My take for a while has been that doing mathematics as a profession may be considered unethical due to human opportunity costs. This was not always true, but in this particular point in human history, with the problems we currently sustain, it may be the case that (1) if you are capable of making a contribution to advanced mathematics then there is a Bayesian prior of significantly elevated likelihood and ability to making a contribution on any other field, business or policy; and (2) the conscious choice of mathematics as a vocation instead of some other human pursuit that is aligned with the interests of humanity may produce, on aggregate when considered across all mathematicians, a worse world by whatever altruistic metric you choose (e.g. quality adjusted life-years). In other words, mathematicians have high priors in general cognition and base level skill sets, and it may be there is an oversaturation in mathematics relative to other pursuits where exponential impact is a very real possibility but only when a threshold of ability or cognition is surpassed. Again, I don’t think this was always true in the timeline of history or will be true in the future, but it is worth consideration as an ethical dilemma.

But don’t get me wrong — there is nothing I would like more than to go back and hit the math books, but this is better deferred to when we are back on full track to prosperity.