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?"
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).
I think the theory is, that geoengineering is unlikely to succeed in the long term and so it's just kicking the problem into the long grass. I see your point, though, that kind of statement is playing into the hands of AGW deniers by implying that the only reason to worry about AGW is because we have an ulterior motive for making people panic over nothing.
Og may have been first to file, but it was Urgh who invented the method.
I always thought it went along the lines of "...so what would happen if we turned this thing loose downtown?"
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Don't worry, we'll get rid of your gray goo with our black hole ;-)
I that that artificial intelligence that is more effective than human intelligence is the main long term issue. I don't expect it in the next few decades as some do, but sometime in the next 1000 years, someone is going to build a machine that is better at general problem solving and design than a skilled human. And a little while after that, human intelligence will be largely obsolete. This holds by far the most powerful and dangerous possibilities.
Speaking of Sci-Fi, the lead female character (Mira) in the book "Evolution's Darling" is an assassin who targets scientists that have been judged by Mira's AI-overlords as being too close to making undesirable discoveries.
For instance, one of her past targets included a researcher working on teleportation (which they calculate will lead to the collapse of civilization), and much of the story involves her mission to assassinate a rogue AI who has developed a method of making perfect copies of AI minds. All for the protection of society of course.
Who needs a soul or magic? With nanobots and AI, someone could torture someone (or everyone), well, forever. What would people do if they knew that, and knew such technologies were coming soon? Perhaps this is the reason most people call the singularity a 'nerd rapture' and other things, there are very unpleasant possibilities inherent in a very technologically advanced universe and it's better if nobody acknowledge they're coming to keep people from panicing.
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
Why would teleportation lead to the collapse of civilization?
...he asked, oblivious to the nuclear bomb that had materialized on his coffee table.
Clearly you've never been to Western Australia, where the black swan is more common than the white!
They're only black on one side. Always facing potential enemies with their black side is a strong survival trait, and why modern Australian swans are almost never killed by drop bears.
is advertising. Perfect persuasion trumps everything else.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Can you say Gray Goo?
I can say it, but I'm not too worried about it -- most of the available niches for miniature self-reproducing machines are already filled... by miniature self-reproducing machines that are much more aggressive and effective than anything technology is likely to come up with.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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