Perhaps a more formal approach to this question is to define 'science' as being concerned with human 'prediction and control'. The branch of philosophy we call 'ethics' is then brought to bear on the 'control issue'.
There is a secondary issue here about the status of philosophy, in that confining its involvement to 'ethics', we are discounting anything philosophy may claim to contribute to 'epistemology'.

I agree with you. Things that are knowable can be used against you.

If a criminal or a bad person gets his hand on knowledge, much like Adam bit into the fruit of the forbidden tree, the criminal can cause bad things.

You propose that knowledge not be disseminated for that reason.

But then police won't have knowledge, either. Police uses knowledge to nab crimianls, and the justice system uses knowledge to discourage criminal activity. If the police has no knowledge, they are helpless in catching criminals.

The problem with general banning of dissemination of knowledge is that it has to be universal. That way, the hooligans will stay dumb, but so will the police.

If it's not universal, then you, or somebody has to decide whom to give knowledge to. Well, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI decided that for themselves. A CIA agent who is trained to protect you from foreign terrorists, knows more than you do about terrorism.

So I think your fear is valid, but it not founded right. The trick is for protection agencies to be smarter, better informed than how the damage agencies are.

[Deleted]

There are badly formed questions. You may as well ask if fire is bad or doctors?

If the surface argument you’re presenting is suggesting that we shouldn’t be inquisitive and curious about the universe I completely disagree - not that it matters because we’re curious regardless of what anyone says/wants.

I assume there are more ‘good’ people than ‘bad’ people (or rather ‘good’ actions rather than ‘bad’ actions) as human society has managed to decrease human suffering through scientific strides not in spite of them.

Trees are not ‘bad’, but I can still bash an infants head against one. I don’t, and haven’t, seen any weight to the argument that we should stop learning just incase what we learn helps some bad person do more bad. You can try if you want to though.

Holding to ignorance is more dangerous than taking some responsibility for failing. If you fail because you refused to try and learn shame on you. If you failed whilst trying to learn then you come to understand what path is better. Of course the issue seems to be that you’re against the foolhardy - I agree. Caution and care, respect of our limited understanding and such, are important. Basically exploration without humility is dangerous and irresponsible, whilst exploration with humility is wisdom willing to take on greater responsibility - arrogance can easily lead to us thinking we can take on more responsibility than we can, but we generally learn from this because nature is an unforgiving teacher (learn or die).

In more simplistic terms are you asking if knowing something is better for you than not knowing? Which would also be similar to asking if all hideous actions can be dismissed if they are done in ignorance ... which then leads to ask how we’re to dictate what is and isn’t an action of ignorance ... which leads to only one possible conclusion: we must come to learn the means to best measure what is and isn’t done out of ignorance by way of scientific investigation rather than relying of a judicial system based o blind accusations utterly absent of evidence or logical reasoning.

The police having knowledge does not stop the criminals. — elucid

Well, get rid of the police force, and see how your town's life shapes up after that.

I know it's an impossible proposition to carry out.

But I do believe that policing does deter some elements (not all) from criminal activity.

And you're right, police can only act on the fet acompli of a criminal act. Police can only arrest people suspected of already having committed a crime. But then again, jail is not a bed of roses, and many, many people reform their lives out of jail. And many, many people hold themselves back from committing crime because they know what the consequences will be if they get caught.

So in a way, depending on how you define criminals, yes, you're right, police does not stop already committed crime. But not gaining knowledge will hinder them in finding those who have committed crimes, and helping the court system to get them corrected.

Is science all good? Or is there somethings wrong with it? Is there somethings wrong with knowing things? Of course, in some situations, people knowing things can be very bad. Suppose a criminal finds out about the science of bombs and weapons, imagine how bad that would be? Imagine, a criminal knowing how to get to where you are. Imagine a criminal knowing how to hack into your bank account. Imagine, them knowing how to steal in other ways.

Imagine people knowing things about you that would make them hate you. You wouldn't like that, would you. True, that knowing what things are bad for you is good, but it can also be very stressful, embarrassing, annoying, and dangerous. — elucid

David Eggers’ novel The Circle explores this question - it may be worth a read (the movie is terrible, by the way, and completely misses the point).

The more we know about the world, the greater our capacity to achieve. It is what we don’t know about the world, and what we don’t want to know, that is far more dangerous and destructive.

Imagine spending lots of time and money wrong scientific researches. That would not be good.

So have some respect for ignorance as well. — elucid

But how would we find out that the scientific research is ‘wrong’?

It isn’t that we should be cautious with seeking knowledge, but that we should be cautious with acting in ignorance.

[Deleted]

I think there is a trade-off when it comes to knowledge, of both reality and morality.

On the one hand, the better we know what is true and what is good, the better we are able to bridge the difference between the two: to make good things true, and bad things false.

But knowledge of both sorts is a narrowing-down of the available possibilities: when you know nothing, then so far as you know anything could be true, anything could be good, and the more about each you learn, the more you find that things are either impossible or impermissible, and so the remaining domain of things that both should be and could be gets narrower and narrower and narrower.

So greater knowledge leads to better behavior, to more effective bringing-about of good things. But lesser knowledge leads to better experience, to more innocence and less hopelessness.

What would be best would be if we could live our lives in that hopeful innocence, while something else that didn't have the capacity to suffer like we do handled all of the dreadful knowing and acted on that knowledge to our benefit.

So have some respect for ignorance as well — elucid

You must work for the government

You must work for the government — staticphoton

:rofl: :up: :clap:

We could view the world as a system whose parts are out of sync. Science is progressing so rapidly that other areas of human concern, specifically morality, is left far behind. Thus we have the misuse/abuse of scientific knowledge resulting in a lot of suffering. Had morality made similar progress I think the sad situation of guns, chemical weapons, atomic bombs, etc. wouldn't have occurred.

It's quite worrisome why morality is still stuck in the past or is human nature to be blamed or is it something else? Whatever the case maybe we need to do something about it.