Wiener in the 1950s

[Monte Davis]

Mathematicians and death: Freeman Dyson is good, sometimes very moving, on
this in _Weapons and Hope_ and _Disturbing the Universe_. As a young
mathematician during WWII, he did operations research -- among othjer
things, analyses of the odds against bomber crews returning from
incinerating German civilians -- and has never ducked the implications of
that or of his later involvement with the JASON advisory group, etc.

I guess where I differ from Steely is that I care more about degrees of
responsibility. Let's say for the sake of argument -- and again, I *would*
like the details of those AEC contracts -- that Wiener did do theoretical
work useful for the plutonium breeder at Hanford. Is it sophistry to
distinguish that from the role of Curtis LeMay? Dwight Eisenhower? Teller?
Szilard? the sainted Oppenheimer? Marie Curie? A technician assembling
fission cores in Amarillo? A mechanic maintaining a SAC B-52? A
meteorologist whose data went into the flight plan?

The damnable Pynchonian dilemma is that you can't build those toys without
a System that stretches far and wide. And when judgment moves from
individuals to a System, it becomes systematic -- flip/flopping from
implicating all participants equally, to exculpating them equally.

Of all the thousands of books since Los Alamos, I can't think of any that
rubs our noses in that as thoroughly, remorselessly, or humanely as GR.

-Monte