I don’t deny the amelioration of our human condition wrought by technology. It’s a good thing. But has it made any of us more tolerant of each other? More sensitive to our ecological togetherness? I don’t see anything as more important than answers to these questions.
As for fallibility, yes, it is uncertainty that allows any progress in wisdom as well as in plodding existence. For me, if I have any knowledge of biospheres, waste is evil.
The child is not the scientist.
thezeus18: Ignorance is dumb, and dangerous to others.
Today North Korea has tested a nuclear device. What sense of maturity or morality would keep them from using it or selling it to terrorists?
(And thanks to all who have posted here.)
Your a technophobe. Atomic energy was understood then manifested by the (great) minds of adults. It didn’t fall from the sky into the hands of overgrown children.
Mr. K.,
No, I’m not a technophobe. I thoroughly enjoy the comforts of living provided by technology. Neither am I stupid enough to believe nuclear energy appeared in the hands of children. You must admit all adults are not responsible or mature. And, as a friend once asked me, what’s the good of having the most powerful thing in the world if you haven’t figured out a way to contain it? The bully mentality in both West and East is, to say the least, adolescent.
Here’s a deduction (well a shortcut).
Ignorance is evil.
We are ignorant of God existence.
God is evil?
Is God, in fact, evil? 
MJ,
Faulty syllogism. A = B, B = C, but C does not equal A. Ignorance of places no moral value on what; it places the value on use of ignorance.
really? we don’t? I thought some quantum physics experiment could create a blackhole and swallow the earth someday… 
and also…nanotech…which can create self repilcating robots which can eat us all! 
but both fields are cool, though.
h.d.,
Why is it that you know so much at age 20? Does Peru have a better educational system than that in the U.S.?
Errors in biolabs and nuclear facilities make the plots of some of our best sci-fi stories. But sci-fi seems to have a way of becoming sci-reality.
Hi Irrelius,
I didn’t learn this stuff in school…only my english skills…I didn’t even learn math properly in school…
I just learned this stuff by myself cause I’m curious 
haha.
The ‘grey goo’ end of the world scenario is pretty silly, IMHO. We already have those nanomachines – they are called bacteria, and we get along quite nicely with them. They might outnumber and outweigh us, but they’ve yet to kill us off.
As for GM foods, what is there to be scared of? Aside from the occasional unexpected allergic reaction because of an unexpected protein, where is the harm in GM-itself? Now, the way corporations apply GM-crops, like terminator seeds, is a major ethical concern, but I don’t see it as being any more worrying than traditional breeding. Heck, ‘killer’ bees would never have accidentally arisen from GM-breeding practices, but did arise from traditional breeding practices. So, uhhhh, which one of these is worse?
More knowledge means more control over the process, which is a good thing. Look at what we can accomplish with nuclear energy! France gets ~75% of its energy from clean nuclear power plants – this process could be further optimized through the use of breeder reactors, but those have safety concerns since they pump out weapons-grade plutonium.
As for what will keep North Korea from selling its weapons to terrorists – why would N. Korea sell its weapons to terrorists? The financial gain would in no way significantly offset the cost of a nuclear program (otherwise the terrorists would have already built a program from scratch). Ideologically the N. Korean government has no reason to sell these weapons to terrorists.
What N. Korea desperately wants is respect. It has, essentially, been leeching off of the PRC for years now (certainly since the famine!). Now, I know in China there is a saying that if you do someone a good turn, you should forget it but if someone does you a good turn, you should try your best to repay it. N. Korea is failing (miserably) to live up to that maxim as it seeks respect and legitimacy through the threat of force. But all-in-all the N. Korean nuclear program is a paper-tiger. If N. Korea were to ever use the weapons, the N. Korean government would fall apart (shortly before much of N. Korea became a smoldering crater). So, it is the same will to power that caused N. Korea to seek nukes that will keep N. Korea from using them.
North Korea must sell its nuclear technology to anyone who will pay for it, terrorists included. Otherwise, K.J.I., could not maintain his 100 cars, a sizeable Western video collection and numerous Rolexes. His adolescent behavior of I’ll threaten you because I think you threaten me is mirrored by US’s John Wayne them or us bully mentality. Can both of us outgrow this in time to prevent wholesale exploitation of nuclear devises by every ethnicity that feels threatened? One can only hope so. The 20th century was the most warring era in human history, the bloodiest! The 21st century began with a war between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists. That doesn’t prophecy hope for a sanity of togetherness. Countries and individuals face the forced globalization of humans due to comminicational advances and population explosions. The wars we see now are assertions of singular ethnicities in the teeth of forced gloabalization. Until these wars are fought to the conclusion that none are winable, terrorism will be the soup of the day.
That is faulty logic. If K.J.I wanted to maintain a life of luxury, he would have simply diverted the funds from a nuclear program towards creating a more opulent life for himself. That is, after all, what most dictators do.
Clearly he had a motivation beyond a financial one for creating his nuclear program. It is that same motivation that will keep him from using it.
As for your statement that this century has been the bloodist, let’s look at that statement for a second.
During the 30 years war 3 million to 8 million people died and the European population was around 21 million. So, that is 14%-38% of the population that died during that single war in an isolated part of the world. During WWII (the bloodiest war of this century), 62 million people died out of a world population of 2,296 million. That is only 3% of the affected population! Even if we don’t count Sub-saharan Africa and other non-affected areas (which I will arbitrarily say is 3/4ths of the world’s population, yes, that is highballing it by a HUGE amount) it is still only 10%! Yes, more people died in the 20th century, but there were also many, many more people. The rate at which people die in bloody wars has gone down even if the actual number of people has gone up.
K.J.I. wants it all, not diversion of capital for his private fantasies. His main fear is that the U.S. will either destabilize his authority or bomb it away. He needs place and authority to satisfy his ego. These are what are threatened.
As for wars, those of the twentieth cenury were global, not internicine or local. As for the twenty first century, can you deny that it began with a clash of cultures, a war that cannot really be won?
With respect to K.J.I., I think we agree more than we disagree on this point – though I fail to see how/why (within your model) he would sell his weapons to terrorists.
As for this generations wars being ideological, I think that most wars since the French Revolution (and probably before) had a major ideological/cultural component to them. Despite that, I’m too much of a materialist to think of the wars of this century being detached from the physical realities of the present. Given past oppression, the nation/culture that emerges has something of a chip on its shoulder and is desperately seeking validation/legitimacy. The ways it seeks to acheive that can be bloody, bloody, bloody.
Good response as usual, Xunzian.
About K.J.I., it all depends on whether or not his appetites for Western “goodies”, disguised as due to “the great leader” (Roman deifications of rulers comes to mind.) exhausts what he can extract from his people and necessitates other types of exploitation. Obsessions, especially those tied to ego, simply get bigger and demand more.
I realize that many Islamics are still pissed off about the crusades, that many countries are still fighting against stigmas imposed on them by colonialism, etc., etc.; but the mere fact that the twenty-first century began with a global war does not bode well for any of us. What is it of history that we have failed to learn from and must suffer the consequences of? (I love to end sentences with prepositions, if only to offend the schoolmarmish.)
See, how is the current conflict really any different from, say, Italian adventures in Ethiopia? One of the major things Italy had to do to re-establish its legitimacy was to crush the Ethiopians because the Ethiopians had dared to defeat a European power during the height of colonialism.
While the new economic Imperialism is very different from the past two waves of Imperialism, it has far more in common than not, and the American situation is similar to the Italian one. We were hurt by what is for all intents and purposes, an inferior power – a pawn took a queen and we’re mad as hell about it.
As for your statement about a global war, I’m not sure that I buy it. The short 20th century began with a global war which escalated and escalated after a brief cease-fire. The war(s) that are being fought right now aren’t anywhere near the scale of that conflict. Pax Americana, like Pax Britainia before it, will have many small wars but the overall state is one of stability. What powers exist right now can seriously challenge the American hegemony? Europe has no interest and is still in the process of unification. It needs time to establish itself as a state before it can really rise up and challenge American power. And China is trying to beat America in a race to Americanization right now through strong capitalist reforms.
Terrorists pose no greater threat to the current society than the Anarchists of the 1880s. Sure, they might blow up a few people here or there and have a few new laws built around them, but how much damage can they really do?
Many Americans said that about the Nazi’s, and many British said that about the American Colonialists barking over thier taxes.
My take, I don’t really want to find out how much damage they can do.
Why are you so willing to leave someone in a position to harm you, knowing their intent to do so?
How do you propose stopping a technique?
To compare the current ‘war on terror’ to a real war, like the Second World War, is pretty absurd to me. It isn’t a war against a physical enemy, nor even the ideology of an enemy . . . but a tactic? What?
Now, quelling radical Islam I am all for – but how do you propose we do that? Killing people who don’t fear death, while allowing for collateral damage that justifies radical Islam seems a terribly ineffective way to fight a war.