About

I am a wildlife photographer and conservationist. I also have a PhD in pure mathematics.

I started this blog because I started to think. Unlike the typical prevailing wind of business as usual in academia, I realized that unchecked technological development is likely to bring the human race to a disastrous end, hence this blog.

This blog used to be my math blog. Of course, I still love math but I realized it should be taught with a healthy grounding in ethics first, so I deleted all the math content.

I hope to make the world understand that we as a society should look at technology with a more critical eye instead of developing new tech without thought.

2 Comments

  • Scott McKie says:

    Dr. Polak — I agree with your aim – but to blanket all technology with such a abroad brush – especially when there are many technologies that have proven good – invented by people that have views contrary to yours — is just self-serving – which I don’t believe you intend — or am I wrong in my evaluation?

    • Jason Polak says:

      Thank you for the reply. What I am doing is not self-serving. I am certainly benefitting personally a great deal from technology and I am likely to die before the worst effects of climate change come to pass. Therefore, if I were 100% selfish, I wouldn’t care much about stopping technology.

      What are these so-called proven technologies? I would be happy to discuss them. Actually, my view is a bit more subtle, but I am generally against most technologies that are systemic (require a large chain of supply) and which ruin the earth.

      You have to also keep in mind that before I accept a technology as good, it has to be good with respect to humans AND nonhumans. So for example, a medical treatment that treats a serious disease but causes one species to become extinct with every treatment would NOT be good in my eyes. And so far, many technologies that rely on fossil fuel HAVE caused such extinctions and poisoned the atmosphere, so before they can be considered good, they cannot have been part of such technological destruction.

      The people that have views different from mine are typically human supremacists: they think that increasing human welfare and good is fine even if it is at the expense of the welfare of nonhuman species and the biosphere. I reject that premise.

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