Lawyers, Guns, and Money

[Tim May]

On Saturday, August 25, 2001, at 06:39 PM, Jim Windle wrote:

> On Sat, 25 Aug 2001 16:29:21   Tim May wrote:
>
>>
>> I can think of some scientists who had enormous influences on policy,
>> men like Szilard, Von Neumann, Fermi, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Teller, 
>> and
>> a bunch of others
>
> As an addendum I would add Claude Shannon.  In fact I can't think of a 
> single lawyer in the 20th century who had the long term influesnce on 
> society that either Shannon or von Neumann did.  The list of other 
> influential non-lawyers might also be expanded to include Turing, 
> Godel, von Braun, Crick and Watson.  Washington's myopia in thinking 
> olny lawyers are worth listening to is indicative of the type of 
> government we have.
>

Well, yes, there are many. I only even _tried_ to list a handful of the 
most important folks in just that one field: nuclear. Every field has 
its giants.

And the ones I cited in just the nuclear field were not just scientists, 
they were policy advisors. Szilard's soliciting of Einstein to write the 
letter to Roosevelt, Einstein's letter, Fermi's policy work in the 
1950s, Teller's lobbying for the H-bomb, Oppenheimer and the Manhattan 
Project (and later antiwar lobbying), and Von Neumann's powerful 
arguments for building up the nuclear arsenal. (VN favored a pre-emptive 
nuclear strike on Russia with bombers.)

The other examples (we could write all day listing such giants) were 
certainly scientists, but many had no interest whatsoever in policy. 
Kurt Godel, for example. Crick, as another. I don't recall Shannon 
having much interest in policy.

Washington _does_ listen to other than lawyers. The examples I gave 
showed this to be true in the past, and almost certainly still true. 
(And the SDI arguments were in many cases made by scientists, e.g., 
Teller, Lowell Wood, etc.)

--Tim May