Top Physicist Advocates Scientific Self-Censorship

spamania writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is running this article about a new book by Britain's astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, that advocates restricting scientific research in certain fields in the interest of public safety. In "Our Final Hour", Rees lends a sober, respectable voice to the oft-irrational ranting about nanotech, biotech, and other fields."

Comments

Don't restrict, classify

[headkase]

If research is truly dangerous then classify it. But not to research it only leaves you behind when other nations research it.

Re:Don't restrict, classify

[khb]

I don't think the good professor is purely concerned with bad people doing evil with science. From reading the article, it would seem that he is concerned that good people doing good research might inadvertently kill us all. So classification wouldn't help.

Restricting dangerous experiments to safe locations would. It seems to me that the professor is making a strong arguement for serious space colonization, for two reasons:

1) Doing some classes of nasty experiments on, say, neptune would greatly reduce the consequences to out of control experiments (e.g. nanobots and grey goo)

2) If the professor is right, that we only have a 50-50 chance of not destroying the earth in the "near" future, having a self sufficient backup colony or six would be prudent.

How about..

[composer777]

addressing the grievances that might cause a certain group to use technology to do harm? Or am I supposed to believe that we are the only rational ones and the rest of the world is full of savages that need to be tamed? Our viewpoint of other countries sounds alot like present day colonialism if you ask me.

Here's some food for thought. If we don't address these grievances, then how can Rees so arrogantly believe that his book is going to make a bit of difference? Does he think that they are incapable of research? Does he think that they are going to say," Gee, Rees wrote a book, maybe we shouldn't use this technology or do our own research." It might slow terrorism down, but it's a stupid price to pay. It will only delay the inevitable UNLESS we address the problems rather than dropping bombs. The only thing that his proposal might do is further along the police state mentality that seems to be moving along quite well here in the US. He certainly won't stop terrorism.