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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (84323)	9/14/2008 1:14:01 PM
From: wonk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544256

…On the other, I wonder if it's a good idea to find out secrets like that. There may be no end to the damage we could do with it…. Yours is a universal question, I think best best expressed by Robert Oppenheimer, often described as the ‘father of the atomic bomb.’ “…We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another….” As you noted, human curiosity cannot be suppressed. New knowledge leads to unintended and unexpected consequences. Guttenberg’s printing press led directly to the Protestant Reformation which resulted in 120 years of religious strife, war and death in Europe, which finally ended with the Treaty of Westphalia. Yet, the Reformation and all those years of death and war also resulted in the success of the colonization of North America and ultimately, the United States. Furthermore, the backlash against the wars of the Reformation birthed the Age of Enlightenment, without which there would be no Declaration of Independence in the form as written by Jefferson, and certainly no Bill of Rights. As the phrase goes, better to light a candle than to live in the dark, even if you burn your fingers the first couple of times.

To: ManyMoose who wrote (84323)	9/14/2008 7:38:07 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544256

>>Do you think it's a good idea to study such things as the Hadron Collider? Serious question. I am very curious about the importance of the knowledge. On the one hand I think humans should explore knowledge to the limits of their capacity, if there are any such limits. On the other, I wonder if it's a good idea to find out secrets like that. There may be no end to the damage we could do with it. << MM - That's a good question. I don't feel qualified to answer it. - Allen