@lovelyleonard replied to your post “E39: All Things Considered”
But yeah idk how anybody can like Jacobi coming out of this episode
Yeah, I mean in a broader sense of meta, it’s pretty obvious that SI5 are meant to exemplify both everything evil and everything seductive about workplace capitalist culture, and in some sense, toxic science culture.
Toxic science culture is individualistic. Enshrining people as “exceptional”, even when their pursuits could hurt others. Enshrining maverick behavior. Showing the different justifications people have for their risks, whether it be for the “greater good” (Hilbert) or just...because it makes them feel like Hot Shit (Maxwell, Jacobi).
Maxwell and Jacobi are hyper-competent, no denying it. But they’re always pushing beyond what’s safe or realistic to be done, beyond the consent of...pretty much anyone, other than Kepler to rein them in. And we all know that isn’t going to happen.
Idk if anyone else experienced this, but when Kepler made his whole speech about how they NEEDED to do this EXTREMELY reckless and life-endangering thing (probe delivery) to get a chance at first contact, it really hit home for me. I’m a scientist. I hear this type of rhetoric all the time, mostly to justify sacrificing much smaller things, like sleep or whatnot, in pursuit of discovery. But to hear it used to so flagrantly throw away people’s lives is something else.
I’ve seen a few great things (noteably: Nightcrawler) that expose the more sinister side of corporate culture, but no story I’ve seen, heard or read has really tackled the dark side of discovery culture and its various pitfalls and evils the way Wolf 359 does.
