Quote:
Originally Posted by DougL
In my not expert opinion, here are 3 technologies that we as humans lack the ethical means to deal with and we may see real consequences from screwing up.
I think my hope is more that scientific ethics moves faster and less that science moves slower.
Humans are inherently social creatures and society has a really strong influence on science on a philosophical level. That we've set up a society where the ratio of non-military scientists to military scientists is a good thing. It sets expectations that science is for the benefit of humankind, rather than the political dominance of a single nation. And we saw this in the Cold War days where Western scientists consorted with the dirty commie scientists. It's a lot easier to cooperate when the goal is flying a machine 4 billion miles to see if there's water on Titan.
The problem is that there are these fringe scientists, isolated from the world community, who learn the scientific techniques but don't get to participate in anything bigger than pleasing their military superiors (or acquiring money). We can't undiscover CRISPR or the atomic bomb, but we can have robust public discussion about the ethical implications of science so that at least our scientists grow up with a solid ethical foundation.
As an example, I'm neither entirely for nor entirely against the W-era ban on stem cell research. I think it's very good to openly question at what point "these embryos will go to waste" turns into "we can make extra embryos since they will be put to good use." It was a disaster that one political party was oblivious about the potential benefit of multipotency, and the other refused to consider the difference between multipotency and pluripotency. It was a conversation that could have been precedent-setting (and used for the Crispr debate) but was ultimately derailed by scientific illiteracy and partisanship.
/rant