[In 1963] Matthew Meselson was a biologist at Harvard consulting with the government when he learned they were doing research on biological weapons. “I asked why would we do that?” He was told because they’d be “cheaper than nukes”.
“By the time I got back to the office,” he said, “it dawned on me that we don’t want a weapon of mass destruction that is cheap!” He imagined what would happen if there were a ten-cent hydrogen bomb. Sure, the government would save some money. Also, we’d all be dead.
So he set off on a six-year crusade to make the US, and then the world, swear off biological weapons and agree to stop stockpiling and offensive research. It wasn’t his job. The most striking thing, talking to him, was that that doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.
“I decided, this had better not happen, we had better not do it anymore,” he told me, and a few weeks later he was contacting every science writer in America to convince them to run a story on it. He’d show up in policymaker’s offices. He started petitions.
It seems like there’s some kind of personality trait where instead of going ‘someone should do something about that’, you go ‘I’m going to do something about that.’ I don’t know how to teach it but I sincerely think the world is only still around because some people have it.
Speaker: If someone should do something about that,
Audience: I desire to believe that someone should do something about that;
Speaker: If nobody should do something about that
Audience: I desire to believe that nobody should do something about that;
Together: Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
-https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1115683367536607232
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