Changes in Science Fiction's Ambiguous Attitudes Towards Science

[darkwing_duck1]

Re: misgivings about upsetting the "natural order"--that suffers a logical flaw as well. Humans and human ingenuity arise from and form a part of the natural order.

Very true - I've had that argument a hundred times.

Not very thoughtful environmentalist: Humans are destroying nature with all their building!!

Me: Birds build houses too - what's the difference?

NVTE: They're animals!

Me: So? We're animals too. If a bird's nest is natural, so is an apartment building.

NVTE: Uh UH!

Me: Why not?

NVTE: Because humans built it!


Funny how science and technology - our investigation of nature and the application of what we learn - has come to be seen as unnatural...

I think the thoughtful environmenalist would reply that a bird makes a nest only as big as it needs, and does it by scavenging it's materials from natural souces (twigs and stuff on the ground).

Man cuts down a forest for timber, then goes and cuts down ANOTHER forest for land to build a city on.

Chimps use other technology as well - sticks for getting termites, very, very simple stone tools, etc. As far as what it means - just the same as we're talking about above. There's nothing fundamentally different about humans and animals, it's simply a matter of degree.

Chimps don't alter the genetic code of their food with unnatural outside genetic material. We do.

We can't "destroy nature" because we are part of nature and whatever we do is therefore natural.

Nice sophistry that begs the question. Man cross breeding two varieties of wheat to make a third, superior variety of wheat is acting naturally, in accordance with natural processes.

Man crossing wheat genes with tobacco genes and fish genes and whatever genes in a lab to produce a "whebacofish-whatever" plant is NOT acting in accordance with natural laws and processes.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Some good thoughts in here. I think iguana has a really good point: even when Science Gone Wrong is the bad guy, oftentimes it's also science that saves the day. Though not obviously in Frankenstein.

Well, there is something to day about torches and pitchforks, too.

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: misgivings about upsetting the "natural order"--that suffers a logical flaw as well. Humans and human ingenuity arise from and form a part of the natural order.

To even presume that we understand fundamental forces like genetics to tamper with them is hubris of the worst order.

Science tends towards that flaw in general, really. Scientists presume that they have some special control over nature based on their allegedly superior knowledge and information. Only rarely do they stop and ask the crucial question: "what if we are WRONG?"

Many a sci-fi tale has stemmed from just that: the consequences of science being WRONG.

Scientists routinely ask if what they are doing may have harmful effects. Sure, Dr. Doom doesn't ask if what he is doing may have harmful effects. Dr. Oppenheimer constantly asked himself if what he was doing was for the greater good.

At any rate, the worst thing that could happen from human genetic engineering is not fully understanding genetic interactions and producing a disabled child. That's not evil, that's just malpractice.

I think the thoughtful environmenalist would reply that a bird makes a nest only as big as it needs, and does it by scavenging it's materials from natural souces (twigs and stuff on the ground).

Man cuts down a forest for timber, then goes and cuts down ANOTHER forest for land to build a city on.

A thoughtful environmentalist wouldn't. Life, by its nature, will grow and exploit resources until pressures place a constraint on it. In the bird's case, it only builds a nest as big as it needs because building a nest by beak takes time and energy that the bird would presumably rather use for hunting or mating. The problem with humans is that intelligence is such a game-breaking adaptation that there is essentially no likely immediate constraint on our action, except in relationship to each other.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Science tends towards that flaw in general, really. Scientists presume that they have some special control over nature based on their allegedly superior knowledge and information. Only rarely do they stop and ask the crucial question: "what if we are WRONG?"

Scientists routinely ask if what they are doing may have harmful effects. Sure, Dr. Doom doesn't ask if what he is doing may have harmful effects. Dr. Oppenheimer constantly asked himself if what he was doing was for the greater good.

Well, colour me unsurprised that duck has no idea how science is done and what scientists actually think.

 

[Myasishchev]

Aren't there like fifty scientific and medical journals devoted exclusively to discussing ethics?

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Scientists routinely ask if what they are doing may have harmful effects. Sure, Dr. Doom doesn't ask if what he is doing may have harmful effects. Dr. Oppenheimer constantly asked himself if what he was doing was for the greater good.

Well they don't seem to be doing a very good job of it with continued work on things like "sterile seed" (grows once producing seed that can be harvested but won't germinate) for the agricorp market. If the pollen for such a thing made it into widespread infection of the food chain we would have mass famine as the crop system collapsed.

And then there's Frankenfoods. Unnatural splicing of foreign genes into foodstuffs with NO foreknowledge of what might happen, or if the resulting foods are even safe to eat.

There is already bountiful evicence that things like BGH in meat and milk is altering our growth and developmental patterns in unpredictable ways. Another example of science acting with knowledge but not wisdom.

At any rate, the worst thing that could happen from human genetic engineering is not fully understanding genetic interactions and producing a disabled child. That's not evil, that's just malpractice.

At our current level. If gengineering of humans continues to progress, who knows what horror we might cook up? Khan Singh anyone?

A thoughtful environmentalist wouldn't. Life, by its nature, will grow and exploit resources until pressures place a constraint on it. In the bird's case, it only builds a nest as big as it needs because building a nest by beak takes time and energy that the bird would presumably rather use for hunting or mating. The problem with humans is that intelligence is such a game-breaking adaptation that there is essentially no likely immediate constraint on our action, except in relationship to each other.

Which is exactly why human endeavor is UNnnatural in it's basis. We have broken outside the bounds of the "rules of the game", and have given ourselves the power to totally overwhelm natural processes without ensuring we have the WISDOM to use that power well. The potential of ONE man to destroy an ecosystem is vast compared to the ability of any animal or plant.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Aren't there like fifty scientific and medical journals devoted exclusively to discussing ethics?

There is a vast difference between discussing and practicing. Otherwise we wouldn't have Frankenfoods, "sterile seed", embryonic stem cell research, biowarfare research, et al.

 

[Rii]

Certainly it would've been preferable if the innumerable Manhattan Project scientists who came to oppose what was done with their research had considered such things before effectively ceding control of the affair to the military.

 

[FordSVT]

Eventually, the bomb had to be created, and the bomb had to be used on live targets. Better the USA than Germany or the USSR.

That's how I look at it anyway. People are stupid, and we only tend to learn from our mistakes after we make them. We're not very good as a group at figuring out what is bad for us and not doing it. Most kids burn their hands at least once before they'll believe the stove is hot. Better to use it twice during WW2 than during the Cold War after both sides have created thousands of them.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

The scary thing about the bomb is that when they set off the first test bomb, there were calculations that showed that they might ignite a chain-reaction in the atmosphere that would have incinerated the world.

They didn't know whether or not to beleive those calculations.

They did it anyways.

That's science. "Let's do it, and do it now, and we'll let other people worry about the impact later."

That's why I firmly believe that scientists that do not act from a strong position of moral restraint are the most dangerous people alive.

 

[iguana_tonante]

The scary thing about the bomb is that when they set off the first test bomb, there were calculations that showed that they might ignite a chain-reaction in the atmosphere that would have incinerated the world.

They didn't know whether or not to beleive those calculations.

They did it anyways.

That's science. "Let's do it, and do it now, and we'll let other people worry about the impact later."

No. Really, no. That's a story that is repeated again and again, but it's still bogus. There were concerns that something like that could happen, so they checked the maths and proved that it was impossible, or at least extremely unlikely (as unlikely, say, that your head would spontaneously explode when you are reading the sport page of your newspaper).

That is how scientists work: they get concerned with all aspects of their experiment, even unlikely ones, and they take time to check them thoroughly. Because being cautious is a good thing. Too bad that people like you take that cautions and use them to "show" that science is dangerous and scientists are deranged madmen bent of raping the laws of nature.

These days, it was that nuclear explosions would ignite the atmosphere. Today, it is that the LHC would create black holes that will destroy the Earth. Same old scaremongering by people afraid of science and journalists trying to get their stories published.

That's why I firmly believe that scientists that do not act from a strong position of moral restraint are the most dangerous people alive.

And since you believe that without any supporting evidence, and basing your judgement on false stories, it's just another of your wacky beliefs. Which are too many already.

 

[Rii]

Eventually [....] the bomb had to be used on live targets.

Why?

Better to use it twice during WW2 than during the Cold War after both sides have created thousands of them.

There might not have been any need (perceived need, that is; there never was any actual need) to create thousands of nuclear weapons had the bomb not been used by the United States. Indeed, it's possible that the entire post-WW2 global order might've unfolded very differently had it not happened.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Yes, very differently: heightened chances of a conventional war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and a lower likelihood of the Soviet empire dissolving.

And of course, if war had come, we could have effectively burned Russian cities without anything so fancy as an atomic bomb. The atomic bomb just made it so easy and relatively inexpensive that war became unthinkable, or so painful to think about that it was actively avoided at almost every turn.

Except when that tool JFK was in office.

I think what is often forgotten--indeed, what was immediately forgotten after Hiroshima and Nagasaki--is that it probably saved Japanese lives. We would have continued to starve them by blockade, continued to conventionally firebomb their cities, and killed hundreds of thousands of untrained, unarmed Japanese "soldiers" during Olympic and Coronet, and we were planning to use chemical weapons to avoid an Iwo Jima writ large. Reminds me viscerally of the collapse of the tunnels in Watership Down.

Of course, there were also the American and Commonwealth casualties, vastly overplayed by a-bomb supporters after the fact and more earnestly overprojected by planners of the time, but certainly in the tens and probably in the hundreds of thousands. None of these things are morally better than atomic bombing, and were certainly likely given the Japanese government's attitude toward prolonging the war.

It is also conceivable that the atomic bombings saved South Korea (as well as, perhaps, Hokkaido) from communist domination. But I know less about this subject.

I will agree that Nagasaki was probably unnecessary, but iirc this arose from some simple, if stupid, mistakes.

If the pollen for such a thing made it into widespread infection of the food chain we would have mass famine as the crop system collapsed.

Firstly, sterile seeds are not used in any country, and are illegal in two. Secondly, there are also advantages to sterile seed (genetic cross into wild populations is potentially bad, because they grow outside of controlled farm conditions and represent a store of biodiversity; terminator seeds prevent this). Thirdly, you overestimate the damage. No food system is going to collapse.

And then there's Frankenfoods. Unnatural splicing of foreign genes into foodstuffs with NO foreknowledge of what might happen, or if the resulting foods are even safe to eat.

No one knew if plums were good to eat until someone tried 'em and didn't die. In any event, eukaryotic life is pretty much always going to be technically edible unless it expresses toxins (blowfish, those berry bushes in my dad's yard, which taste like burning) or physically dangerous (diatoms, prawn shells, sticks), which should be generally testable.

There is already bountiful evicence that things like BGH in meat and milk is altering our growth and developmental patterns in unpredictable ways. Another example of science acting with knowledge but not wisdom.

Taller, faster-developing women. At least that's what it seems like here. There may be some merit to this one.

Which is exactly why human endeavor is UNnnatural in it's basis. We have broken outside the bounds of the "rules of the game", and have given ourselves the power to totally overwhelm natural processes without ensuring we have the WISDOM to use that power well. The potential of ONE man to destroy an ecosystem is vast compared to the ability of any animal or plant.

No, what it means is that for the first time in four billion years, nature has an intelligence in it. An intelligence that is capable of guiding it, when heretofore nature has been a brutish, genocidal retard, a trial-and-error machine incapable of realizing that "ocean anoxic events are bad," or "hey, that asteroid looks unfriendly," or "cats sure would live much longer, happier lives if they didn't breed so quickly and outrun their food supply."

Human wisdom is grossly fallible, but we're better than the alternative, which is nothing at all.

 

[stj]

Businesses and governments pay for science and technological development. And most governments are faithful servants of business in general, and quite often of some individual businesses in particular. They control the development of science and technology. Attacks on scientists as the individuals responsible are reactionary scapegoating. Attacks on "science" express a mindless bleat of discontent with a society controlled by (to this kind of person) incomprehensible forces. They're just foolish daydreams about a return to a simpler world (usually what the individual whining thought the world was like when he or she was a child.)

But, again, it is remarkable how much modernity is acceptable when it personally benefits someone. Somehow, an exception is made, or simply the issue is tacitly overlooked. Perhaps the real point, given the general distaste for big words and the scum who use them, is why "science" is ever viewed positively. The answer of course, is wishful thinking, an imaginary fulfilment of the desire for power. Most stories are carefully neutered so that the heroes are "powerful," but somehow can't change anything significant about society or the world. The individual is fictively affirmed but so is the oppressive society.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

If the pollen for such a thing made it into widespread infection of the food chain we would have mass famine as the crop system collapsed.

Firstly, sterile seeds are not used in any country, and are illegal in two.

The seeds have been planted in US fields, and have had one "escape" into adjoining fields already. Monsanto sued in court for "appropriation" of their "proprietary technology" and seized the farmer's crop.

Secondly, there are also advantages to sterile seed (genetic cross into wild populations is potentially bad, because they grow outside of controlled farm conditions and represent a store of biodiversity; terminator seeds prevent this).

There are no advantages to sterile seed other than forcing farmers to buy all new seed for planting every year.

Thirdly, you overestimate the damage. No food system is going to collapse.

There is absolutely NO way you can know that. A widespread distribution of sterile seeds cross-polinating with normal seeds would wipe out existing non-sterile populations in one crop if the trait "bred true", as it seems to do.

The risk is too great to permit continued development of these seeds. "Terminator" is a good name for them.

And then there's Frankenfoods. Unnatural splicing of foreign genes into foodstuffs with NO foreknowledge of what might happen, or if the resulting foods are even safe to eat.

No one knew if plums were good to eat until someone tried 'em and didn't die.

There is a difference between a plum and a "fishato", or a "wheabaco" plant. That you cannot see the obvious difference says volumes about the blindness of "science".

In any event, eukaryotic life is pretty much always going to be technically edible unless it expresses toxins (blowfish, those berry bushes in my dad's yard, which taste like burning) or physically dangerous (diatoms, prawn shells, sticks), which should be generally testable.

And how are people with allergies supposed to deal with frankenfoods? Put a peanut gene into a wheat plant and you run the risk of suddenly turning wheat products toxic to those with peanut allergies. That's just one example.

There is already bountiful evicence that things like BGH in meat and milk is altering our growth and developmental patterns in unpredictable ways. Another example of science acting with knowledge but not wisdom.

Taller, faster-developing women. At least that's what it seems like here. There may be some merit to this one.

Uh, no. Like cancer promotion (IGF-1) and other concerns.

http://www.healthcoalition.ca/bgh.pdf

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/bgh.htm

Read that 2nd article closely, as it details exhaustively the problem of BGH to both man and cow.

No, what it means is that for the first time in four billion years, nature has an intelligence in it. An intelligence that is capable of guiding it, when heretofore nature has been a brutish, genocidal retard, a trial-and-error machine incapable of realizing that "ocean anoxic events are bad," or "hey, that asteroid looks unfriendly," or "cats sure would live much longer, happier lives if they didn't breed so quickly and outrun their food supply."Human wisdom is grossly fallible, but we're better than the alternative, which is nothing at all.

And we're putting milk cows on steriods that kill them within a couple of years, designing seeds that could wipe out plant types if they "escaped" into the wild, and a dozen other things that are inimical to the continued health and stability of the ecosystem.

Then lets talk about things like "factory fishing", which are driving entire fish populations to extinction because we don't leave enough of them to repopulate.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Attacks on scientists as the individuals responsible are reactionary scapegoating.

Scientists are responsible for their decisions to ignore wisdom and conscience to persue ultimate knowledge. They are responsible for their hubris that any and all intellectual curiosity must be satisfied, no matter the consequences.

Attacks on "science" express a mindless bleat of discontent with a society controlled by (to this kind of person) incomprehensible forces.

Oh we understand those forces. We just don't like the uses to which they are put, and understand the dark side of them, unlike "science" which never bothers with such understanding.

They're just foolish daydreams about a return to a simpler world (usually what the individual whining thought the world was like when he or she was a child.)

"New" and "complex" =/= better.

But, again, it is remarkable how much modernity is acceptable when it personally benefits someone. Somehow, an exception is made, or simply the issue is tacitly overlooked.

No, we don't make blanket presumptions, unlike "science", which presumes that knowledge and "progress" are inevitably beneficial.

 

[stj]

I was speaking generally, but since you speak for these people, ("we" and all that,) so be it.

Scientists are responsible for their decisions to ignore wisdom and conscience to persue ultimate knowledge. They are responsible for their hubris that any and all intellectual curiosity must be satisfied, no matter the consequences.

There is an old saw that the one who pays the piper calls the tune. The idea that businesses and governments are responsible for technological change is not just common sense, it's cliche.

The satisfaction of scientific curiosity has no direct consequences, never has. Nor are there any offenses to wisdom and conscience to its satisfaction. The nonsense phrase "ultimate knowledge" seems to be some sort of code for usurping God's power, meant to be inflammatory. But it's not an argument.

Scientists in practice are acutely aware that it is difficult to get funding to satisfy any research at all, precisely because most scientific curiosity has no easily visible consequences at all. They like to sell science as leading to technology, but the shrewder investors like to have governments fund the basic research as much as possible, even for obviously practical developments, like the internet. Most students disdain science because they see no practical benefit. Even those aiming at medical careers commonly resent to learn the basics of biology and especially chemistry because they have no easily visible uses.

The otherwise mystifying resentment toward science and curiosity ("ultimate" or not,) is that it has gone far toward providing real answers to questions that used to be answered with "God."

Oh we understand those forces. We just don't like the uses to which they are put, and understand the dark side of them, unlike "science" which never bothers with such understanding.

Since those "forces" I referred to are the commercial and political benefits to businesses and governments, but you somehow start raving about science, complete with scare quotes, you plainly do not understand those forces. Judging from your apparent belief that just any "peanut" genes code for the antigen that triggers peanut allergy, I'm not so sure you understand science and technology either. The underlying notion that genes from one organism are of somehow different in essence seems pretty mystical. All genes are alleles in the evolutionary sense.

"New" and "complex" =/= better.

The point included the fact that children's memories don't include the complexity or the badness of the world they grew up in. Being children, they didn't understand it. When "new" is more rational, it is simpler in the ways that matter, as well as better. And being helpless before natural forces is not simpler in any reasonable meaning of the word. Coupling "new" and "complex" is apparently meant to tarnish the new with nasty complexity, but they don't logically go together. In either case, new is inevitable, and thinking you can go back is childish.

No, we don't make blanket presumptions, unlike "science", which presumes that knowledge and "progress" are inevitably beneficial.

There is not a shred of evidence for the counterproposition that ignorance is ever beneficial. Incidentally, "progress" means movement toward a goal, so in that sense is always good. The question is, as ever, which goals. Scientists as a group have never set the goals for how scientific knowledge is used. The claim that ignorance is a guard against misuse of knowledge means you advocate the end of scientific research, because no one knows which knowledge can be either used or misused.

 

[Myasishchev]

DD: I wasn't being sarcastic about growth hormone in beef and milk. There's actually probably some merit to looking into any connections between increased presence of mammal hormones in our food and our health.

As for genetically engineered foods and people with food allergies... get with your own program. If you really want us to live naturally, the food allergy people are the first against the wall.

 

[stj]

^^^Sorry to have forgotten you.

^Yes, very differently: heightened chances of a conventional war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, and a lower likelihood of the Soviet empire dissolving.

I'm not certain that you're responding to the post about the needlessness of thousands of nuclear weapons. But, the US led their development because it wanted the power to destroy the Soviet Union, then the Soviet Union followed in self defense. The US always tried to seize an overwhelming advantage, even to the point of folly, as in its missile defense programs, which it is still continuing. The US is still militarizing space as much as it covertly can.

Empires do not subsidize the living standards of their so-called subjects. Whether you disliked it for other reasons, there simply is no reasonable way to call the Soviet Union an "empire."

And of course, if war had come, we could have effectively burned Russian cities without anything so fancy as an atomic bomb. The atomic bomb just made it so easy and relatively inexpensive that war became unthinkable, or so painful to think about that it was actively avoided at almost every turn.

Nonsense. The logistics made it impossible. Japan was especially invulnerable to incendaries and blockade and the US still couldn't shut it down. It was the atomic bomb that made burning Russia thinkably cheap. And there was considerable effort devoted to trying to find a way to exterminate the Russians. To the US' disappointment it was never possible to do so without too many casualties of its own.

Except when that tool JFK was in office.

How are you so sure he was exceptional? Eisenhower threatened nukes in Korea, the military considered nukes in Vietnam if I remember correctly, Nixon threatened war over the Middle East (the common belief it was an anti-impeachment ploy doesn't mean it didn't happen.) Reagan was all about Cold War until he lost his mind and Nancy took over.

I think what is often forgotten--indeed, what was immediately forgotten after Hiroshima and Nagasaki--is that it probably saved Japanese lives. We would have continued to starve them by blockade, continued to conventionally firebomb their cities, and killed hundreds of thousands of untrained, unarmed Japanese "soldiers" during Olympic and Coronet, and we were planning to use chemical weapons to avoid an Iwo Jima writ large. Reminds me viscerally of the collapse of the tunnels in Watership Down.

The Japanese were already trying to negotiate a surrender, with the sole stipulation being the retention of the Emperor. The final surrender, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had unofficial assurances of this. The Japanese proffers were made via the USSR when it was nonbelligerent in the Pacific. The USSR was scheduled to enter the war ninety days after the European war ended and the Japanese knew this. They believed the Russians would be more amenable to playing peacemaker, as a way to avoid the expenditure and have some say in the peace. The Soviets chose to enter the war as scheduled instead. The US of course completely excluded the USSR from everything it possibly could.

Of course, there were also the American and Commonwealth casualties, vastly overplayed by a-bomb supporters after the fact and more earnestly overprojected by planners of the time, but certainly in the tens and probably in the hundreds of thousands. None of these things are morally better than atomic bombing, and were certainly likely given the Japanese government's attitude toward prolonging the war.

The Japanese government was against prolonging the war. The problem was its desire to get an official concession on the Emperor's status.

It is also conceivable that the atomic bombings saved South Korea (as well as, perhaps, Hokkaido) from communist domination. But I know less about this subject.

It is only conceivable if you don't know anything about the situation in Korea. The Red Army rolled up the Japanese in Korea. South Korea was "saved" for the Rhee dictatorship because it was Soviet policy cooperate as much as possible in the liberated territories, even in places like Poland. It was the US that consistently refused any concessions to the Soviets. The great precedent was Italy, set in 1943. This should be the official beginning point of the Cold War, I think.