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Yeah, a refugee who is also a highly qualified rocket scientist should raise some healthy suspicion at the least.

Do you think rocket scientists are just… immune to war?

I think that rocket scientists are usually cherished by totalitarian regimes, not persecuted.

That’s a narrow view of where refugees come from. Also doesn’t consider that they can become a talented rocket scientist after becoming a refugee.

If you are smart enough to be a rocket scientist you are more likely to be smart enough to see when your country is being ruled by thieves and going to the dogs.

Either you hide it and leave ASAP, you don't hide it and try to change your country for the better (= jail, regime doesn't like people like that) or you suppress your conscience (or not have it) and enjoy a nice lifestyle. The last option is more rare because smart people are usually allergic to propaganda

>> The last option is more rare because smart people are less susceptible to propaganda

This is actually bullshit, you can easily manipulate smart person, by appealing to their perceived smartness :)

Anyway, just because someone is smart does not mean that they are also highly moral. It's often like: give a person opportunity for professional growth ("you'll be working on our moon landing program") and they will sell their own mother.

EDIT: tangentially related https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/01/why-smart-peop...

It does not mean they are moral, it means it's more likely they are moral because they know more (know to check their sources, follow the money, less susceptible to conspiracy theories etc) and also they due to being smart don't need to worry as much about financial security or where their next meal comes from and can worry about higher things

Working on lunar landing is great but when you have the smarts to see that all your work ultimately props up the thieving violent elites you have to think about your values and whether you'd enjoy to work on lunar landing in a democratic country more

Knowledge does not confer morality. Highly intelligent people are very good at finding reasons to believe the ends will justify any means.

Von Braun was happy to use jewish slave labor to develop his rockets. He thought that humanity going to space was important enough to justify that.

Where do people keep seeing those things I didn't write?

Knowledge does not magically make you moral, knowledge "just" makes it more possible to become and act moral. There may be exceptions that prove the rule..,

Maybe Von Braun was a dick, I don't know that story, but some factory worker in Crapovsk with no degree who needs to make money to feed family every day can't just decide to leave the country even if he is moral, and is more likely to be immoral by ignorance of real events by watching one sided and misleading account on TV. He has no CPU left to wonder abstract things like whether the government is bombing civilians far away and he only speaks one language in which 80% of info says "no they don't". No scientific community will stand up for him if he goes to jail for protesting war. Maybe he would not mind to emigrate for economical reasons, sure. But as a rule of thumb rocket scientist over in Moscow with fancy credentials has means and ways to think about higher values than money and leave if conscience says so.

> Knowledge does not magically make you moral, knowledge "just" makes it more possible to become and act moral.

I fundamentally do not agree with that. With intelligence and opportunity it may be possible for a moral person to more effectively do things which are moral, but that doesn't make that person more moral.

Unfortunately actions and words is what matters. If you are deeply "moral" but support the gov in what you do, say by continuing to live in a violent dictatorship and work for/pay tax to the czar, you are acting immorally.

Therefore between two equally moral people (self assessed) whoever actually acts moral is more moral (effective).

So even if we pretend that knowledge is irrelevant to morality and only assume that smarter people are generally richer and richer people can afford to act moral then the fact is richer people are more moral IRL.

And yes, this means circumstances beyond your control can make you unable to act moral even if you are moral. It's called "tragedy" and dictatorships are known for causing this

> This is actually bullshit

This is actually not because smart people are not the target group. On the other hand, I've seen smart people fall victim to the propaganda machine more than once in order to adjust and conform. They were smart, but not strong enough.

A certain degree of sociopathy seems to be required to think independently because you must ignore the fact that everyone agrees (or seems to agree) with party policy if you live in certain regimes. It's not a very well adjusted human thing to do...

> A certain degree of sociopathy seems to be required to think independently

That’s actually an interesting thought, thank you.

Not sure that really encompasses the way things work. For example, people doing "rocket scientist" stuff under one government, however their government gets overthrown fairly unexpectedly.

Maybe Egypt or similar would be examples?

Ah yes, the same way the Nazis cherished Einstein, von Neumann, …

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/scientist-refugees-and-manhatt...

If anything those are often considered valuable resources to be exploited or destroyed.

Von Braun was a Nazi spy

Von Braun and his team chose to surrender to the Americans because they saw America as a Christian nation where they might be forgiven and allowed to live normal lives, in contrast to the Soviet Union, where that would never be allowed. Before the end of the war von Braun was only nominally a Christian, but after coming to America he doubled down on Christianity and received the treatment he had predicted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Religious_co...

> spying

To whom do you think he was sending his coded messages? A secret nazi base under Antarctica? The fuhrer was dead, Germany was occupied and divided. Get real.

It turns out they weren't in a secret nazi base under Antarctica, they were on the Moon.

There's a documentary about it here: :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky

> Von Braun was a Nazi spy

He came to the US after the war in Europe was over. Pretty difficult to spy on behalf of a political regime that no longer exists.

If he was spying for anyone - which I don’t think has ever been seriously alleged, let alone proven - it would’ve been the USSR.

All kinds of spies in all kinds of projects existed in American history. SpaceX being a relatively new organization and the roles they hire are both not immune to this. For example, “Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II.” from Wikipedia.

GP didn’t claim spies don’t exist. They claimed spies for regimes that don’t exist don’t exist.

Until the mid 60s it was the USSR that was leading the space race

That was not true when von Braun and his team chose to surrender to the Americans.

Approximately half the team went to the soviets, some defected even before the end of the war.

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