It’s week 5 on the road, and we’re deep in the weeds about the question of what we, as scientists, owe the world. Technological progress alone seems like a weak orienting principle, as does abandoning the pursuit of knowledge completely. So how do we hew a path that makes sense, when it seems like the institutions and organizations around us have gone astray? To help us make sense of the interface between science and ethics, we turn to an essay called “To Young Scientists,” read by Ayn Rand at MIT in the 1960s. Rand was writing at the peak of the nuclear age, where the destruction of the species, if not the planet, seemed imminent. Today, the threat of nuclear conflict looms once again, but the cutting edge risk lies in the ceaseless development of machine learning and AI technologies that threaten to engulf all of human practice. There are no easy answers at hand, but we eke out a few basic principles that can serve as the starting point for building a life where progress & meaning can align.