1) When it comes to children everyone immediately gets that their ability is limited and thus the power they have should be as well. 2) When it comes to adults we completely ignore our own limitations and instead insist, "we need as much power as possible, more is better!" — Jake
Why do even the most intelligent and best educated people find this so hard to grasp? — Jake
Jake, the problem with the theory is, as has been said a number of times, that its to general or on a too high level of abstraction, making it only partly true, and even if true, useless. — ChatteringMonkey
You just keep ignoring these points. It's only partly true because, a) like i said our 'relation to knowledge' is at best only marginally driving 'the knowledge explosion' (it's more a story of economics and goverments...), and b) it's not generally the case for all knowledge. — ChatteringMonkey
And from a policy-point of view the idea that we should 'change our relation to knowledge', is useless, because what is one supposed to do with such a general claim? — ChatteringMonkey
If you really want influence the world in some way here, you need identify individual research that is potentially dangerous, explain why etc etc... and then make concrete and realistic proposals of how to deal with that. And if you'd start that excercise, you'd probably find that a number of people are allready doing that. — ChatteringMonkey
IN OTHER WORDS... The human situation is tragic. We are very flawed heroes and our flaws have been, are, and will be the cause of our downfall. — Bitter Crank
Yeah sure.... but again it's to vague to be informative. What limits is the question. — ChatteringMonkey
No, i'm not a politician or activist, I'm a philosopher. I'm interested in good arguments and thinking well, not in changing the world. — ChatteringMonkey
My goal in this thread is improving upon the argument, and maybe helping you to be more effective along the way. — ChatteringMonkey
I like the Amish people I have met. They are, of course, quite religious and of necessity rather conservative, but they aren't naive country bumpkins. — Bitter Crank
I'll rephrase then...
1) Should it be a goal of society to look for ways to limit the powers available to human beings?
2) Or, should we accept the group consensus which assumes we should learn as much as possible, thus giving ourselves as much power as possible?
I agree with your "thinking well" goal and am trying to facilitate that by focusing the question. In the end we are going to try to limit the knowledge and powers available to us, or we're not. Which do you prefer? — Jake
No see, it's not black or white. — ChatteringMonkey
2) Or, should we accept the group consensus which assumes we should learn as much as possible, thus giving ourselves as much power as possible? — Jake
1) Should it be a goal of society to look for ways to limit the powers available to human beings? — Jake
The president of the US is the only one who can push the button for a nuclear strike. — ChatteringMonkey
In one respect, the group consensus is for a limitation of knowledge and power. — Bitter Crank
It isn't clear to me how "we" would limit "us" from learning whatever "somebody among us" decides to learn, be it benign or malignant. I can decide what I will not learn, but I don't know of a way to prevent you from learning what you wish to learn. — Bitter Crank
Somewhere, right now, somebody is openly engaging in legal research which will likely have quite negative consequences. They are pushing the envelope, maybe too far. What are "we" going to do about it? — Bitter Crank
That was once a comforting assumption; it's not quite so comforting at the present moment. — Bitter Crank
Why do we treat things differently when humans are involved. Because we attribute agency to them, the ability to freely make rational and moral decisions. I think that view is at best partly true. In fact, that view is often part of the hubris. — ChatteringMonkey
When you look at the history of the two countries, and begin to understand the mechanics a bit more, it's isn't quite as insane. A 'strong man' like putin was needed to hold Russia together after the fall of the USSR. And Trump, well, he's the result of large parts of the population being ignored and not represented politically. — ChatteringMonkey
Only way out of the prisonner's dilemma would seem to be a supranational legal framework where all parties are obliged to disarm simultaniously. — ChatteringMonkey
On June 3, 1980, at about two-thirty in the morning, computers at the National Military Command Center, beneath the Pentagon, at the headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), deep within Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and at Site R, the Pentagon’s alternate command post center hidden inside Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania, issued an urgent warning: the Soviet Union had just launched a nuclear attack on the United States. The Soviets had recently invaded Afghanistan, and the animosity between the two superpowers was greater than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
U.S. Air Force ballistic-missile crews removed their launch keys from the safes, bomber crews ran to their planes, fighter planes took off to search the skies, and the Federal Aviation Administration prepared to order every airborne commercial airliner to land.
President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was asleep in Washington, D.C., when the phone rang. His military aide, General William Odom, was calling to inform him that two hundred and twenty missiles launched from Soviet submarines were heading toward the United States. Brzezinski told Odom to get confirmation of the attack. A retaliatory strike would have to be ordered quickly; Washington might be destroyed within minutes. Odom called back and offered a correction: twenty-two hundred Soviet missiles had been launched.
Brzezinski decided not to wake up his wife, preferring that she die in her sleep. As he prepared to call Carter and recommend an American counterattack, the phone rang for a third time. Odom apologized—it was a false alarm. An investigation later found that a defective computer chip in a communications device at NORAD headquarters had generated the erroneous warning. The chip cost forty-six cents. — The New Yorker
This article will argue that the "more is better" relationship with knowledge which is the foundation of science and our modern civilization is simplistic, outdated and increasingly dangerous. — Jake
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