We need to get serious about the War on Error. If we are making mistakes, the sooner they are corrected the better.
“Don’t get greedy.”
My gloved hands were busy handling a pipet inside a laminar flow hood while learning to transfer tissue culture cells. This is a side of scientific research that is not well appreciated. Generations of mentors have worked one on one with peers and students to share techniques and even more importantly why things are done a certain way. (Research is labor intensive.)
I thought avoiding greed was good advice in general though (greediness in regular expressions REGEX being the exception).
After the cells were comfortable in their new flasks there was time for the explanation. To keep cells growing in culture, you need to use an enzyme preparation to break their grip on the culture flask, then transfer (split) them into new flasks to give them room to grow. I noticed that the procedure left a fair amount of suspension behind and had asked if I should go back and try to recover it. The cells are in a fragile state after the enzyme treatment and “getting greedy” would actually result in net cell loss because of the extra time involved.
Greed and selfishness seem to be closely related. Some reading:
‘Selfish’ Giving: Does It Count If You Get In Return?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121718372
[Yesterday I suggested that there is hope that corporations should be expected to act as responsible citizens. Corporate generosity is an example in the link above.]
Aggression vs Altruism
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u028747670201513/
Genes may actually encode for altruism? Now there is food for thought! I have remarked several times that although people like to quote “survival of the fittest” to describe evolution (and excuse terrible behavior), probably the beatitude “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” is more accurate.
One of the things I have learned as a scientist is not only to list what assumptions you make but to question the validity of those assumptions as well. Much of what makes our society work is that there has been an assumption that most of the citizens are honest and have good intentions. There will be a sociopaths — we all know people who will seek ways to cheat even if doing the honest thing is actually easier. There are humane ways to protect the rest of society from them. Unfortunately we have allowed the creation of entities that have rights of citizens. Legislation isn’t very effective because (a) government is essentially “outgunned” by the resources available find and even create loopholes for financial benefit and (b) the reason for their existance is to maximize financial benefit.
Maybe selfishness and greed have to be promoted actively in real people because they go against our nature? However if the marketing of greed is successful, it will invalidate one of the basic assmuptions about how our society works.
Then there is the question of who promotes greed and why. How did we in the USA get to where we consume a much higher proportion of non-renewable resources than our share?
Greed may be accidental, a result of ignorance or short sightedness. Encouraging people to learn about how things work can prevent this accidental greed while giving pleasure in appreciating the complexities of our society as well as the natural world. A net gain for all, but not good for those who rely on making things complicated to promote unquestioning consumption.
Institutions can be accidentally greedy too. For example, the US Postal Service has been removing drop boxes in urban and suburban areas for cost savings. There are a number of elderly and disabled people in my neighborhood. They were assured that the mail carrier would pick up their mail. However, when I actually checked, only rural mail carriers are required to pick up outgoing mail. In town where the carrier goes around on foot, it is not required. It appears that what happened is that the individual mail carriers, bless them, took on the responsibility on their own, altruistic behavior.
Now, you would think that walking a bit further to depost your mail would be good exercise, but for some of us that is not the case. If the weather is bad or we are having a bad day, a lot of us go to our cars and turn the key in the ignition. So, the Postal Service technically saved money and made their carriers work harder, but how much did they contribute to increasing greenhouse gas emissions?
If there are any engineers or scientists working for the government who are not totally demoralized after a couple generations of abuse from the “small government” people, they may be able to give an definitive answer given some resources.
If it actually makes better sense environmentally for the Postal Service to encourage their carriers to pick up mail, they should be given bonuses for reducing greenhouse emissions and saving energy. And if that means hiring more carriers, heaven knows we have a lot of people looking for jobs.
That would probably require cooperation between agencies though, which leads to questioning the assumption that there are responsible adults in charge, but that is a topic for another day.
