I just read a piece on the veil of ignorance, what it is and what effects it has on people. In short, when designing something, the designer is encouraged to view the thing they have built through the veil of ignorance. From the point of view of another entirely different human, with an entirely different background and experience. What would they see, what could they want form it and how would you go about helping them in getting what they are using the thing / came here for.

I found this more explicit framing of this somewhat obvious design strategy quite helpful. I often feel like other people don't think much about what they are doing. This may be of course true but is in any way quite a condescending way to view other humans (however stupid their actions might seem) most actions of people are motivated somehow and I want to believe that my work that I put out there for others to use will at least in some circumstances be used by others to help them in a way that I would deem helpful not only for the individual but for humanity as a whole. I rely on the work of others all the time and I don't know what intention the other people had when they released their work into the open.

Most often want to place restrictions on my work because I feel that it is otherwise (ab)used in a way that I did not intend for it or used for a cause that I don't agree with. The former is for me a much more immediate motivator. The latter is simply the risk I run when I release something into the world. I doubt that many people will really read what I write or ever use what I have built, maybe that will change, but I'm not counting on it. The thing is not really a fear of it not being used in a way that I intended for it, but more that the thing that I build is not appreciated in the sense that it is simply used and people come to expect that that what I have built will work how they expect it to and are annoyed when it does not. I don't like it when people become entitled (funnily the thing I do with my own privileges more than often enough) to my work. As I doubt any one else does.

I have a few occasions that have stayed in my mind over the years, and a few things that happen more often that I don't really like that have to do with my chosen occupation. The last thing that may be a reason for this urge has to do with an asymmetry that I felt in some situations with loose friends.

The first was an incident where I clearly stated what I wanted to do on a forum (build an H-Bridge from discrete components) and after stating clearly that I knew that there where ready made solutions to this problem in the form of ICs and I wanted to learn by doing it. Turns out all of the replies where of the kind that urged me "just use the finished chip". It seemed that no one read the actual post and just wanted to put their (obviously not very considerate) opinion out there. (Again I am aware that the behaviour is more or less a mirror of the behaviour that I have encountered and am complaining about here).

The second thing is a more wide-spread thing I have experienced. I am a scientist by training and devotion and I think I do it because I am just fundamentally curious. I do it (at least that is what I tell myself) because by now that is simply what I do. I try to figure out how things work and that has led me (somewhat unsurprisingly) to pursue a scientific career. If I interact with people that are not so interested in scientific progress the question often comes up why "we" (I'll get to this later) should pursue scientific work anyway, as there is obviously no clear benefit from it. An when you only look at the short or very short term (which is obviously everything anyone nowadays can really think of somehow) then it is quite obvious that scientific work does not provide much "bang for the buck" so to speak. To be more precise, scientific work outside of R&D in companies is considered somewhat 'not worth while' while somehow perplexing to me poeple especially in the technology sector (that is computers and associated components) somehow just expect that research will just bring somehow 'better' devices. I think this is somewhat insulting, as this feels to me like that the person I am talking to is telling me to "get a real job" and "do something actually worth while" and I really don't like being treated like that. On the other hand I feel like as soon as there is a problem that is difficult to solve "scientists" cant be to quick to solve it. Compounding this is that when the inevitable happens and the scientific community, or even single scientists get something wrong it is ridiculed immediately by press organisations, especially of the more tabloid variety and there subsequently seems to me to be little to no respect for the arduous and error prone process of scientific discovery. I feel like my work, the things I like doing and that I identify with to an extent are ignored and belittled on the one side, as long as there is not a clear use case for it and then, when one arises everyone is quick to shout their opinion about what the scientists of the respective fields are doing wrong and what they should have actually done all along.

Scientific achievement is furthermore is mostly the work of small or medium size groups of people. There are not many scientists and yet when A rocket is launched to the moon or a particle is discovered, somehow 'we' discovered the particle or landed on the moon. The achievement that was clearly the labour of a small (compared to most groups the scientific community (at least the ones that have stuck around at university) I would estimate is at most a few million people and that is counting all scientists across the World.) group of people, but still it seems to me that when something of value was done it is suddenly appropriated by the general population as if they had any involvement and somewhat expected that 'of course this was the right thing to do all along' but over and over again, even after the inventor of the web as we know it today coming from the scientific community say that actually the money spent on this type of work should have been spent to 'feed the children in Africa' or something of the sort.

I don't think the non-scientific person sees that the fruits of scientific discovery are the very reason that they can do anything in a usual day for a western person. I don't get the question "what do I need moth for?" is simply a result of careful engineering and design of products that would only be possible because of the vast amount of knowledge that is available to engineers on any given topic.

I think that Lack of recognition for me personally runs deep, as for most of my childhood there was this feeling of inadequacy despite all the things I was trying to do and a feeling that whatever I had done It was not really worth paying attention to.

I mean I know and agree with the saying that "If you do something you should not do it to get recognition" and I think that I adhere to that fairly well. I mean I don't regret any of the time spent learning and tinkering and getting stuff wrong (and also occasionally getting things right) but It is never the less frustrating when your work and effort and passion is answered with disinterest and the general "don't care because it feels useless to me" kind of sentiment. I also felt austercized by many of my contemporaries because of what I was doing (I probably was also pretty bad at communicating which would be a much more relevant factor to my austerity, but feeds in to this sentiment that many people that I have encountered seem oblivious and ungrateful towards the scientific work that enables essentially their entire existence. I often imagine how lost these kind of people would be if one where to actually remove all the things that are a consequence of this scientific knowledge they deem so worthless one should rather 'feed the children in Africa' with the means devoted on it. (Not that I hope that the people in Africa should not be well fed, Imagine how much more cool things we could see when the people there would have the headspace to actually think about scientific matters instead of having to worry about where to get the evenings meal from).

This sentiment of lacking recognition that is most likely the result of experiences in my past and not because of the general carelessness of most people (me included) about most things. And in turn, I hope I can keep in mind that being restrictive and prohibitive actually runs counter to the scientific method because it stands in the way of others for arbitrary and mostly petty reasons, which I always despise when I come across them. So in turn I should really not be hypocritical by on the one side calling for the removal of such hindrances and on the other hand wanting to implement hindrances on the results of my work regardless.

In the end I feel that I am not treated with the respect that I would want to be treated with and that reduces my tolerance towards people that (may be because of no fault of their own) don't approach me in that manner, either because they don't know that I am particularly sensitive in that regard or because I misread their behaviour or because of the general difficulties of human to human communication. And that is a real shame. I could be helping people with my knowledge and show them that science has intrinsic value by example. People that do only want my services and don't care about me or what I am doing can on the other hand still just pay me a reasonable fee.

The thing with the payment and the employment model is yet another thing that is related to this societal recognition. I would really like to see that a scientific career no longer lacks behind a similar kind of career in 'industry' in terms of compensation and general standard of living. I think for example that a Payment of 80.000 Euro for Professor at a university is really kind of meek compared to even entry level salaries for programmers/computer engineers. Compounding that is the fact that doctoral candidates don't even receive full salaries when they start but have to live with half a usual salary and post doctoral positions are limited to two years and require frequent moving and are generally hostile towards the accumulation of wealth (except in the realm of experience).

I guess that was my rant for today. I hope I was able to sensitise you to this issue of mine and I would much appreciate it if you would spend a little thought on the matter when making political decisions on allocation of funding (especially when it comes to universities and the working conditions for the staff there). With that, I hope you have a nice day. Thanks for reading.