Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Dangerous Lines of Scientific Inquiry?
gbrumfiel writes "The battle over whether to publish research into mutant bird flu got editors over at Nature News thinking about other potentially dangerous lines of scientific inquiry. They came up with a non-definitive list of four technologies with the potential to do great good or great harm:
Laser isotope enrichment: great for making medical isotopes or nuclear weapons. Brain scanning: can help locked-in patients to communicate or a police state to read minds. Geoengineering: could lessen the effects of climate change or undermine the political will to fight it. Genetic screening of embryos: could spot genetic disorders in the womb or lead to a brave new world of baby selection.
What would Slashdotters add to the list?"
Relativity.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Can you say Gray Goo?
Ask Slashdot: What's your favorite Sci-Fi apocalypse?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
All science aspire to make something happen. What this "something" is, is rarely defined. But, once in a while the results from science is a black swan events. That is something that couldn't be predicted, but changes everything.
A second possibility could be that science reinforces some systems in society because they are not socially responsible enough to be impartial. Be it big pharma and their needs to patent everything or eugenic doctors supporting fascism.
Geoengineering: could lessen the effects of climate change or undermine the political will to fight it. If we successfully engineer the problem away, shouldn't we worry about it less?
I'm not saying their might not be downsides, but both of these sound reasonable together.
Where I live, certain ethnic minorities (actually, taken together they are actually a majority) are notorious for screening embryos for gender. Then they abort the females until a male is born first. It's become such an issue that it's now illegal to specify an embryo's gender until the window for legal abortion has passed (I don't remember how many weeks/months that is).
If you're white, the doctor will still tell you if you ask though.
All forms of scientific inquiry have "dual use"
You may as well try to go back in time and stop Og or Urgh from figuring out how to make fire.
Fuck this shit.
--
BMO
"Geoengineering: could lessen the effects of climate change or undermine the political will to fight it."
Isn't this a bit like the whole "teaching condoms in school is dangerous because then teens will have massive amounts of sex"? You're omitting a valid (even if imperfect) solution that may help stave off tragedy if people choose a particular path in order to defend and mandate that your "morally superior path" is the only option presented.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Once you start blacklisting/limiting the release of scientific information, science is essentially dead. Science should be all about sharing of knowledge, collaborative work, cross confirmation of results. It's not scientists that should handle the 'risks' to society (taking into account ethics) - that's a job for politics (IE, you can publish how to make an atomic bomb but dissemination of nuclear material should be controlled by law). And in any case, any information you try to blacklist will eventually get out. Of course, I suppose there's a limit to that too - if we arrive at a point where a scientific discovery can lead to virtually anyone creating a WMD at low cost and with readily available materials, then there is a problem. But we're not there yet and anyway, at that point, there's no easy solution (though I personally believe a 'solution' should then be more along the lines of changing the root of the issue: why those people would want to create WMD to begin with).
support human rights in and of themselves, and take charge of the state actors that tend to use these things horribly.
einstein and his friends were simply discussing the universe, and what would happen if you shined a light while riding on a superfast train. they had no 'intention' of investigating nuclear weapons, but that is where E=mc^2 eventually led.
lets look at the computerized lists used to help perform the holocaust. they began as census taking machines.
the attempt to cure disease was later used in Unit 731 to cause disease in Chinese civilian populations.
etc etc etc.
Similar things could be said about many other scientists, which is why so many of the big pacifists and anti-nuclear activists in the cold war were scientists... even people like Andrei Sahkarov who had specifically built their careers around weapons tech felt a responsibility to push against governments who were misusing it.
and i know everyones worried about 'lone wolf terrorists'. but alot of those guys, if you look at their history, were only enabled by state powers. without the CIA, ISI, and Soviet Red Army, there is no al Qaeda. it simply would not exist. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar would be selling fruitcakes on the side of the road not running a huge paramilitary organization from inside of a mansion. Pick a terrorist bombing over the last 50 years, the chances that is directly linked, or 'one-degree-of-separation' from a state run intelligence agency are very high.
We are already there on this one. Its just passive for the most part and the technology is classified.
Could be used to observer history... or to change it.
Any worthwhile scientific avenue can be used or exploited in a positive or negative way. Human nature is the real question in point. Science seems to be over politicised in general at the moment, and questions like this simply epitomise the situation. If scientists could just get on with, for instance, the benefits of stem cell research, with funding that had no strings attached then we would all be much better off. Leave researchers to be researchers, and moralists to be moralists and ne'er the twain shall meet. Science should not be bound by the qualms of people that don't understand what research means. The potential use of conclusive research should be debated in a moral sense, not the research itself.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
All scientific lines of inquiry could be considered dangerous. That also includes the bread in your kitchen and life itself.
This, or more generally, large-scale carbon fiber construction.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Just sayin'.
Sapient artificial species which don't die of natural causes and can live virtually will more radically threaten our culture, society and civilization than any other change in technology.
For all of human history we've been adapting to the same species using different technology. We've never in history dealt with the fundamental nature of man changing before.
Steal a baby from 2,000 BCE and it'll probably grow up like any other human. Steal a baby from 2,500 AD and it will most likely be a new species.
Everything else just make the danger slightly more efficient. Genetically engineered bird flu might be scary, but a few blankets with small pox has a mortality rate of maybe 30%. We might talk about screening for gender, but really just killing the girls after they are born has been a tested and proven tradition. Pretty much, we know how to do damage using conventional methods. Physics tells us who to do damage using methods unknown.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Could result in intelligent beings with special abilities who save the human race from its flaws (and add really hot raves) - or pathetic half-beings who know only their inability to live in one world or another . . . or embittered slaves who ultimately rise up and overthrow their masters with their superhuman powers, laying waste to civilization.
Og may have been first to file, but it was Urgh who invented the method.
Political Science
Nanoscale self replicating robotics.
Some things you just don't want to get lose in the world at large...
are banned in advanced technical civilizations, for good reasons.
Suppose scientific experimentation confirms the existence of the soul, and that we all end up in Hell (or some very unpleasant equivalent), but the older you are when you die, the more painful it becomes? Or, that afterlife is extremely pleasant, better than anything you've ever experienced on earth, and the scientists build a machine that can give you a brief preview of this?
That's right, mass suicides. The population of an entire planet disappeared this way.
There are a couple of things to be remembered.
First: Everything man has ever created has been used for such negative things as murder and war. For that matter, every thing we ever will create will also be used for such things until such point as mankind has surpassed the need and desire for such negative activities.
Second: Once a thing has been done, it will be done again. Once it is known by anyone that something is actually possible (as opposed to theoretically possible or even believed impossible) it becomes capable of being repeated. Just look at nuclear proliferation for an example. It was believed that splitting the atom was impossible. Once it was demonstrated to be possible, many others repeated the discovery despite the best attempts at others to prevent that from happening.
The only thing they are really doing by blocking research from those in that field is to waste resources duplicating effort, and reducing or eliminating potential benefit from that knowledge while failing to prevent it's eventual and inevitable misuse. I would even hazard to say that such censorship increases the devastation that will be caused by such inhumane uses by limiting if not eliminating the positive research and understanding that comes from shared research and peer review.
Only a moron, a paranoid, or a politician could come up with such a stupid and counterproductive scheme as censoring research.
I'm pretty sure there's a "political science" joke here somewhere, but I can't seem to make it work. Anybody else want to take a shot?
... eugenics.
Did I just manage to invoke Godwin's Law without using a certain historical name? (Never mind that said person didn't invent or implement it first.)
Just ask any successful - or credible - alchemist ;)
AI
They could be quite a boon. They could give more women with reproductive problems the chance to have a genetic descendant child. You might even be able to correct dominant genetic problems (Huntington's Disease comes to mind) before implantation.
They could also be terribly abused.
Before, you had to convince/coerce a woman to get pregnant and carry a child to term. This put at least some practical limits (physical ones in the case of coercing, moral and persuasive ones in the case of convincing) on creating children for bad purposes.
Now you can create babies without even that small oversight. And you can create them as quickly as you can field more artificial wombs.
It's not instantly destructive the way that some of the ones mentioned are, but it could be terribly misused.
Imagine creating fully aware normal children genetically identical to aging adults to be dissected for transplant organs. Save for the sucessful human cloning, you could do this already if you were repressive enough, but this would make it much easier. No wrath of the parents to deal with. You might even be able to keep the source of the organs a closely guarded secret.
In truth though, nearly any powerful technology can be used for horrible things. It's up to us how we use it.
Any tech can be used for good or ill. Suppose Government A or Multinational Corp B engineered a good way to clear space junk from useful orbits. How does one distinguish "junk" from "competitor's satellite" ?
Depending on the method of teleportation, cloning could be another implementation of the same technology.
Interesting topic and not impossible as there are developmental / phenotypic markers that are correlated with same-sex attraction. BUT no one want to do the work as its the kind of thing that could be misused. On one hand it could substantiate the "some people are just gay, get over it" but on the other hand it could be used to persecute the people with these markers. I wonder what would happen to some of the religious anti-abortion groups if there was a way you could abort the gay.
As long as we permit women to have abortions for no reason other than because they want to, is it really so hard to swallow the idea of genetic selection? We already kill fetusus for no reason at all, and society is tolerant, if not accepting, of it. Why then would it be repugnant to select fetuses based on actual quantitative bases? How can that be worse than terminating pregnancies because we feel like it?
There is better technology coming on line the keeping a child alive until its' old enough to have useful organs.
OTOH, you could create something without a brain, and then get a head transplant ever 20 or so years.
I'm up for that!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Don't worry, we'll get rid of your gray goo with our black hole ;-)
bombings like the Cole, Khobar Towers, Pan Am over Lockerbee, etc etc etc.
promoting a good police force is sort of part of the human rights agenda. rights activists are usually not asking for the end of the state, they are asking for the rule of law, and equal protection under the law.
which means for example that if a government murders a bunch of people with a research weapon, it should be held responsible. and maybe some of the Unit 731 people should not have their graves in honored places in Japanese cemeteries where the president goes and pays respects.
In our efforts to understand and control the source code for all biological life, we will discover that we will be able to use those building blocks to "create " new life forms and manipulate existing ones. We'll, at some point, be able to choose characteristics for our children (height, hair color, nose size, webbed feet, etc) . We will also discover that we can create bacterial and viral attackers which target specific ethnicities or even individual traits (freckles, blondes, tall people, etc) .
It is easier to destroy than to create. We will wreak unimaginable genetic destruction before we learn to control our base urges, if ever.
1. Mr Fusion home energy;
2. The Emacs Gene Editor mode for fun, profit and mayhem;
3. Self replicating robots, evolution does the rest;
4. Private use rail guns coupled with item 1.
The Mad Science is the most dangerous form. Yes, the volcano fortress is cool, but eventually James Bond comes around and blows the place up.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Man's last invention. "Computer, load Scarlett Johanssen program 2....he he"
Drank the koolaid, did ya?
Pure and innocent Scientific Inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge generally hits a pretty thick wall pretty quickly as soon as it steps into the realm of things that already being researched, with the qualification that they are things the military is researching, or has researched within the past decade.
Even now, just to use the results of certain types of this research -- such as very accurate nuclear interaction cross-sections (discovered for the purposes of nuclear weapons, but) used for the purposes of cancer treatment -- puts you under the watchful eye of the FBI.
Yes, not everything falls under this category, and no, nobody needs to be reminded of the benefits of such research like how our microwave ovens defeated the germans, but just think about some of the examples we DO know about:
WWII to Cold war era: Nuclear Science
Cryptography (Government mandated PGP backdoor, anyone?)
Sources:
MCNP:
http://mcnpx.lanl.gov/
PGP:
http://books.google.com/books?id=cSe_0OnZqjAC&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=pgp+government+mandated+backdoor&source=bl&ots=cVtmm3vwYK&sig=fwjn6mfbXVWngTS0pgHIFWFV9bE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5OyZT8_pLsXUgAf3gNX1DQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=pgp%20government%20mandated%20backdoor&f=false)
Once again, this article is full of shit.
"Ooh, death is the most dangerous".
Platypus Shit. Sex is the most dangerous.
Every movie from Disney on up talks about Death.
The second you talk about Sex you get whisked away.
Therefore Sex is the most dangerous research topic, hands down. Yes, Pun intended.
Because you know the only people who can get it will be Dick Cheneys.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Each of those four items are the potential subject of nightmares and downfalls, but each and every one of them is a guarantee -- all eight.
Imagine the year 2150. Distant to any human life, not at all distant to government, mediocre to construction (some city construction projects take 70 years), and eons to technology.
In your 2150, can we spot genetic defects before birth? Of course. Can we select babies for the life that we want? As in can I choose the embryo with athletic skills over the embryo with mathematic skils? I'd sure hope so. It sounds dangerous today, but it's only dangerous in advance, like everything. By the time it's ubiquitous, it's just another form of choosing your child's academic goals. It just starts even earlier.
Same goes for the other six in your 2150. I'd sure as hell hope that we can read minds to some extent by then. But just like the polygraph didn't destroy interrogations, and the mouse didn't destroy the keyboard, and television didn't kill radio, and the plane didn't kill the car, it won't be the only form of communication.
As for police states reading minds, that's the ethical equivalent of humane execution. It's already a police state, it's already killing people, I'm not worried about the mind reading.
Geoengineering is absolutely required in order to live anywhere but terrestrial land. Period. So it's guaranteed to happen. And it'll happen quite suddenly the day before it's required. And by the time it can be used to "undermind the political will to fight it" it'll be so easy to do that it'll be a part of normal construction.
Nuclear weapons don't kill people. People's mistakes kill people. But people don't kill asteroids. Nuclear weapons kill asteroids. That's another period, by the way.
I like how bird flu wasn't one of the top four, having inspired the thing in the first place. But that's the same concept. Of course we're going to have a major outbreak of something. We've had it before. Everyone's so worried that this time, with common means of global transportation, it'll be much worse. I think that they forget one thing. In probably under an hour, every airport and every border can instantly have screeners for whatever the current outbreak is. We have TSA and border and customs security everywhere nowadays. It'd be easy to suddenly, and globally, halt anyone displaying symptoms, or quickly test everyone as a part of transportation procedures.
My point is that, as a civilization, we can't not have those things. Being scared of the research in advance is stupid. Focus on being scared of the initially flawed execution of that research. Work on that while the research is underway. We have M.A.D. for nuclear weapons. That's already worked a few times. It's dumb, but it worked. I'm stunned, but it worked. That's the sort of thing that we need for the rest of them. A Nash equillibrium for each one.
Yes, the idea of creating anencephalics for that purpose has been thought of.
However it has complications. For many parts of the body to develop normally they have to be used. A digestive tract that has never processed food or muscles that have never moved are not going to be normal. You would have to have enough brain function to run those processes during growth. Or, alternatively, you would have to be able to interface a control system to the brain stem to take over that function.
The Evil Overlord way to do it is just raise the kid normally, let them play and grow and then kill them for the organs or whole body. Much simpler that way, but your neighbors may say bad things about you.
There would be ethical and humanitarian applications for it, but mere death and pain would be hard pressed to compete with the potential damage of perfect propaganda. If some combination of psychology, hypnosis, drugs in the water, drugs in the drugs, or whatnot made it possible to get people to believe anything you said, that could be the end of all freedom forever.
A new political system to replace what we've got. It would have...
1. Ability to remove anybody from power at any level of government by a poll of interested parties.
2. Any law or regulation to be affirmed by at least 20% (or whatever) of voters every 10 (or whenever) years.
3. & 4. I'll think of a couple more soon.
1) human behaviour modification
2) experimenting with food supply/drinking water/energy etc
3) playing with dangerous virus outbreaks
4) transferring dangerous animals from one continent to another(bees are good example where this happened already)
5) terraforming planets / weather modification
6) self-duplicating robots/nanostructures
7) mythbuster style explosion/destruction research
8) dna modification
9) global physics parameter modifications
10) gun/missile/bomb research
Your scenario is ridiculous. If you have sufficiently advanced technology to do that it would simply be easier to grow the organs themselves.
Abstract:
Researchers investigated the relative effect of jokes vs cartoons about Muhammad. Subject size was approximately 1 billion individuals. Cartoons were determined to elicit a stronger response with a higher researcher fatality rate (p.01) and subject fatalities due to riots (p.01).
Looking at the complexity of the universe and the DNA chains that map life and trying to find evidence that this was not random probability. Life is fragile. How has it survied this long. The sun, how was it made to not burn out in a few hundred years? Why is it stable? How long can the fire burn? Without intelligent design, science has many questions to find the answer to. It is harder to believe this thing called life started on it's own and DNA which is universal in life was not designed. Why isn't there life without DNA, but uses something else instead? Since DNA is universal, did we really decend from pond scum along with iguanas and brine shrimp?
I do agree the design permits natural selection. To say that natural selection is part of devine design is a very dangerous discovery.
The truth shall set you free!
Any kind of nanotechnology is in general bad news, because it'll be hard to control in the wild. Once you can make a lot of them, you can let them loose on a subject population and well, at least they'll wear out after a while.
Because they're so small you pretty much need a trigger nanobot/signal to activate it ie: in the the presence of bot A bot B starts its thing, like disassembling RNA.
There's not a lot you could do against these things, except stay out of the way. The good thing is that they probably wouldn't be very contagious - they'd go in via your lungs/nose and stay there.
Poison is still cheaper, but with nano you can really get to scale.
This was a great episode. I highly recommend it, if you can find it see it.
In it a student simply uncovers that fusion is a trivial to access. It is simply asymmetric. Power corrupts, what will happen if more power is easily available. As geeks we see that in the power given to us by computers such that kids can conceivably launch denial of service attacks.
Picture something like the Matrix, except..There is no possibility EVER of the "One", no escapees from the system, no resistance, no nothing just slaves in a system. Might look like this world, might look like something else. Assuming some mad man that controls nanobots/AI doesn't decide to say, kill all the men and take the women as slaves..*forever*. Pleasant dreams..
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
Aka figuring out the best text editor, whether it be vim, or notepad.exe.
The technological device that probably killed more people than anyone else in WWI was General Haig's telephone.
Yep, I can speak first hand to that. I was doing my Ph.D. research on the chemical byproducts of Nickel production and their deleterious effects on local ecosystems. I focused my research on the areas surrounding the Sudbury nickel mines in Ontario, which produce the nickel used in hybrid car batteries. My data showed that the complete death of the local ecosystem and the loss of oxygen-regenerative plant species combined with the carbon emissions from shipping nickel all over the world to make batteries would never be offset by the fuel savings of the hybrid cars.
After I gave my professor/advisers the data, results, and draft of my dissertation, about a week later my research grant was summarily terminated and I was told that the work I had done so far and the dissertation I had written were property of the University and I was not to disclose any of the data or the dissertation to anyone else under threat of lawsuit.
I was told that I would have to choose a new research topic and start my research over from scratch if I wanted to get the Ph.D. I was never offered an explanation as to why my research was terminated.
Really? So you fully understand the vagaries of the body's influence on organ development or even just have solid ideas of the limits on the complexity of it? You're ahead of the people where I work. Maybe you should apply here as a med researcher.
I agree that the barrier to developing a working artificial womb is high, but I suspect it may be less than what is needed for full development to adulthood of ALL organs that we could transplant.
Yes, we've got people printing bladders that have been implanted in dogs and become functional, but that's just one case in a vastly complex reality that stands in the way of general organ culturing.
There already is some work going on toward developing artificial wombs specifically for the fertility treatment possibilities (as well as a lot of purely scientific ones in nonhuman animals).
The creation of embryos from somatic cells has already been demonstrated. (dolly the sheep, etc.) It's just got a lot of difficulties and most of the trials fail. Even the ones that progress to term have problems.
I wouldn't want to predict absolutely which tech happens first.
Prime Number Theory
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It's true that everything is dual use. A spoon can be used to gouge out an eye. However it has a low "blowback quotient."
I define the blowback quotient as follows:
ACWC is the "Ability to Cause Widespread Casualties." Range is 1 (nearly unable to cause harm) to 10 (causes catastrophic loss of life)
EU is the "Ease of Use." Range is 1 (Any moron can use it) to 10 (Virtually impossible to use)
Blowback quotient = function of ACWC / EU
A spoon has a low ACWC, but it has a high ease of use. So its blowback quotient is low.
A gun has a moderate ACWC and it too has a high ease of use. A moderate blowback quotient.
A highly transmissible fatal virus has a high ACWC and a low ease of use. Until someone publishes the steps to make it so that a graduate student can create a batch and have it exponentially propagate through the population. A very high blowback quotient.
I think they need to look at something like a "blowback quotient" before putting something like this out there.
Although it is technically "math" rather than "Science", it is already consider a dangerous (non-exportable) technology.
Some research into topics like how to factor large integers has already been marked "secret" and prevented from being published.
If people start studying how the planets move, it could lead to heresy yet also make sense, thereby undermining people's respect for authority.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Allows nerds to live.
Well, technically not a field of scientific inquiry but a self appointed science discipline by itself: politics.
Poor economic science will destroy life on the planet faster than poor ecologic science. It won't be an asteroid, virus or bomb that brings the apocalypse; more likely an error in someone's trading software. In an over specialized world, where will the generalists come from? Where will common sense have the opportunity to save us? How to we teach 'grit?'
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Koran flammability
Corporate misdeeds
Police brutality
Oh, you didn't mean dangerous to the researcher?
They are all, ultimately, tools.
Any tool can be used for both good and evil.
Case in point, a baseball bat. You can use a baseball bat to hit a home run or bash someone's head in. The choice is your. This goes for almost all tools; knives, guns, shovels, chainsaws, forks, etc.
I think even this justification for the government's involvement, that it may be planet or species threatening, is on shaky ground.
However, it is all our of responsibilities to make sure that tools are applied 'properly'. Unfortunately, there are those among us that think differently.
So, how do you balance it? The short answer is you probably can't. So does this mean we are all doomed to die from grey goop?
I hope not, but research implies that this type of technology might be achievable and if it is, it may be only a matter of time before someone invents the 'ultimate weapon'.
So, how do you prevent this?
I'm afraid we may not be able too...
In the past we could rely on a 'certain' morality among people but in this spoiled, me me me world we have today; some idiot might... think it's funny.
Maybe not. First thing to pop into my head.
46 & 2
genetic engineering leads to the monster of the week or the some thing in a syfy channel B moive.
Knives, swords and other sharp edges and stuff. We are really trying to define ambivalent fields of science and point out that they are all just tools?
Next we'll be wondering "Which are the most dangerous books to write?", or "What are the most dangerous sentences to say?". I reject the premise.
If I were to pick at all, almost none of that would be on the list. Only things that had the potential to create society ending things that are not stoppable by individual action. Diseases, for example, fall into that category. But I find even that highly suspect.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Don't let systems get to smart and don't hook them up to nukes.
The idea that computers are developing things that human engineers have not thought of. It has been going on for years.
To be fair, sex causes death. If sex could be prevented we could wipe out the spectre of death forever.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just look at how dangerous bacteria are getting without any intentional effort on our part. I've had to deal with MRSA myself and after four courses of antibiotics I still haven't shaken it. Engineering a bug that our natural defenses and antibiotics can't touch should be fairly easy so both accidental and intentional releases of super bugs has to be high up on the list. Historically there have been multiple examples of diseases having outbreaks that killed a large portion of the population in the last thousand years and in truth in the last hundred years. Killing all humans would be difficult since some populations are isolated but killing most humans is very achievable.
Factoring large numbers (bypass encryption)
Advanced robotics ("put entire cities out of work", if not directly enslaving people)
Advanced human-computer interfaces (including programming languages)
etc.
Really, any technology that changes a well-established status quo could be dangerous to those who do not have access to it.
this is true. while researching a particular quirk my ex has (female ejaculation), i was gobsmacked to find that there's bugger all information out there, most of it wrong.
you'd think after 100,000+ years of having more or less the same anatomy, we'd have it figured out by now.
the more you look, the more gaps in our knowledge you find, and the only conclusion is that we're afraid of our own sex organs - they're taboo in a way that even multi-megaton H-bombs are not.
In other words, this research will provide a solution to climate change that doesn't involve passing new laws and taxes, regulating people's lives, stealing their property, and so on. This line of inquiry is dangerous because it undermines what "climate change" advocates are really up to.
Liberty in your lifetime
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133201/Dr-Richard-Holmes-Suicide-riddle-weapons-expert-worked-David-Kelly.html
If your in the UK and working on chem, bio "protection" try not to get too stressed.
It seems "suicide" is catching.....
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I should've read the article before I posted. The actual quote in the article is even more outrageous:
Can you imagine what this guy would say if scientists discovered a way to eliminate crime? "But that would allow governments to sidestep their obligation to imprison and execute criminals!" "Eliminating crime without punishing people creates a 'moral hazard'!"
Liberty in your lifetime
Free societies have always worked in part because when stupid laws are inevitably enacted, a lot of people ignore them with impunity. There has been freedom in anonymity. But face recognition technology is improving, surveillance cameras are proliferating, and other things like cell phones and debit cards make it trivially easy to see where people are and what they're doing. The only real safeguard of a free society, the inability of corporations and governments to deal with the vast sea of data, is coming to an end. And never mind actual laws. Kids who demonstrated against oil drilling in national parks when they were 13 will find themselves explaining to a job interviewer why they hate capitalism when they graduate from college.
So my vote for major danger...at least to a free society...would be quantum computing as it affects D-base management.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You should never ask "What does god need with a spaceship?"
Scientific inquiry should never be stifled. Repeat after me: NEVER!!! I'm referring to unbound scientific inquiry. No ethics, no morals, pure curiosity about finding answers to questions posed. I don't want to live in a world that's dictated out of fear and restricts curiosity because of what might be.
Treading lightly, leads to control, which is what we've seen for the past 4-5000 years.
Fear is the non-technical hurdle that human civilization must overcome, lest we perish by the illusion of control.
I'd vote for wormhole weapons, but that's me. Perhaps I've watched too much Farscape, but the idea of turning the Universe to Swiss Cheese if they are ever deployed does kind of win my vote.
I am John Hurt.
OTOH, you could create something without a brain, ...
They already have this. They're called Political Science majors.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Carl Sagan mentioned this in one of his books. The same technology that could be used to detect asteroids then reach them and divert their orbits away from the Earth could also be used to divert them towards the Earth.
...Ignorance.
The most dangerous lines of scientific inquiry are thinking that they exist and killing science for them
Example #1: In the 1990s the English speaking countries AUSCANNZUKUS sponsored a secret science project that discovered and developed Topological Quantum Neural Network technology (would provide a Wikipedia link, but the topic is censored there). They used it to build a Magic Decoder Box, but the technology had much more interesting uses than reading other peoples' mail. It also lead indirectly to some major mathematical and scientific breakthroughs. e.g. The mathematical breakthrough that allowed for rapid sequencing of 'shattered' DNA in the late 90s, some of the advanced AI now in evidence from large corporations, et cetera. However, because the original Magic Decoder Box project was classified none of this science has been publicly shared. Anyone participating in Corporate or Government development using this technology must sign an ironclad NDA of the direst sort. This author is one of the few people who knows a lot about this 'censored science', yet who has never signed an NDA.
This author has personally seen an example of scientific censorship at work: find a rare early First Edition of Dr. Stuart Kauffman's 1996 book At Home in the Universe , and compare it chapter-by-chapter with a later First Edition. One chapter has been excised, and that chapter explicitly discusses Quantum Neural Networks. This author suspects he snuck it past the censors, then someone noticed and made him remove it for all later printings, while still calling it a First Edition. The 'censored' version was removed from sale, but there are still a few copies out there. The chapter in question seems odd and out of place, until one realizes that it is trying to deliver a hidden message from a scientist who abhors censoring science, yet had no choice. This author believes that there were once legitimate National Security reasons for keeping this science secret, but believes those reasons are no longer valid. Skeptical readers should note that The Ultra Secret, a strikingly similar case, remained classified for 35 years.
The importance of laser enrichment is that it has the potential to lower startup costs for reactors that require more highly enriched uranium (say 20%, so maybe still classified as LEU)- like LFTR/MSR. The enriched uranium is more dangerous to handle, but it doesn't make it easier to make bombs, though the enrichment technology might. It is all a very small price to pay considering the benefits of cheap nuclear energy.
You forgot Bill Joy's rant against nanotechnology which is not entirely crazy, but completely impossible to implement.
In addition it seems to require that the U.S. somehow improve science education and dominate the technology so as to control it. Less and less likely.
women
I will be lost in the cacophony of answers, but one area of interest and fear for me was neurobiology. Specifically, studying human neurobiology. Imagine if one day someone could figure out how your brain works - what is perception, what is emotion, what is thought, what is learning, and what is memory. Imagine they could explain it in biomolecular terms, how electromagnetic fields from neurons combined with neurotransmitters to cause reactions. X set will induce violent rage, block Y while stimulating Z will create passivity, do process P and you can implant false memories of pattern T. Once a scientist understands how to manipulate these types of things, well... watch any mind-BLEEP movie like Videodrome or even Total Recall - you know the ones I'm talking about, where they leaving you asking "was it really happening to the character in the film, or was it all in the characters head?"
I do have a bias. My sister is schizophrenic, my other sister suffers depression. I believe chronic depression or manic depression is common in my family. I have experienced both depression and manic episodes. I ponder things like perception and reality, and have drunk once to the black-out stage to try to understand what that loss of control and perception is like. I often delve into my own personal philosophical corners about what being human is and what existence is (both in a religious - Buddhist/Shinto - and nonreligious - Zen - manner; disclaimer: I am an atheist). Naturally, research into this area fascinates me. We've seen biology, chemistry, and physics explode - and the advances in neurobiology and psychology are taking great leaps now.
I guess in the end, most of these topics are reflections of our own fears. I see many of the topics raised being "what makes me feel powerless/helpless/lacking control". For me, it is losing who I am - either by accident (such as the traumatic brain injuries that can cause personality disorders or destroy your ability to form long-term memories... imagine living in a perpetual now where new encounters are not encoded for later recall!) or manipulation (a process is discovered that can manipulate mood or memories).
is advertising. Perfect persuasion trumps everything else.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
If we can move them, we can aim them.
(And we all know what happened last time) :)
Computer science is probably not going to blow up the world any time soon. The greatest threat from computer programs is to personal privacy. Computer camera's that can read your emotions, cellphones that can track where you are 24/7, online databases that store your online browsing, governments that look through your email, and then I haven't even started with the crackpot theories.
I experienced a good/bad moment not too long ago in my scientific research when I was doing research on the effect of the TPB website blockade on BitTorrent use in the Netherlands. Everyone knows that it had 0 effect, but you have to prove it. So in one afternoon I built a script that could scrape peer-lists, and did some analysis on those.
The evilness of this script is that it can just as well be used by the movie/record industry to easily find out who's downloading. It's not groundbreaking, and they could probably build it themselves too, but still, this gets you thinking about the possible evil use of other research.
Don't worry, it's all just 1's and 0's anyway...
encryption.
We don't survive as we are, and no other advanced life in the universe has either. That's why the phone is not ringing, SETI is failure by first principles.
Advancing makes us disappear in one of two ways, either thru the post's implied self destruction by playing with fire that we are incapable of controlling, or Vernor Vinge's Singularity where we simply become something else.
Lets look forward to joining the club!
What could possibly go wrong?
genetic engineering leads to the monster of the week or the some thing in a syfy channel B moive.
That would actually be a pretty sophisticated plot, by SyFy standards.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Do you really need to have someone else give you an explanation?
Tough luck. Choose something else and do it. Or find a new university. When you get your degree or finally decide not to get it, rewrite your nickel thesis, restate the data so it can't be traced back to you, and publish anonymously. It might be a good idea to also provide the results to any group who might find it politically advantageous.
If you're interested in revenge, write up memoirs naming the university and those who would have seen your documents and been able to quash them. Late in life, when you can no longer be hurt, publish. Or if you're extremely brave, ASAP.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It's a conundrum, though. If abortion is legal, it has to be legal for everyone, for all reasons.
I can't wrap my head around that logic. Driving, smoking, drinking alcohol, gun ownership, voting, etc... there are plenty of examples where legal status is more than a boolean value.
That said, there is only one thing that should really matter in abortion discussions: Whether the fetus is a person or not. If it is a person, abortion is murder and you clearly can't murder someone just because you don't like their existence (or even if their existence is a health risk for you). If it's not a living person separate from the mother, abortion clearly isn't murder but more equivalent to a lot of other, already legal medical and cosmetic procedures (plastic surgery, cutting away the vermiform appendix, etc.).
I disagree with Ron Paul when he said that life begins at conception and that it's a scientific statement. It isn't scientific statement (there isn't any scientific consensus about that) but it most certainly is a factual claim, that is boolean and either true or false, depending on our definition of life/personhood. I personally don't consider a fetus in its early stages to be a person (it can't have feelings, etc.) but can see how a point could be made that it becomes a person before the moment of birth, so I think that the current system of "Abortion is legal for X weeks/months but not after that" is pretty optimal.
That's also what I hate on "our" side of the abortion debate: When pro-life ("the other guys") say "Fetus is a person/human/living being/etc. so you can't just kill it if you find it inconvenient", we call ourselves pro-choice and say "Sure we can. Women should have a right to choose to end its life!" instead of saying "That's fair, but it isn't really a person at that point".
It might accelerate the development of nasty things, but it can't stop the development. To the contrary, if one doesn't know the dangers, he doesn't know how to avoid them or how to look at it. So drawing a line is counter-productive.
it's also possible that geoengineering doesn't fix the problem the way the problem happens to be.
Adding aerosols (the only reasonably feasible geoengineering project) doesn't counteract the specific problems of excess greenhouse very well.
More aerosols is a whole lot like lowering the incoming solar flux. Problem is that it will make more of a difference in the tropics and in daytime, but the greenhouse effect is making more of a difference in the polar regions and at night.
And that's because the physics of the geoengineering is pretty different from the physics of the problem.
So to be effective you have to add a new climate change of roughly similar magnitude as the existing one from greenhouse gases, but it doesn't really offset the actual climate change, it's just a new, and large perturbation. Getting some statistical number to go down doesn't help, because nobody lives in a globally space and time averaged place.
Successfully making a tasp or droud would probably lead to the end of humanity in a generation or so. At least the end of any non-stone-age parts.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"With universal screening, many more pregnancies might be terminated — and women who choose to carry a child with, say, Down's syndrome to term could face social and legal stigmas" - legal stigmas? We live in representative democracies with independent judiciaries. It's not for medical ethicists to decide legal issues. Neither for them to decide Geo-engineering shouldn't be investigated since it might undermine political will - politics is to be decided by elected governments. And brain scanning to read thoughts? Probably more realistic to worry about the dangers of my new perpetual motion device. The article is a either a troll, or represents a lot of wasted tax dollars in scientists who should get on with the job at hand.
Yes, really. If need be you could grow an organ complex, a bunch of different organs all growing in tandem in an artificial womb like setting. Since you know... if you can already grow things in an artificial womb...
this internet, Alex? I just love the limitless power of the human imagination.. think I'm going to go watch CONTACT again.
Ok, now tell me what great good can a virus epidemic cause.
None are as bad as the alternative...
The parent comment you're quoting is only half right, for the political will. To have meaningful impact, any of the geoengineering concepts be of massive scale, with costs that guarantee that none will ever move out of the pilot project phase.
The bigger problem with GE (there's a pun there, but I'm too lazy to reach for it) would be the unintended ecological (and as a result, economic) consequences. Meanwhile, the ecological consequences of reducing greenhouse gas output are very well known, because we've already experienced them. The relative unknowns are all economic, and since we're in no danger of going cold turkey, manageable.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Eventually, we'll probably find a cure for old age -- essentially, people can live forever unless they suicide and/or die in an accident. Extra points will be awarded if the cure also extends humans' active reproductive years so that it's entirely feasible for them to have new children at age 200. For even more fun, the first rounds of the treatment will likely be so expensive that only the richest minorities in the world can afford the eternal life.
Seriously.
Physics, bioweapons, nanotech, all the other scary things are about what people can do. Social psych is about what people *want* to do. Find the grand unified theory of 'how to make people behave in the ways you wish', and you'll be capable of massive control on the civilisation scale, and so massive harm. No single weapon in history has matched the simple, banal ability to tell a hundred million people to kill or die, and have them _obey_.
A second possibility could be that science reinforces some systems in society because they are not socially responsible enough to be impartial
It's often claimed that "50% of the world's scientists work for the military", even if this is wildly inaccurate, military research still takes the prize in my book for both the "most dangerous line of inquiry" and the "most prudent line of inquiry".
- As other's have pointed out, swans are black here in Oz, their offspring are white until they get their adult coat. The term 'black swan' just feels odd to an Aussie, same 'foriegn' feeling as driving on the right hand side of the road.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
... you ignorant clod!
It's not scientists that should handle the 'risks' to society (taking into account ethics) - that's a job for politics (IE, you can publish how to make an atomic bomb but dissemination of nuclear material should be controlled by law). .
Isn't that one of the main problems of the mankind? That politicians are the ones making the decisions whule the rest are driven as lambs? Look at global crisis, how parasites (politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, etc.) are the ones holding the wealth and power, not scientists , philosophers or intellectuals who end up begging for support to continue their quest for knowledge, while the majority of voters are dumbed down with empty entertainment.
Now, is there enough tungsten et al to made more mass than that?
The fungi bacteria et al have predators and found their capability by perusing the nearby possible of evolutionary change. At a rate that allowed their predators to adapt.
Look at the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria to see what happens when you introduce a new species with all these built in weaknesses to a place that never had to deal with it.
Disprove the existence of gods . .. Make a research that once and for all rids humanity of this tool .. and watch the Earth's population go on the
Get rid of the notions that a " God " might exist.once and for all .
If you want danger
to control the population . Disprove God
greatest war ever. Free the people from opression and control that is done through the
various religions on earth.
Well, of course not. After all, if I'm smart enough to get a Ph.D., I'm smart enough to know my research was terminated because it disagreed with the university's political positions on anthropogenic global warming.
I did transfer to another school where I completed my dissertation on another less political subject.
I would purchase embyro screening services *today*. does anyone know of any service providers or have any recommendations in this area?
Any scientific knowledge can be used for good or bad. If someone starts to cencor scientific publications based on their potential for evil we will go back to the dark ages... Powder should never come to public!!!
Electricity can be used to fry people in a chair!
Germ theory can lead to biological warfare!
the wheel can be used to build war vehicles
the pointy stick can be used to make a spear
THE FIRE CAN BE USED TO BURN YOUR HOUSE!!!
the list can be endless!!!
Slashdot itself has been leading this effort since its inception.
I still haven't decided whether to publish my plans to open a portal to another dimension ...
Does that count?
Cause with oil, nuclear, fracking, coal, carbon, we are going to do to ourselves what no Terrorist ever dreamed of, extinction level event mass destructor.
Could allow for teleportation Portal-style. Or could open gate to a place we don't want to open Event Horizon style.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf
How about DARPA's hypersonic flight? The good is that hypersonic flight may eventually allow us to get on board a plane and be anywhere on Earth in a couple of hours. The bad is that the research is being funded partially in order to create an ICBM that can deliver a payload anywhere on Earth within an hour.
On Wikipedia, there's a saying: "don't stuff beans in your nose". It's an admonishment to not tell somebody not to do something that shouldn't be done; somebody's liable to do it. Not sure if this truly bears relevance, but....
This sig no verb.
What's needed to grow normal adult organs is different from what a fetus needs in order to grow to only the stage ready for birth. By the time you assemble a whole complex of organs, it's probably easier just to have the whole fetus.
The womb environment is complex and there is a lot of interplay between the mother and the embryo/fetus. But given that the embryo is made to be somewhat more independent, it's likely to be less complex than the whole hoard of different environments and chemical cues needed to mature the whole gamut of tissues. The placental barrier blocks a lot of things that cells in general tissue would need. The fetus is made to supply itself with those.
Also, the organs created by bio-printing and the like have never fully operated. That's why they're finding they have to do mechanical stimulation and provide a whole witches brew of properly timed chemical cues to them to get them to fully develop once printed. A developing fetus and then a child provide all of those environments just as a matter of course.
That's the line of thinking on the part of those looking at artificial wombs.
I've seen these lines of inquiry turn violent!
To date, the study of religion has killed the most folks.
Potentially, in the future, bio-engineering seem the most scary.
(Although watching the silly stuff that has happened recently, climate-engineering seems a close second.)
I don't think the idea that Watson will take over Sky-net style is a credible threat at this point.
Aside from another Asteroid, I suspect humans will somehow muddle through anything science currently has to offer.
Yeah, you're full of shit... what kind of phd program is this where your advisor has no idea what your research is until you turn in the draft of your dissertation? I could maybe believe this in some kind of humanities program, but in the sciences you're working on what your professor (the one who submitted that grant proposal) tells you to work on.
Can't find the quote, but this topic reminds me of the Alien race that invents the most powerful source of energy to power one of its spaceships, goes to turn it on, and instantly ends the universe. Of course they have always ended it, and they always will.
I had a mental exercise the other day, where I imagined "What would you do, if you invented a power source that could solve all of the earths energy problems, however the wrong use could destroy the world?" It is a significant scientific discovery, but who would you trust with the technology? Would you see the peril and decide to take the knowlege to the grave, or how much do you trust the scientific community, the government, etc...?
Electromagnetism, frequency theory, radiant energy..
the potential exists to change the way we view the world forever.
to make and unmake many things.
tesla was an avenging angel bearing gifts. soloman asked for wisdom.
what do you study? believe? feel?
prepare yourself for?
The most dangerous thing humans can do is thinking. So ban all schools. This is the most effective suppression of dangerous knowledge.
Yes, and there are some genies that aren't quite out of the bottle yet.
Using induced decay of metastable nuclear isomers it may be possible to make tiny nuclear weapons and exawatt gamma-ray lasers with few to no fission products.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_isomer
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
So, you have breed a generation of Neck-beards who are immortal? They certainly not going to have sex anytime soon...
It's true that claiming that fertilized egg is a person doesn't have much to back it up from science and it's instead a claim that's based in religion. However, I think that if we built discussion around "What do we - as a society - want to base personhood on? Religion or something else?" and then - for those who want to base it on religion "Is that what [your holy text] actually says about this very subject?", it would be more reasonable than it's now.
Of course you might say "The other guys are so insane fundamentalist that they won't listen to any reasoning, no matter how we approach that!" in which you might be partially right... But of course, public discourse never aims to convert the evangelists of either side but rather to sway the general audience. Also, if we go with that claim, we might as well say "Okay, it's just ridiculous to talk about this in media/news/debates/congress/etc., as nobody will change their views... So let's never return to this subject again". I do see some appeal in that approach but I'm still too idealistic to completely accept it. :)
Screw growing new organs, I want all artificial like in Bicentennial Man :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Well, maybe he's lying, but then again maybe it wasn't the research that was the problem but rather the results. I can believe that nobody would have had a problem if he had concluded that everything was just fine, the way he was supposed to.
This is really the most dangerous area of "scientific" research - the temptation to get the "right" answers, and to avoid any research or conclusions that your colleagues and the powers that be might find unacceptable.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Either Television, or, maybe computer software. Hell, you could go all the way back to Guttenberg, that bastard.
Called the "Haber-Bosch" process.
It was (is) a chemical process for extracting ammonia-based fertilizer from atmospheric Nitrogen. Developed by Germany around the turn of the 20th Century, and rapidly adopted, worldwide - it rapidly increased crop-yeilds, and allowed the human population to explode (like an out-of-control fungal infection) from roughly 1 billion to the 7 billion we are today - VERY rapidly increasing our consumption and output of Carbon, and increasing AGW.
If there was ever a "tipping-point" in the destruction of our species, and the ability of our world to sustain life, it was probably THIS. (unless you believe we can turn this around or bounce back from this).
Remember The Bell Curve?
Any study of race or genetic differences in race, gender and class will be big trouble.
As will a study of branching in the human family tree. At some point, some humans went north, and others went seaward.
In fact, IQ studies in general tend to upset people. Stay away from these if you want a high-paying research job.
Futurist Traditionalism
Ask Slashdot: What's your favorite Sci-Fi apocalypse?
This is my all-time favorite apocalyptic scenario:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8&ob=av3n
I'm not really sure what line of scientific research leads to it though...
Knowledge != Intelligence
Nano and mole. gen. Any dissenters? I didn't think so.
1. Shortens my lifespan.
2. Prolongs my lifespan with pain.
So, you have breed a generation of Neck-beards who are immortal? They certainly not going to have sex anytime soon...
You're a 'tard, but I'm going to use your comment to explain how sex causes death and how this is a very sad joke. I was unnecessarily obscure with it to be artful, and the common folk should be led to the punchline so they can expand their understanding of this particular sick joke because a general understanding of this would be useful.
In biological terms for mammals, "sex" is the meeting of the sperm and the egg. Excluding cloning this is the only way mammals reproduce. Every life created in this way will end in death as all life ends. In the human case if you prevent this "sex" from occurring you will prevent births. If you continue such prevention for about 70 years you will have prevented all possible human births until the affected humans are incapable of giving birth. Since noone who was not born can die, this will also prevent deaths. In absolute terms birth causes death - each and every birth causes exactly one death. When every person who can do "sex" has passed the capable age has done so without giving birth all the people who can die will have been born, which is about 75 years hence under the absolute observance of this plan. Within 75 years thereafter (with modern science) the last human will die. And that will be the end of humans and human deaths forever (untimely or not), because there will be no more humans to die, nor any humans to make more humans to live and die. We will have conquered Death by surrendering to him. And that was the obscure joke others got without this long explanation that you didn't understand.
The end of sex ends births, which ends humans which ends death of humans. Now do you get it? Once there are no humans there are no more humans to fear death. And if we don't get off this planet, this is the end of Man.
Yes, this makes agricultural science the most destructive technology Man has ever known or will ever know, nuclear science notwithstanding.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And BTW: I don't understand why this is funny.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
those that are left unresearched because some bigots have decided it is not a good investment
The most dangerous line of scientific inquiry is a scientific inquiry into "dangerous" lines of scientific inquiry. It's OK, I'll wait till you catch up.
I didn't read either article, but didn't we just go through this a few days ago?
Their they're doing there hair.