun said, "basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
Mathematicians who fancy themselves as pure thinkers and who love to repeat the Hardy quote are very full of themselves. They are like the surgeon who runs around yelling "these hands have been touched by God!" One might be proud that their work doesn't contribute anything useful to society, for now, but research builds upon what came before it.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Saturday May 03 2014, @01:38PM
Asking people to forego their livelyhood in the name of morality is doomed to failure. Are you going to feed those mathematicians?
(Score: 3, Informative) by melikamp on Saturday May 03 2014, @02:15PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @10:12PM
Seriously. As a professional theoretical physicist I have never had any peer try to convince me to use free software for research or teaching, except one guy insistant that I should use the GSL because "it's built by professional mathematicians and you will never do better", until I found that
a) The routines I needed were copied and pasted from Netlib and therefore 30 years old
b) While being 30 years old isn't necessarily an issue I already knew and had rejected those routines because they were (and are) shit, and throw in a region where instead we should actually have rapid and reliable asymptotic expansions or Taylor series
c) The routine I had, in fact, built myself was not only vastly superior but was also not hindered by any form of the GPL
Like it or not but people won't care about using free software because "we want to see the proofs", they want to do their research. And if their research can be done by Matlab then frankly anyone can reproduce it. In Matlab itself, or in Mathematica, or in Maple, or, you know, by hand using Abramowitz and Stegun or similar. They give you a wide-eyed look because you're sounding bonkers, frankly. We want to find the answers, not evangelise about "free" software and bask in the beauty of using the GPL. If others can use the papers to find the same answers then that's all we need. (If they can't then something is very wrong with the paper.)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 03 2014, @02:28PM
Well, they could rely on their mothers to feed them and solve conjectures [wikipedia.org]... there are plenty of them still...
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by internetguy on Saturday May 03 2014, @02:30PM
Why is it doomed to failure? They could always be a stripper and make better money!
Sig: I must be new here.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday May 03 2014, @04:59PM
That mindset is disturbing to me. I'd die for a worthy enough cause. Are you saying there's nobody left willing to die for something worthwhile?
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @06:28PM
It is easy to ask someone to die for YOUR worthy cause, but the problem is that you might not think that my worthy causes are worth dying for. There are people who are recruiters for suicide bombers. I often wonder whether the potential recruit ever asks why the recruiter isn't willing to step up and do his part for the cause.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday May 03 2014, @09:28PM
Are you saying there's nobody left willing to die for something worthwhile?
It's an irrelevant question, since we talk about mathematicians here. I am sure that someone, somewhere, is willing to die for something that HE considers worthwhile. A great many of those guys are employed by Al-Qaeda. A bunch more are employed by governments as soldiers; they stand to die for something that their boss considers worthwhile. Just one notch down are police officers; however, due to an unexpected sign reversal, they are likely to kill YOU for something they consider worthwhile.
All those groups have hardly anything to do with mathematicians, of course. You should be asking if there is a sufficient number of mathematicians who are willing to die from hunger, and to attempt the same on their families, for something that YOU consider worthwhile. (I am sure that many mathematicians would gladly die to save their {child,wife,dog,research} from fire. It remains to be seen how those mathematicians are classifying your freedom and freedom of many other people in the country and abroad. I would say that the term "mad scientist" has some basis in reality, especially when that scientist does not know what his research leads to, or chooses to not think about it, or adopts an imaginary position that presents his actions as good.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by morpheus on Saturday May 03 2014, @02:37PM
Instead of telling math graduates what moral (or immoral) choices they should make, how about doing your part and helping reduce the number of mathematics graduates, to the point that mathematicians are in high enough demand so that they CAN make choices. I am still baffled by all the cries to `attract more students to STEM fields' coming from engineers, scientists, etc. What incentive (other than fixing some rather abstract perceived societal wrongs) do these people have to produce more competition for themselves?
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Saturday May 03 2014, @07:41PM
Companies want highly skilled STEM graduates. They want lots of them to keep wages down. Even McDonalds wants mathematics graduates working for it at minimum wage, if they can get them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by morpheus on Sunday May 04 2014, @02:29AM
My point exactly. So, instead of `attracting kids to science' because `it's fun', lets do the exact opposite and make it nearly impossible to get a science degree. I, for one will be writing a motivational text `Science, or why you are NOT GOOD ENOUGH'. For those scientists (or engineers, or mathematicians, whatever) that have made it, there will be some breathing room to make `the right' decision.
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Saturday May 03 2014, @05:26PM
Since the agencies, in the name of national security, are going to keep spying the wrong people to support a transnational systems that uses finance instead of weapon, why don't people, in the name of national security, start spying on the system?
When I first heard about the internet I said: wow, in the future an internet based economic transaction system inherently transparent will make it impossible to:
- steal
- have conflicts of interests (what if the same bank controls food, and medicines? will they object to selling cheap dangerous food when it's a win win?)
- scam
- evade taxes
- inflate expenses
And I concluded: "the internet will never take off".
I was pleasantly astounded I was wrong. But then I understood: the orwellian capabilities of the net are kept, the transparency is discarded. The best part is that THE PEOPLE are scared into not wanting transparency, by acts of leaking stuff that is damaging for the people. I am not saying Anonymous or Snowden are putting up a charade (they are having natural reactions, and that is what is possibly expected by them). The TSA is a charade for sure, "Laptop please".
So, math professor, what about ask mathematicians to work for whomever but help out collaborative efforts for transparency, and what about people DEMAND that politicians make it legal to uncover all information which is not personal, but directly or indirectly influences the consumer, who will become a citizen at last?
If you think that transparency will help The terrorists and the mafia guys, well, are already doing the spying and the cyberattacks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @06:41PM
"Will: Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices.
A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president."
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/ [imdb.com]
(Score: 1) by panachocala on Saturday May 03 2014, @07:15PM
I'll quit working on math problems just as soon as the steel workers, who make the actual buildings in which the NSA operates, quit. Ditto the cafeteria workers. They must stand strong, bravo to them.
(Score: 1) by Solaarius on Sunday May 04 2014, @12:15AM
Well, gosh when you take the idea to it's logical extreme, it really does seem silly, doesn't it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_extreme [wikipedia.org]
Or perhaps you are just confusing the difference between commodities and valuable assets. It's their mathematicians and not their chefs that enable the NSA to be evil.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday May 04 2014, @03:01AM
But without food and shelter they wouldn't manage to be "evil" for very long. Each one plays their part and to just single out the once at the top of the work-pyramid is quite unfair. If they asked and made an offer I couldn't refuse I would work for them, but I don't think the field of my math degree is all to interesting to their line of work -- also i'm not a citizen so i'm sure that will put a dent in the joboffers to.